Neither Microsoft, Nokia, nor anyone else should fork Android. It’s unforkable.

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/02/neither-microsoft-nokia-nor-anyone-else-should-fork-android-its-unforkable/

by AndrewDucker • 12 years ago

178 207 12 years ago

arstechnica.com

mpettitt2• 12 years ago

Interesting article. I'm intrigued as to how CynaogenMod handles the lack of Google Play APIs - it seems to be skirted around on their website.

AndrewDucker2• 12 years ago

If you run it on your existing phone then it extracts the Google Play apps from it and re-uploads them afterwards.

However, their new phone is actually certified, and therefore gets them "properly": http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/12/19/the-oppo-n1-is-offic...

mpettitt2• 12 years ago

That's, hmm, interesting from a competitive and privacy advocate perspective. It means that whilst Prism Break and similar websites are advocating it, the key parts which report back to Google are still in place, since they aren't the bits being replaced.

muyuu• 12 years ago

Woha that looks pretty good. I didn't know about the Oppo N1.

SideburnsOfDoom6• 12 years ago

Microsoft is just not going to abandon Windows Phone, for fundamentally these reasons:

"If it's a core business function – do it yourself, no matter what." http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/10/programming-is-hard...

MS certainly will view "a computer in every pocket, and all of them running MS Software" as core to their future. If they do abandon Windows phone, it will be because that has changed.

In the meantime, MS is a company with a track record of plugging away until version x of the product is good enough to succeed.

snom380• 12 years ago

Agreed, although that track record stopped pretty much after IE and XBox.

SideburnsOfDoom6• 12 years ago

It's still happening, Azure is being iterated and improved a lot.

fidotron10• 12 years ago

You forget "Embrace, extend . . "

The other mobile ecosystems are now so far in front they have no viable option other than the embracing and extending. Android happens to be flexible enough at the software layer (not just licensing) to make such a thing remarkably easy to do, given the resources.

SideburnsOfDoom6• 12 years ago

The other mobile ecosystems are now so far in front they have no viable option other than the embracing and extending.

That's your opinion. I doubt that it would get any traction inside MS.

It just doesn't make sense - are MS more likely to take the android kernel and reskin it to look like WinPhone, or continue to believe that writing OS kernels is a core company competence ... which it is, really. If one day MS could not write OS kernels any more they would be in serious trouble. It's a core business function, so they do it themselves.

How would re-skinning android help MS get "in front" anyway? They have technically solid product in Windows Phone, they need other things to make it win, and they know it. Hence, the whole Nokia deal.

pjmlp3• 12 years ago

You forget "Embrace, extend . . "

Like Apple, Oracle, IBM and many other commercial vendors. Still don't get why only Microsoft gets bashed about it.

dasil0032• 12 years ago

"Embrace, extend" was more effective (and terrifying to competition) when Microsoft was the juggernaut. But now Microsoft is actually behind Google, so there's little chance they can extend it any meaningful way that would give them leverage against Google. Google has equal engineering resource and huge head-start in install base and ecosystem.

So the real question is what could Microsoft leverage from AOSP? My instinct is they could probably build anything from AOSP into WinPhone far faster than they could utilize AOSP directly.

brudgers• 12 years ago

Embrace extend works for markets and technologies not so much for operating systems. Nobody has done well embracing and extending Android, those who tried such as Samsung are throwing in the towel because of...

...wait for it...

...you know it's coming...

...vendor lock-in.

I think the article gives Android too much credit for mindshare. Sure it's a platform for developers (this is why the monkey boy criticism of Ballmer makes no sense) but it's not really a brand among consumers. In consumer minds, Android is simply not an iPhone and increasingly not a Windows Phone. All that manufacturer and carrier customization erodes the idea of Android. In so far as Android is a brand, it's Google, not Andorid. But the primary brand of an Android phone is the Phone's manufacturer. Doing Apple on the cheap doesn't work.

Roboprog• 12 years ago

Hmm. What if MS made a .NET to dex converter???

I'm in the MS hating camp, BUT, I suppose they could actually devote enough resources to make a quite usable mode in Visual Studio that supports a .NET subset that maps to the Android/base API and then translates .NET bytecode to dex/dalvik format.

Oh, the horror...

sirkneeland5• 12 years ago

"all of them running MS software" is already never going to happen. If they view that as core to their future, they have already failed.

