Google closes Android 3.0 Honeycomb source to prevent use on smartphones - Page 4

Okay. Google, the "flexibly open" company!

No.

Apple is collaborative on some things, shares code sporadically on others and is strictly closed on quite a bit too. The difference is Apple doesn't shout from the Rooftops that they are open and others are closed! Then revoke access to a whole trunk of that "open" project.

Google's problem is they are disingenuous about being open. As in talking the talk, but not walking the walk. How can you really trust someone who has done that repeatedly through the whole Android development process?

All of Android isn't one program. Google only needs to give back on the individual program level to the appropriate GPL projects. I don't doubt they are managing to keep current enough with that to avoid the ire of the FSF folks.

Lots of the rest of Android is on the Apache License which doesn't require give back, just attribution that Apache Licensed code was used.

Legally I don't see a problem here for Google. On a neighborly and PR moral high ground level, it's a train wreck of a bad decision.

QfT...

That reads more like a self licking ice cream cone than getting to understand what a user wants.

Conferences and reports are the worst way to learn what the average user likes, you only hear what the same out of touch talking heads say those users want. Those same folks that advised the mobile market for years and couldn't manage to tell anyone the consumer really wanted a device like an iPhone.

Don't forget their stance on Net Neutrality!

Not even close.
I'd buy Google products long before I'd buy anything Amway.
Apparently, you've never had a mom who got suckered into the Amway "get rich quick" pyramid scheme...

'droid enthusiasts despair

Incidentally, it's "jibe" not "jive" — an all to[o] common misusage that is very annoying.

(And for starters,everyone, please, learn the difference between "moot" and "mute," "prostate" and "prostrate," and "travesty" and "tapestry!")

Is DaHarder buying 3 Xooms for each of his family members this time??
I wonder where all 9 of his Galaxy Tab end up.

In the garbage where cheap crap ware belongs.

DED: The initials of the author of the article.

"an all too common"

i totally agree. I'd wager that Apple came up with the iPhone because they did not attend any of these conferences or listen to any of their advice.

LOL, I did that for you.
Honestly, just an incidental omission typo, not a misusage from misunderstanding (although I am a terrible speller and typist.)

There seems to be some kind of immutable law that if one be so bold as to post a grammar correction that post will contain at least a typo, if not a grave grammatical lapse.

I honastly havent understand it's.

I dread instant messaging because my keyboard tries to thwart all attempts at intelligent conversation.

I agree. It should probably have a proper name and Wikipedia entry.
Perhaps it should be called something like, "The 'Actaully . . . ' Principle" since so many grammar correction posts start with, "Actually . . ." and always contain a typo?

All I ask is that people stop using "bias" as an adjective (unless they're making clothes).

Constantly seeing "that's a bias opinion" or "this whole article is pretty bias" is like being stabbed in the head by the stupid fork.

Actually jive is ok. I think it is a different meaning than jibe. Jive is a 1940s American slang term which was used just as the poster wrote - to be in sync with. Jibe is a nautical term meaning to switch or shift which doesn't really make sense in that context. So actually jibe is the wrong word for what was being stated.

Actually, "jive" can be used to be roughly synonymous with "gibe", meaning to tease. "Jive" also has an old jazz era meaning of "in a jazzy manner" (not to mention a frenetic style of dance) and then by extension (presumably because of the easy but tangled seductiveness of swing and/or the dance style) "glib" or "untrustworthy."

"Jibe" does indeed have a nautical meaning, but also and more typically is used to mean "be in alignment with" or "agree."

As far as I know, it's never correct to use "jive" to mean "agree."

Heh, and I see we both conformed to DEuserIGN's prescription of starting such posts with "actually."

In order to discover the correct usage of slang you must consult the street not a dictionary.

I believe it originated from jive as a musical reference. Jive is dancing to swing music and then the phrase morphed from that usage to the slang "Doesn't jive" meaning out of step with the music and extended to mean 'doesn't make sense'. So the most common usage was the opposite of agree but should translate to the positive if you omit the doesn't verb.

