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Comment by elteto | Hacker News Reader

I don't see the problem here. Play is part of Google's ecosystem, not the Android OS platform. I can download Android's source code, compile it and put it in any device I want (provided I have the technical capability to do so of course). In fact, this is what Android distributions like Cyanogenmod do, and they also provide a binary blob with Google's stuff as an option, if you want to install it. I don't see the reason to demand the Play store app to be open source nor what could be gained from it.

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The problem isn't Play. It's that people are being bound more tightly to the ecosystem.

As a developer, one of the things that was more appealing to me about Android was that Android seemed to be a more level playing field. But this approach tilts things substantially in favor of Google.

In particular, this solves fragmentation for Google, and maybe for Google trusted partners, but it doesn't seem to do so for any other Android developers.

I don't think anybody's saying the Play app should be open source. But if I were making my living from Android apps, I'd worry that Android improvements would be few and far between. Both the technical and business incentives push to improving Play Services, not the base OS.

I don't see any reason why the play app shouldn't be Free software. So, while I might be a minority, I'd certainly like to see all of it opened up.

I'd much prefer a reality where the play service and app is open, and which upstream source you trust is defined by which certificates you trust, and nothing else. That'd make it trivial to set up trusted sources for a company, for example.

Why should it be free software? What gives you a reason to feel that level of entitlement?

I want the freedom to control what software runs on my device. One straightforward way to do that is for the play app and service (or at least the service api) to be Free software.

So, I would like to run Free software on my devices. Thankfully the kernel is still Free software, so there's still hope we can have open distributions going forward. It seems a shame to double the work to achieve that goal, so I think it makes sense for the software to be opened up.

Note that you can replace the Play apk on your device, and create a Free implementation of its (documented) APIs.

I want a pony, too. But unless I am willing to pay for it, I won't get one.

You didn't answer the question--what makes you believe you are entitled to free software from a company that employs thousands of people to write it?

If I had spent a million constructing a virtual pony, and I could give you a copy of it without any additional cost, I'd give you a copy of my pony.

However, the pony in this analogy is the device, not the software. The software is more like the saddle -- and Google are selling ponies with their own custom designed saddle, making it hard to ride it any other way than bareback if you don't use Google's saddle - so that they can sell adwords printed on the saddle, and take a cut from everyone that sells Google compatible stirrups.

At any rate, I didn't say I was entitled to it, just that I couldn't see any reason to keep it closed. I do see many reasons to keep it open.

I see a great many reasons to keep it closed, not least of which is many millions of dollars worth in intellectual property.

What intellectual property do you think are in the pieces that are closed, in the Google apps and apis for android?

There's certainly a lot of work put into making the stuff work -- but opening up the code won't make it stop working for Google. And I really doubt there's much fancy in there - mostly just grunt work to implement some straightforward ideas. I fail to see how opening that up under something like the GPL or AGPL, preventing someone to (legally) take the code and "run away" with it -- will lower the value of the Android system.

They tried that before, and we got fragmentation. Play Services is supposed to be the solution to that. I think it very well might be a huge improvement.

Well, from a business standpoint, there are a lot of companies planning to piggyback off of Android to launch their own OS platforms. These competitors represent a real threat to the Android platform. When Google was all alone in the smartphone OS space (chief competitors being BBOS and iOS, which aren't licensed to 3rd party manufacturers) they didn't have to worry about competing for the attentions of manufacturers... companies got to choose between Android or making Symbian featurephones. So it was easy for Google to be generous with the source.

Now that Google has to worry about de-Google'd Android products, they need to keep more of their work for themselves.

Android was open as long as people did what google wanted with it.

That's the antithesis of open.

Like other commenter said, only the Sith deal in absolutes :) In this regard, I'm okay with Google protecting their IP and internal infrastructure, I am not really interested in how they process payments or any of the other details. Open source philosophy does not entitle you to any of that info, you could write your own app store if you so want, like Amazon did.

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