What needs to happen is that the definition of "running MS software" needs to change from an OS stack (where they've already lost) to things going on in the cloud.

gtirloni2• 12 years ago

I don't think that battle is settled (or that it will have winners and losers at all).

SideburnsOfDoom6• 12 years ago

I don't think it's quite that settled.

And no, it's not just about the OS stack. It says something that MS's new CEO, Satya Nadella, used to run the cloud group.

Oculus• 12 years ago

This has been an ongoing cycle for all of Android. First people complain about Android lagging behind iOS so Google starts moving their services to GSM so they can avoid having to send updates through manufacturers. Then people complain Google isn't open enough so they start baking it into ASOP which takes forever to rollout. On the cycle goes..

AndrewDucker2• 12 years ago

An alternative would be to use GSM as a shim, that just calls through to AOSP if the functionality is there, or fills in the functionality if it's not.

But I'm not seeing the advantage to Google of doing that - as everyone gets GSM if they go for the major phones.

vetinari2• 12 years ago

There is one factor that causes what's going into GMS and what into AOSP, that the article conveniently glosses over:

Functionality in GMS requries server side support. It can be computational capacity or server-side dabatases (fused location with wifi and cell towers? Google caller id? Map tiles? Storage? Server side push? Cloud support for games? All of them require something on the other side of connection).

Unless someone is willing to step in and provide this, there will be no AOSP equivalent.

king_jester2• 12 years ago

Most GSM APIs are based around Google services and products, so some of the APIs don't really have an equivalent in AOSP. One of the other reasons why Google likes GSM over AOSP is the fact that there is much better control over versions of code out in the wild, whereas AOSP rollouts that come with updates to the phone propagate more slowly and inconsistently.

hrjet• 12 years ago

Google could just add a clause in their manufacturer MOU and kill fragmentation easily. Moving the functionality into apps is an unnecessary extreme.

Touche2• 12 years ago

It doesn't have to be either or. Most of the AOSP apps have been basically abandoned. They could develop the AOSP Calendar app and also put a branded version in GSM. But they aren't doing that.

Shooti• 12 years ago

This has been thrown around a lot, but it's not really the case when you look into it. Going to through the 9 base apps of the CDD and comparing to Nexus:

Clock: https://android.googlesource.com/platform/packages/apps/Desk... - still worked on, identical

Browser: https://android.googlesource.com/platform/packages/apps/Brow... bug fixes only, but it was just a wrapper over webview. With chromium taking over webview any 3rd party/OEM browser app based on it essentially is a Chrome fork.

Calendar - https://android.googlesource.com/platform/packages/apps/Cale... Still worked on, identical except the built-in Google Calendar Content Provider/sync and alt icon

Contacts (People): https://android.googlesource.com/platform/packages/apps/Cont... - Still worked on, identical.

Gallery: https://android.googlesource.com/platform/packages/apps/Gall... - Still worked on/huge update in 4.4, identical.

Search: https://android.googlesource.com/platform/packages/apps/Quic... - Bug fixes, terrible 2.x style design, no Now.

Launcher: https://android.googlesource.com/platform/packages/apps/Laun... - Still worked on, doesn't include Google Now page or hotword detection

Music: https://android.googlesource.com/platform/packages/apps/Musi... Bugfixes, terrible 2.x design.

Settings: https://android.googlesource.com/platform/packages/apps/Sett... - Still worked on, identical

And to throw in three more essentials:

Keyboard: https://android.googlesource.com/platform/packages/inputmeth... - Still worked on. No Swipe input, identical otherwise

Camera: https://android.googlesource.com/platform/packages/apps/Came... - Still worked on. No Photosphere, identical otherwise

Email: https://android.googlesource.com/platform/packages/apps/Emai... - Still worked on, identical. Post-4.4 its design matches the Gmail app.

Each of the omissions has either an obvious Google server dependency (Google Now) or possible patent liability angle (the Swipe keyboard functionality). Music and Search are the only two which really stick out.

But even with Music, there's an argument to be made about the opportunity cost of doing so. There's no immediate benefit in spending dev cycles prettying up the AOSP Music app when no consumer will see it since every major OEM (Samsung, HTC, Sony etc) already have their own. Any time they set aside to that is time they could have used to work on the terrible latency problems plaguing the underlying audio system, which actually does make a difference across the board.

