Joe Hewitt: Android and Open Source

http://joehewitt.com/post/android-and-open-source/

by tonyskn • 16 years ago

87 36 16 years ago

kenjackson8• 16 years ago

What Joe considers important (public source tree and outsider commits) are probably amongst the absolute least important and interesting aspects of openness. It's the type of thing only a maintainer would care about.

He's arguing a point that nobody cares about. Even RMS is probably saying, "You're being a bit pedantic here about the definition, aren't you Joe?"

joehewitt• 16 years ago

That's a disappointing attitude. Let me give you a great counterexample.

Chrome was initially a completely fork of Webkit, but Google eventually chose to work with Apple and merge all of their changes to the Webkit trunk. This was only possible because Webkit, unlike Android, allows outsiders to commit.

The costs of maintaining a fork of a project as large as Webkit (or Android) are so huge, even Google didn't want to bear them for long. The benefits of the merge are huge for all users. Not only does Chrome continue to get Apple's changes downstream, like CSS transforms, but Safari gets Google's changes, like web sockets. In Android today, this sort of collaboration would be impossible.

kenjackson8• 16 years ago

And while everything you say may be true, I still don't think most people care. In fact, I'm fairly certain most people don't care. Ask your average developer, much less consumer, the difference between Chrome and Android with respect to openess and you'll probably get blank stares.

Clearly Google doesn't think the benefits of public commits outweighs the costs, otherwise it would economically make sense. Additionally I suspect given the current state of mobile OS development vs browser development they probably realize that public contributions would be fewer and of less general utility than what we've seen with browsers.

I still think the fact that one can pick up Android, even if it is just 2.2 today, and build it, and port it to any device they want, and rip out any code they like, and add any code they like is a pretty reasonable definition of open -- at least given that openness is a gradient and not absolute term.

Matt_Cutts• 16 years ago

I just wanted to say thanks for the blog post. It conveyed a lot of the nuances that might not have come through in the tweets.

bbatsell• 16 years ago

> He's arguing a point that nobody cares about.

Right, that's why it's been in the top 5 of HN for two days.

> Even RMS is probably saying, "You're being a bit pedantic here[...]"

Have you ever read a word of RMS? :P

His position would be that Hewitt is being insufficiently pedantic, particularly with regard to the complete closed-ness of the hardware and manufacturer/carrier-specific software.

kenjackson8• 16 years ago

Yeah, I was using a bit of hyperbole with RMS. Taking someone who is the most pedantic about naming, e.g., GNU/Linux, and most extreme about what freedom and openness is, and then making a joke that he even thinks Joe has taken it too far.

jaaron• 16 years ago

No, public source tree and a process for outsider commits are critical for proper open source projects. Otherwise, while you have the code, your only choice is to fork, not collaborate. The code may be OSI compliantly licensed, but the community, the decision process, and the opportunity to actually make a difference are closed.

kenjackson8• 16 years ago

"Otherwise, while you have the code, your only choice is to fork, not collaborate"

If you look at this the right way, every checkin is a new fork. There's no such thing as a mainline branch. There's absolutely no reason you can't simply fork some branch of Android and start working on it and tell everyone to work from your branch. Each developer has the choice, including Google to use your branch or checkin to a different fork.

Again, AFAIK, Google is not preventing anyone from branching and checking into a new branch. This is fundamentally no different than Google allow public commits, but then branching after each of their checkins.

To put it another way, if you were to take the 2.2 branch of Android and you forked then contributed an incredible 7" tablet UI experience that Google nor Apple could ever match, you may have forced Google to begin picking up your branch.

There's is nothing stopping any of this from happening, except the apparent attitude that Google needs to bend over backwards to accomodate people who haven't shown any inclination nor aptitude to an interesting contribution.

Goodness, I can't believe I'm defending Google.

pkaler• 16 years ago

To expand on my point from last time:

Android source code is licensed under the GPL and Apache licenses and therefore the source code is open for developers.

The Android project isn't really developed in the open therefore the process is closed for most developers.

Most Android hardware is carrier locked, has proprietary firmware, or has proprietary services loaded on top and therefore is closed for users.

kenjackson8• 16 years ago

"Most Android hardware is carrier locked, has proprietary firmware, or has proprietary services loaded on top and therefore is closed for users."