Another interesting nautical phrase that has made its way into common usage is:

"By and large"- In sailing it means tacking against the wind (jibing) or with the wind, large being full sail.

Now it means 'most of the time', since a sail is mostly either 'by' or 'large' or sometimes there is no wind.

Good grief, now we're discussing English slang! what's a slang word for "hypocrite"?

Troll.

lol I'm not a troll, I legitimately found it funny I see we don't share a sense of humor, but that's totally fine.

I'm still looking for the "hypocrite" slang so we can describe Google with more interesting words! (No, really!(^^))

I love how the techrtards, in all their moronic rants, look at the open source mantra as some sort of mana from heaven. I can do virtually EVERYTHING I want to on my iOS device, and I have 100's of thousands of apps to help me do that easily, conveniently and seamlessly wrapped in a beautifully simple user interface. I don't want to have to be a technologist to manage and use my digital life, just like 95% of the rest of the world. What does open source really mean? Nothing to the vast majority of people. But meanwhile I'm glad that the techtards have access to some the most powerful and meaningful open source projects out there, like webkit. Now who developed that and gave this gift to the rest of the world? Oh yeh, it was Apple. Oops. Give it a rest you blithering techno twits.

At least they get a five-year supply of laundry soap for their trouble.

Best point made in this entire thread!

BTW, for all the talk coming from the Android geek collective about how Android devices are outselling iOS devices, a little reality check:

there are currently over 120 different smartphone models on the market shipping with Android, competing with 3 different iOS models (iPhone 4, 3GS, 3G), yet Android smartphones only managed to outsell iOS smartphones by a few thousand.

When talking about Android devices vs. iOS devices IN GENERAL, it isn't even close, specifically when considering that there is no real Android equivalent for the iPod touch other than the Samsung Galaxy Player, which is only for sale in South Korea. We all know how the Xoom, the current Galaxy Tab and other Android based tablets are selling compared to the iPad (hint: not very well.)

These FACTS don't really speak very well to Android's popularity among those who actually BUY STUFF.

You can do only what Apple allows you to do and what Apple thought of. On Android as a manufacturer the only limit is what you are able to do not what Google thought of... and it doesn't really matter if you do it in 2.3 or 3.0 in a few months.

Webkit would certainly not be open source if Apple would not have been forced to open source it (since its based on KHTML).
Contrary to what Google open sourced a lot of projects without being forced and often doesn't even force companies that use it to open source their contributions.
But that doesn't mean Google has to open source everything and all the time... thats just naive.

Overall considering how primitive computing still is these days a closed system like Apples simply doesn't make sense in the long run.

Wow. Just wow.

Here, I think you were actually looking for this:

I love this quote from Ars :
"Sadly, those promises were never fulfilled and the dream of an open mobile ecosystem around Android never materialized. In reality, Android has become an insular platform developed almost entirely behind closed doors in an environment that is hostile to external contributors and is mired in a culture of secrecy that serves a small handful of prominent commercial hardware vendors and mobile carriers."

Because what's worse than being so blatantly lied to?

+++++

lol nice try
Free is actually not that important compared to the ability to take a look at the source and modify it if necessary. Especially when it comes from professionals and not GPL amateurs.
What i was referring to was this http://code.google.com/hosting/search?q=label:google when i said they don't just open source stuff when they are forced to do so.

For example open sourcing stuff like this is more of a gain for developers than for Google
http://code.google.com/p/protobuf/
http://code.google.com/p/googletest/

It's not even worth to reply to that until you began to understand the reason and the alternatives.
I give you a hint: Linux Desktop

At the end of the day the whole operating system is still open source and released under Apache even if the manufacturer had no say.
But it never was about open governance anyway so who cares... Symbian and Maemo/Meego already tried that and it didn't work out that well.

[my bold] That is the party line and except for a VERY VERY few individuals I don't buy it when we are talking about consumer electronics.