The same applies to Search. It's much more effective to commit those dev cycles on the layers underlying it so that the whole ecosystem benefits. Few of the exclusive features of the current Google Search app make sense for a service agnostic device search app to have, which is the original role of that app plays (Google's OS X app of the same name had the same featureset: http://www.google.com/quicksearchbox/). Really there's no motive to subvert the order of things and promote web search over OS search in a OS search app unless you own a search engine like Google.

Which isn't to say it (and Music) shouldn't be updated, since they do serve as docs for 3rd party devs and OEMs, so not updating would have some indirect inverse effect on the quality of apps. But I can see why they haven't got around to it yet given their trajectory.

tl;dr the situation is more grey than black or white.

higherpurpose2• 12 years ago

So Microsoft should fork Ubuntu Touch then. Problem solved ;)

Zigurd2• 12 years ago

Amazon has obviously forked Android successfully and has sold a lot of tablets. OPhone is an Android derived OS used in China, and other Chinese OEMs without access to the Google ecosystem have to do similar things.

Mithaldu• 12 years ago

I own an Amazon Kindle Fire. It sucks. Out of the box it can do almost nothing that normal android devices can. I had to root it in a very frustrating and glitchy process to be able to install google app store software and even of that many don't install or don't work.

What amazon has successfully done is build a kindle based on linux as opposed to whatever is on the original kindles. It's a very limited thing and nothing more than a kiosk to amazon purchases.

The only reason people buy it is because of brand loyalty to the kindle device series they knew before.

bitwize• 12 years ago

The original Kindles, afaik, were based on Linux, with I guess a custom stack on top.

king_jester2• 12 years ago

I had to root it in a very frustrating and glitchy process to be able to install google app store software and even of that many don't install or don't work.

The root process for Kindle devices is very annoying. However, there is a reason why most app store apps don't work on Kindle. Unless a developer is specifically thinking about supporting a device without Google APIs, they are likely not to correctly handle when API calls fail or aren't available. Also, the Kindle Fires to date have had some quirks here and there that don't work exactly as you would expect, so a developer would probably have to actually test their app for Kindle (which is its own pain due to how bad the Amazon developer portal is).

cwp2• 12 years ago

Amazon is a special case. They don't care about compatibility, since they're building a very focused, special-purpose platform of their own. Like the original iPhone, the Kindle is attractive enough that people will buy it without any apps. Android was just a way for them to cut their time-to-market.

Microsoft has a different set of problems. Windows Phone is already shipping, so adopting Android would actually delay the next release. What they need is a stronger ecosystem—more apps to bring users and more users to bring developers. Adopting Android might help them achieve that, but at the cost of ceding control to Google. At the end of the day, why would anyone buy Android from Microsoft instead of Google?

If they can't make a success of Windows Phone, MS would be better off to just can it and provide apps and services to both iOS and Android.

cwp2• 12 years ago

Another fork of Android that makes sense is Firefox OS. They take the Android kernel and drivers to get hardware compatibility, and layer a new set of APIs and apps on top of it. They don't care about compatibility, because they're interested in promoting web technologies rather than selling hardware, promoting services or making money from licensing.

ajross• 12 years ago

The Kindle Fire is actually quite compatible, though. The launcher/core experience is very different, but the app selection is basically identical. GMS has some nice APIs, but the truth is that most apps (by download count, or by revenue) either don't use them or can configure them out.

The kindle isn't successful because Amazon was able to eject compatibility concerns, it's successful because Amazon was (unlike basically all the other variant Android customizations) able to bring elements to the platform that customers actually wanted, and that these outweighed their desire for interoperability with the Google GMS ecosystem.

Zigurd2• 12 years ago

Microsoft has OS problems.

Windows CE was un-competitive with Linux, so they had to go to an NT-derived kernel and "real Windows" userland elements for the core OS. But those are bloaty and suck batteries and need fast CPUs.

I don't think they should exactly adopt Android, but they should, at least, have considered doing something Android-like. Imagine the .NET runtime on Linux. That would be very Android-like, but compatible with .NET languages and the VS toolchain.

sirkneeland5• 12 years ago

"If they can't make a success of Windows Phone, MS would be better off to just can it and provide apps and services to both iOS and Android"

That was true until the moment they spent $7.2 billion acquiring a company and 30,000 employees that need to make (and sell) devices to keep going.