Does Android mandate this or can you go and create a phone that has none of the carrier restrictions you noted? I think you can.

m0nastic3• 16 years ago

all Android phones have three sets of restrictions:

1.) Restrictions imposed by Google, which you are free to ignore if you stick to just the released source code of Android (like the Market or their proprietary apps) 2.) Restrictions imposed by the Manufacturer (which you could ignore by making your own phone) 3.) Restrictions imposed by the Carrier (which you can presumably ignore if you make an unlocked GSM phone).

Working outside of all three of those restrictions would basically put you in the same category as OpenMoko (which while an enterprising idea was pretty much guaranteed to not go anywhere).

So I'd agree, "you" can go create a phone without any of the carrier restrictions, provided you are a handset manufacturer. I'm not a handset manufacturer, so I can't.

skybrian• 16 years ago

You can buy a developer phone. However, I'm not sure you can get one for any carrier.

thought_alarm• 16 years ago

It seems whenever someone tries to come up with tangible benefits of Android's "openness" they invariably end up describing properties of the Palm Pilot, Windows Mobile, and Blackberry operating systems that have absolutely nothing to do with open source. Case in point:

    > I've been pleasantly surprised at how much more 
    > configurable Android is. The fact that you can
    > replace the home screen with a third-party launcher
    > or even make your own app store is a clear sign
    > that Google's heart is in the right place.

Or, it's a clear sign that Android isn't well designed and is no different than most of the other mobile devices that have appeared in the last 10 years. And if you purchase a locked-down Android device from your carrier then it literally is no different.

thwarted3• 16 years ago

It's sad that we've reached a point where what is good design is such an absolute, with no consideration for customization as a design goal.

askbjoernhansen• 16 years ago

Things aren't better just because they're more configurable, even if customization is a goal. More often options are just varnish because the defaults aren't reasonable. Make the defaults good first and then add configuration and options.

MrScruff• 16 years ago

Isn't this a rather old trend? As technology becomes more complex, we rely on the creator to make sensible decisions about the interface to allow us to focus primarily on what is relevant to achieving our goal.

Abstraction is the only way technology can become more powerful and more accessible at the same time.

protomyth• 16 years ago

To be fair, its been tried a couple of times to build really customizable machines. It is just more expensive from a manufacturing point of view and the market is never really there. The Treo lost its slot and I seem to remember an attempt by some of the Amiga team to build a PC in a modular way (ended up in a museum somewhere).

The problem has really been the cellphone focus which means "open" = "what carriers want". The lack of a true iPod touch equivalent has hurt the potential of Android.

I really think if you were trying to build and open, customizable, modular platform, it would be competitive with Apple, Microsoft, and RIM. Android really doesn't have a love for an ecosystem of gadgets around it. It is a lone wolf and needs to really have a high speed connector where people could really build cool add-ons that it can plug into. Make it the "I can carry my world" device that can be plugged into other things to get more power / capability.

The funny thing is that the inside of the Mac Pro has so many niceties from a hardware expansion point of view that never really appear on PCs.

usaar333• 16 years ago

First off, no Android device sold blocks installing custom home screens from the market. In the US at least, all major carriers but AT&T allow side-loading applications. What you do see across the board is restricting root access, which, while unfortunate, still allows for a lot of customization.

Secondly, different users will always have different preferences and use cases; the variety enabled by customization allows for more users to be happier. Furthermore, such openness has produced custom apps that blow away everything else away. Swype, a custom keyboard that cannot be distributed to the end-user of rival mobile OS's, is the most obvious example. At least at the OS level, this modularity is a sign that Android is well-designed.

blub• 16 years ago

Swype is also available on Symbian. The company that makes it has stated that it wants it to become a standard on all mobile platforms.

rquesada• 16 years ago

This article (please read the whole article, including the PDF that is mentioned) mentions that Google might be "open" regarding the source code, but it is not open regarding which components can be replaced in Android.

It seems that Google doesn't allow the carries to replace the Google Location Service.

http://daringfireball.net/2010/09/the_welcome_to_android

eli2• 16 years ago

...if they want to use the Google trademark and have the non-open Google apps like Maps and GMail.

Joe Hewitt: Android and Open Source

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