Open source is a great asset and is very much the backbone of modern technology, even in many "closed" systems when MIT, BSD and Apache style licenses are used. But for anyone to suggest that consumer devices need to be Open Source compliant so that the code can be played with and made to be less primitive just flies in the face of all reality.

In general open source software lags proprietary software in functionality and utility during the early stages of the parallel projects software lifecycle. Focused funded development of the proprietary project nearly always pushes capability faster to start with. Once the proprietary software stabilizes and new relevant functionality gives way to bloat the open source projects tend to catch up, using those proprietary projects as models. Open source gets the big win when the proprietary project gets killed, usually not until late in the lifecycle and after the majority of needed core functionality is covered.

The projects that turned into the core of Apache, Linux and GNU followed these basic arcs, with most of the old commercial leading products relegated to the scrap heap of memory.

Open source also shines in areas where there are no good proprietary solutions, or where a couple area leading experts get the bug and/or funding to do something better than a small scale proprietary application is capable of with its cadre of mere mortal experts. These tend to be far smaller community projects where the core developers stay actively involved for extended periods because they get regular use from it. While they might be smaller community-wise, they are probably over-delivering contribution wise to society.

But community open source has proven to be an abysmal model when developing consumer products. The testing and design necessary to get user interfaces correct for widespread use by demographically varied populations is the weakness of the open source community. It just isn't a sexy interesting task like coding is. Proprietary software projects have companies that fund the drudge-work of QA and formal usability testing (and too many of those still get it wrong). Nothing against community open source there, it just is what it is--which is a poor solution for consumer products.

Because of the nature of open source and consumer products over the years, I have to take a very cynical view of ANYONE who tries to use open source as justification as to why some consumer product may be better than another. I just haven't ever seen it bear truth. It gets even less likely when Google and Android are mentioned. Those strictly are not community sourced projects. They are carefully controlled industry shared code without a license fee (the ONLY reason Android is popular at all). Every once in awhile Google will drop a source snapshot and then clam right back up again. That's not open source, that's proprietary software masquerading as open source.

It all comes down to what you can do with your device, and how well it does it. Open or closed, most users are going to care about the experience first and the politics second.

Android on phones has done well because most people use their phones as communication devices first. Mobile email, texting, voice, maps, browser and some web enabled services. Makes sense for a device that you keep on your person at all times, and plays to Google's strengths as a web first company.

Tablets are another matter. They bode to be the next big personal computing paradigm. As such, they will be expected to deliver engaging computing experiences, not just scaled up phone type web services. There's no huge advantage to checking your email or texting or getting showtimes on a tablet over a phone, yet Google seems to think that will do.

It's ironic, because the smug dismissal of the iPad early on was always about how it was "just a consumption device." Real computing would happen elsewhere, we were told, so if you were content to lay back and stare at stuff go ahead and enjoy your toy computer.

Flash forward to the arrival of Android tablets. All of a sudden applications don't matter. Widgets matter, OS cruft matters, being able to access web services matter.

Meanwhile, the iPad continues to add robust productivity apps, and the they make whats available for Honeycomb look pathetic. No doubt applications will be added in time, but of what quality? Where are the really serious, carefully engineered full on applications going to come from?

For instance: here is screen shot of the current Honeycomb specific drum machine available form the Android Store:



And here is one of a dozen high end drum apps for the iPad:



Yes, I know, drum machines aren't the be all and end all of computer use, but there are actually so few apps specifically available for Honeycomb at the moment it difficult to find head to head comparisons.

But more generally, the delta is so huge it's almost comical. Outside of replicating what their phone can do, Android tablets seem to offer a computing experience from the mid-90s. If Google can't get their act together pretty soon, all those iPads with all those apps are going to start making a real impression on the general public. A great many people will have seen or used an iPad running some kind of extremely polished, powerful application, and when they go to look at buying a tablet for themselves and see the primitive state of Honeycomb apps, they're not going to be impressed. And the last thing they're going to think is "Yeah, it might not do much, but by God it's open!"