MSFT now has an interest in shipping hardware that will compete with their software interests.

fredgrott• 12 years ago

the article author does not know what eff they are speaking about: The AOSP counterparts are buggy, feature deprived, and by at least some accounts, barely maintained.

If that sentence was true than stuff like the phone app would not work, obviously it does :)

Author does not realize that AOSP is a snapshot of the full android OS

higherpurpose2• 12 years ago

The author mentions "you can have control or compatibility, but not both". That's basically another way or saying "you can fragment the platform all you want, or choose compatibility (i.e. let Google control the platform across OEMs)". Remember when people were yelling from the rooftops "Android is so fragmented, and why it's always behind iOS! Google, give us standardization already!!"?

Linux' biggest problem has been that Microsoft moved much faster to get Windows on as many PCs as possible through certain corporate deals, but in terms of gaining market share, the Linux ecosystem has also worked against itself, but allowing everyone to fork it into hundreds of different distributions, all doing different stuff, and with barely even a weak app store across several distributions.

Linux is "everywhere", because everyone can fork it, and Android has certainly benefited from this strategy in the early years, too, but that seems to be an antithesis to an "ecosystem". As we can observe, even though "Linux is everywhere" in all sorts of devices, there's no significant "ecosystem".

Google wants to keep and evolve the Android ecosystem, because that makes it much easier for users, and also developers to develop on top of a well standardized ecosystem of devices and OS images. I guess for an proper ecosystem to thrive, it needs to be controlled and standardized as much as possible, with restrictions for OEMs and carriers.

The only alternative for the others, if they really want to start from the Android base, will be to form their own ecosystem, but that's very hard, unless we get to the point where only the web matters on mobile devices, too.

_pmf_2• 12 years ago

The author mentions "you can have control or compatibility, but not both".

Or you can be like Apple, controlling everything while still taking the liberty of shitting down developer's throats (who are delighted to be at the receiving end, for some reason).

fidotron10• 12 years ago

It's not a poor idea at all. The main example used to be Amazon, but now it's China. China are going to be the source of a lot of Google headaches, thanks to their inability to operate there leading to a majority of Android devices shipped there not including their services at all, giving a critical mass to the market for applications without their components.

Hugo Barra ended up at a Chinese company (Xiaomi) and Google just invested in Lenovo, but unless there's a big policy change on the way the Android/China beast will get further and further out of control.

MS absolutely should weigh in with a privacy hardened Android with great Exchange and Active Directory support (and Nokia Maps). It would be huge, and it would force Apple and Google right on to the defensive.

DrPizza2• 12 years ago

But it would have lousy app compatibility... so what advantage would it offer over Windows Phone?

fidotron10• 12 years ago

It would have about as lousy app compat as the Kindle Fire, which is to say nothing like as much as Google would like you to believe.

I'll say it: the Amazon APIs are actually better than some of the Google equivalents too. MS can play exactly the same game, but with the muscle of small business users.

Windows Phone simply has negligible actual interest from the dev community because it's too much of a technical island, and tied to the whole Metro disaster.

Touche2• 12 years ago

It would have better app compatibility than Windows Phone.

BugBrother2• 12 years ago

I don't get why this censoring, which stop US businesses like Google, doesn't lead to a trade war? The Americans are usually not shy about those?

Edit: fidotron, to me it seemed China tried to get rid of Google (internal hacking attacks, etc). That level of aggression is normal for China?

fidotron10• 12 years ago

Because it's self censorship on Google's part.

The killer problem, from a western dev perspective, is you can only distribute free apps on the Play Store in China since Google don't process payments there. Their ad systems also do not work. Apple do not have these problems, largely since their surface area around problematic services is so much smaller.

Google are in a bit of a spot here, especially post Snowden basically showing the western govs were no worse than the Chinese (at least at monitoring, though maybe not in consequences of those being monitored) when the aggressive surveillance by the Chinese was stated as the reason for their withdrawal. It still amazes me how naive Googlers seem to be about issues with surveillance and security in general in a political sense, not merely a technical one.

qwerta• 12 years ago

Many companies produce Android devices without google maps, gmail, play store... It solves a lot of privacy issues.

