Android not open?
I just read the license agreement for the Android SDK 1.0 release 1. It’s definitely not open, by any definition of open I can come up with.
1. I can only use it to develop for Android. At the moment, I don’t have an Android device, and therefore couldn’t care less about Android. I do have an n810, and would love to play with it there.
2. I ” may not copy (except for backup purposes), modify, adapt, redistribute, decompile, reverse engineer, disassemble, or create derivative works of the SDK or any part of the SDK”. This means no porting Android to another device, or modifying it in any way.
3. I “may not load any part of the SDK onto a mobile handset or any other hardware device except a personal computer”. This is the oddest restriction of all. I can’t use it to develop software for an android phone? At any rate, no porting for me.
Okay, none of this applies to open source licensed components. Lets see what I can actually use:
1. The kernel (woo hoo! I can get the kernel elsewhere)
2. webkit. I have this on my laptop already.
3. An android emulator. That’s something, I guess.
4. An eclipse plugin. I don’t use eclipse.
Until enough of Android is release open source to be useful, you can hardly claim that Android is “open”. I’m still holding out hope. I honestly hope that Android is released. But until it is, I can’t in good conscience get an Android phone.
What I would really like to see is a port of Android (or at least it’s UI) to the Nokia internet tablets. Too bad that’s not possible.
The story has always been they’ll open it up once the first devices ship, which should be in the next month or two.
Sure, but the quote was:
“Android is open to developers, open to consumers, and open to handset manufacturers. Cannot wait to see what’s next.”
With the possible exception of manufacturers (I don’t know what kind of license they use…), none of that is actually true, at this time.
Yes, but rather than getting caught up in marketing hype, I’d wait until the phone is actually available before blasting Google for not living up to something they said they’ll do when it’s released. Grousing about it now is premature.
I’m not blasting google for not doing what they said they’d do; I’m blasing google for claiming something is open *now* when it’s not. That’s it. If they had said “will be open”, then I would have kept my mouth shut. But they said “is open”, which is just not true.
Contrast with Nokia and maemo: maemo was available before the tablet was. Granted, not completely everything (like, say, DSP and WIFI drivers) was open at the time, but Nokia never claimed absolutely everything would be open either.
Now, obviously, I can’t order a device until I get my hands on it to play with. That’s just a given. However, I also can’t order a device until google fulfills their open source promises. So far, I haven’t seen much. I’m hopeful, but I haven’t seen much.
The marketing side of Google has said “open” now but the previous announcements by Googlers in the know have all said “open when the device ships”. As a general policy I ignore anything said by marketeers, and blasting them is not worth your time.