In 5 years smartphones will be cheap commodity and there will be also good opensource community fork. I can see Debian on Android.

cdibona• 12 years ago

Five years? You can buy smart phones for 30$ in shenzhen electronic malls today. I don't know your threshold for cheap, but considering feature phones sit at 25 to 20 in the same places.. The future is now :-)

mikecane2• 12 years ago

>>You can buy smart phones for 30$ in shenzhen electronic malls today.

1) That's in Shenzen. Might as well be Mars for most people. When Shenzen hardware is sourced by global brands, they usually have a generous markup where that "$30" quickly disappears.

2) How long do they last? "Oh, but they're cheap. If it breaks in 3 months, just buy another!" No. People just don't want to go through possibly losing data and having hardware just suddenly drop dead on them.

So, yeah. I'll go with the guy who said five years. That's for stuff that won't drop dead in three months.

userbinator• 12 years ago

Go up to ~$100 and the choice of smartphones becomes even more diverse. Quality would probably be a bit better too. This is with no contract, unlocked everything (chances are it's also Mediatek based, which means no bootloader locking AFAIK), and you get all the features like dual SIM, removable battery and expandable storage that most of the big-name manufacturers don't want you to have.

Edit: actually, it looks like $50 is already enough to get a pretty good entry-level Android phone; look up the Jiayu F1.

rbanffy2• 12 years ago

Microsoft could build a fully functional Mono-based Windows Phone experience on top of the AOSP core minus the Dalvik VM.

The only question would be "what for"? They'd gain nothing from it. They already have a more or less portable kernel upon which they can build phones.

pjmlp3• 12 years ago

Besides, since the Visual 2013 launch event, Xamarin has become an official Microsoft partner.

ahomescu13• 12 years ago

It sounds to me like what they need is exactly the other way around: Dalvik VM + all the Java APIs in Android, on top of the WP kernel (or they could go with Linux, but I think the kernel doesn't matter as much).

Maarten88• 12 years ago

This.

But there is one problem with that strategy: if Microsoft would support running Android apps on Windows Phone, there would be little incentive left to write native WP apps. Everybody would only write for Android, making it hard to differentiate the platform.

briandh3• 12 years ago

This piece seems to imply that only full source compatibility with Android (including Play Services) would be valuable to the Windows Phone platform. I don't think that's the case. I think getting 80% of the way, combined with the Microsoft brand plus quality devices Nokia would be enough to entice plenty of developers to the platform.

I think a more interesting question is whether Microsoft should fork AOSP as a whole, or place an Android compatibility layer atop Windows Phone, a la BlackBerry 10.

SoapSeller• 12 years ago

Didn't Google won the the "Oracle vs Google" case on the ground that APIs aren't patentable?

What prevent MS(or any other big player) to re-implement GMS?

BugBrother2• 12 years ago

It would be funny if Google copied Microsoft's monopolist strategies to avoid Windows cloning (APIs are ever changing and complex, especially regarding bug compatibility, no protocol docs+obfuscation, etc)... :-)

scholia5• 12 years ago

The "Oracle vs Google" case isn't over, it's up for appeal...

avenger123• 12 years ago

The title is a bit of a linkbait for sure. I don't think anyone at this point can say that Windows Phone is a non-player. It's going to be around and it can only get better.

Suggesting that Microsoft would fork Android is more wishful thinking than anything else.

Why not just say - "Android is unforkable" and leave it at that.

pmelendez2• 12 years ago

"I don't think anyone at this point can say that Windows Phone is a non-player."

I wouldn't be so sure of that. Just this week I read a comment suggesting the same forking android thing and that windows phone is over.

_random_• 12 years ago

Would you like me to write a comment suggesting that Apple is opting for using Windows for their products? I can write some other comments as well.

jeroen• 12 years ago

From http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/feb/07/satya-nade... , which is linked at the beginning of the article:

"To add to all the advice being ladled out to Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s new chief, here’s another piece: stop bothering with Windows Phone. It’s a waste of money which will never pay off.

Instead, focus the efforts of Microsoft and soon-to-be subsidiary Nokia on forking Android .."

So at least someone with an audience is saying that MS should fork Android, and Ars is responding to that.

x00542• 12 years ago

People with an audience say all kinds of idiotic things. Arguing that Microsoft should fork another OS is like saying that Ford should license the Toyota Prius design and concentrate on their core competency of putting Ford badges on cars.

zmmmmm• 12 years ago

Why not just say - "Android is unforkable" and leave it at that.

Because that's the most ridiculous part. Amazon already did it. Microsoft's own mobile division is in the process of doing it themselves! Others have also done it. To say that something so many people have actually done is undoable is a little bit crazy.

pmelendez2• 12 years ago

Well since that is a comment that pop up in here very frequently (that Nokia and now MS should fork Android) I am very happy to see that I am not the only one who thinks that would be a bad idea.

bane• 12 years ago

"typed on my Kindle Fire"

edderly• 12 years ago

Interesting analysis but I think he overcomplicates the situation.

From a third party app point of view you can build your against Android API level X, or a corresponding ‘Google api’ release associated with the given API level. An app built against API level X will work seamlessly on the corresponding AOSP release.

So far, unless you’re interested in more tightly integrating into Google services, you don’t need to build your app against the Google api, but obviously Google are interested in app developers using their custom apis.

As far as the increasing integration of core applications into GMS is concerned, it is rather overblown to call the AOSP versions broken or buggy. AOSP remains the base platform for the hardware ecosystem to develop their reference designs, AOSP has to work and does work well.

The hardware domain is a big problem for rolling your own OS from scratch, the associated software stack to support a given piece of hardware is non-trivial. Even generic Linux is now being supplanted by Android variants in the embedded space especially if you’re interested in graphics or multimedia.

However, also consider that the most successful player in the Android space, Samsung, have pursued a strategy of lightly forking Android with their own features and customizations without breaking compatibility deliberately.

stusmall5• 12 years ago

The "android isn't very open source" sentiment really bothers me and I see it a lot here. It is a complete and fully functional mobile OS under extremely permissive licensing. Pull it! Change it! Build it! Fork it! Whatever! AOSP is open source.

Look at the closed source services google adds. As far as I know they are all related to google services(Someone please correct me if I'm wrong). Their store, their maps, their email, their location services. This isn't needed in the open source distro and it works great without them. Also there are a lot of restriction on the brand and how you use it when release an Android product. That isn't unique to Android. See firefox vs iceweasel.

Sure sometimes it gets annoying that a lot of Android design decisions are made behind closed doors and in working in the framework sometimes I have to play the game of "Guess what the Google engineer was thinking" because documentation can be scarce. Also from what I've heard sending changing upstream isn't an easy process. These things are nice and make it an easy product to work with... but aren't required for it to be truly open source. The code is there in a series of open git repos and under Apache license. That is open source in my book.

Mister_Snuggles2• 12 years ago

I think the issue is that all of those Google services are really what makes Android Android. An Android phone lacking integration with Gmail, Google Calendar, etc, without something else to make it compelling (like the Kindle Fire), would be a pretty tough sell I think.

ForHackernews2• 12 years ago

That's true, but if say, Microsoft, wanted to, they could clearly create replacements for those services. Now, it's arguable whether an Android phone with Hotmail + Bing Maps integration is even an improvement, but at least it's possible.

In China, most Android phones are already sold without Google services: http://www.radiofreemobile.com/android-in-china-no-google-he...

hrkristian• 12 years ago

You could say the same for GNU. What is Linux without a DE? And a fancy DE like GNOME Shell pulls in a lot of dependencies, the latest furore in that area is GNOME&systemd.

Difference between systemd and GMS is, developers aren't making money off of systemd being in their control, Google relies almost wholly on it for Android profits.

Android is a fully functional Linux based operating system. To expect GMS to just be handed out like it was a keg party flier without considering the actual economic reality of running Google is ridiculous.

OEMs like Samsung weren't fooled back in ~2004 to think they'd get an amazing OS for their phones for free, and the deal Google is offering is beyond amazing compared to how other (tech) firms do business. imo.

dkuntz2• 12 years ago

And Microsoft wouldn't be able to add similar integration?

nodata• 12 years ago

How about, say, the location services apis, aren't they kind of needed for most apps?

stusmall5• 12 years ago

You are thinking of Android as just an OS for consumer mobile phones. You don't always need Facebook to run on it for it to be useful. It is a great polished Linux distro that can find a lot of uses. Think of it as a specialized Linux without the GNU user space. It has a full rich and powerful API without relying on google.

Also device integrators are free to fork away from the base APIs to add their own functionality in the same way google has. If an app wants to be portable, they shouldn't build against these proprietary APIs. This isn't a unique problem to android and doesn't make the source any less open.

What I love so much about open source is that once a project is out there it can take on a life of its own. People can/have/will start cramming Android in places Google would have never expected. It makes a great base for POS systems, high end touch screen vending machines, in flight entertainment consoles, and any number of other things I can't think of but I'm sure the community will.

blinkingled4• 12 years ago

Yes but the APIS themselves are open. It is possible to yank out the Google implementation of the location services and instead use a 3rd party implementation. The OS was designed to make something like this possible. Nokia could plug in their location services trivially for example if MSFT goes Android. (Not that I think it's a good idea but it's doable.)

There are other ways too - Sky hook for example seems to offer location services SDK http://www.skyhookwireless.com/location-technology/sdk.php for the Kindle Fire which doesn't ship with GApps.

alexeisadeski3• 12 years ago

Exactly - and isn't the Kindle Fire OS a successful Android fork?

scholia5• 12 years ago

Different case; different business model. Kindle Fire is a tablet platform for delivering Amazon content and services.

drdaeman4• 12 years ago

Google's AOSP is FOSS, Android you get on a typical phone isn't. You got bunch of proprietary binaries, kernel source code (usually, even without a toolchain to build it), and, well, that's about it.

Fuck open source, I don't give shit about Samsung/Sony/Motorola developers and how they are happy with Apache license they took AOSP under. I - the user - want free software on my phone and I mean the software that respects my freedoms. In this regard, average Android phone isn't free by any standards.

But, yeah, right, AOSP is open. Like this fact is of any use to an average tech-savvy consumer who's not skilled at reverse engineering.

notatoad2• 12 years ago

It's not open source because the average consumer wouldn't know what to do with the source code? what the hell kind of argument is that? Open source isn't about end-users, it's about developer freedom. And developers are free to use android to build things. that's what open source is.

Just because you've chosen to create your own ill-informed definition of what open means, doesn't make android any less open.

blahbl4hblahtoo3• 12 years ago

It's really weird that people talk about phones like general purpose computers that they should be in control of...I'm just pointing out that it has NEVER been the case. I'm not even sure what it would take to get to where it could be.

With PC's there was some FCC oversight, being a device without a transmitter meant that there wasn't a whole lot though. With cell phones they are so heavily regulated...and the carrier is such an integral part of the equation. It seems like you might get more of what you want with a wifi handset or device. The carriers have no vested interest in making a handset like you describe and their monopoly status makes market pressures almost non-existent forces for change.

Just rambling...

zobzu3• 12 years ago

its not what makes an android phone and android phone. so.. the argument is valid, android as a whole, coming from google, isn't open source. only AOSP is. And heck, even the AOSP maintainer resigned some time ago because AOSP didn't include open source drivers and what not.

rbanffy2• 12 years ago

It's somewhat analog to OSX. The kernel and low-level services are open-source and made publicly available on http://opensource.apple.com/. From that point and up, OSX is proprietary. Android would be somewhat analog to Darwin + Finder being open and iTunes, iPhoto, Mail and others being proprietary.

rdtsc4• 12 years ago

That is open source in my book.

Have you actually built and installed AOSP on a device? If you have you might not completely agree with that statement above because without proprietary firmware and closed sourced device drivers those devices often become unusable.

That is completely ignored by your post. Is it on purpose?

JBQ (their AOSP "liason" to the community even quit over that issue) -- people complaining that open isn't really that open.

https://plus.google.com/+JeanBaptisteQueru/posts/9HHRURorE7g

So it is not just me raving about.

I understand Google though. They don't design all those sensors and drivers and all the hardware but have other manufacturers make the devices who buy components from others and so on. So they don't have a choice. But regardless of blame assignment here, I can't honestly say the system is completely open.

Now if you are Amazon or Microsoft, ok, you can find a hardware builder with its own custom drivers just for your device, then forking could work out. But for enthusiasts and experimenting you need to download the proprietary drivers to get a usable device, simple as that.

blinkingled4• 12 years ago

So write your own open source reverse engineered drivers or find a manufacturer that gives you docs for their sensors. It's what the Linux crowd has done for a decade now. That's what hacking and tinkering are all about. They are doing free and open Adreno drivers for example. Also Tegra. Saying Android is not open source because it doesn't come with open drivers for all current and future hardware is just plain impractical. It just means you want everything in your plate. It doesn't mean Android isn't open.

Edit: Noticed people might be taking offense to my strong wording.

stusmall5• 12 years ago

Have you actually built and installed AOSP on a device?

Yes. I work with embedded Android at the driver and framework integration level. This is my every day.

I'm not really concerned that someone can't load AOSP on some cheap AT&T subsidised phone. Does that make the framework less free? No, that means they have non-free hardware.

ageorgia• 12 years ago

The "android isn't very open source" sentiment really bothers me and I see it a lot here.
AOSP is open source.

Clever switch there from Android to AOSP, no wonder its the top comment. The difference between them is what the author is talking about. You just prove his point.

coldtea2• 12 years ago

The "android isn't very open source" sentiment really bothers me and I see it a lot here. It is a complete and fully functional mobile OS under extremely permissive licensing. Pull it! Change it! Build it! Fork it! Whatever!

The fact that you could theoritically "fork it and change it" doesn't change the fact that Android, the thing that is actually shipped, is not open itself, in the sense that it's not a community project, where everybody's opinion has equal weight based on their work, community standing, etc.

Without an actual community behind it, like Gnome or KDE, or FreeBSD have, one cannot influence it much, one's vote doesn't count, and "fork it and change it" is not really feasible -- who'll be paying for that?

The code is there in a series of open git repos and under Apache license. That is open source in my book.

Well, that's the least interesting part of being open source. The actual important attribute of being open source is being a community project (cathedral vs bazaar etc).

greatsuccess3• 12 years ago

It "bothers" you? How can it "bother" you? You arent an AOSP developer.

The license is not what the author is referring to, he's referring to the fact that YOU, or I or ANYONE cannot sign up to develop AOSP and contribute to the project because its just a code dump from google with a license.

Thats NOT open source and if you think the license makes it so then you need to go up and try to make a commit no matter how trivial to AOSP. Dont be a fool...fool.

ewoodrich• 12 years ago

Not even Richard Stallman defines open source (or rather free software) like you do. [1] AOSP meets all of the criteria, and it's a code dump with a permissive license that you are free to fork and redistribute as you wish.

There's no rule that free software requires accepting pull requests from the entire world.

[1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

blahbl4hblahtoo3• 12 years ago

The guy that ran windows phone is now the head of the entire windows division. His name is Terry Myerson. I doubt very seriously that he is going to shitcan windows phone.

raptormissle2• 12 years ago

Windows Phone is already shit canned. MS just isn't smart enough to get it.

theg22• 12 years ago

Quick, give us more of your amazing market insight!

wambotron4• 12 years ago

I don't have much to say about the forking issue, but it want to say this: I own and LOVE my Windows Phone (Nokia Lumia 822). I started on android (Droid X) after deciding the iPhone was too small, bought another one (Droid Razr Maxx), and finally ended up at Windows Phone after playing with it on some online simulator.

I wouldn't go back to android or ios. I don't think they're as usable or fit me as well.

Anecdotally, my wife also joined me on Windows Phone recently after dropping her android phone. She started on iPhone, lost it, was gifted my Razr Maxx, then broke it. She liked the UI of ios, but loved Swype on android and said she'd never go back to ios. Then while we waited a couple weeks for our phone upgrade, she played with my phone and ended up really liking it. She now says it is her favorite phone (Nokia Lumia 920). She likes the camera and the excellent apps from Nokia.

Obviously I don't want MS to switch to android. There may be more apps, but so many are of such poor quality that it is entirely irrelevant to me. Same goes for the apple store. It's almost overwhelming how many bad apps there are.

tmzt9• 12 years ago

What feature or features of Windows Phone drive you to love it? How would you to describe the experience in relation to Android or iOS?

Are there multiple web browser options?

theg22• 12 years ago

Honestly IE on WP8 is a great experience so I haven't felt the need to look but no, all browsers use IE on the phone.

And for me the key feature is everything just works. Theres no need or feeling that I need to flash a rom (which I felt I has to do endlessly on Android). The integration with the ecosystem is nice, sure it's missing some core features iOS and Android have after years of beating MS to the market but hopefully it'll show up.

The major thing its missing is device integration, my fitbit not syncing saddens me everyday and theres not much I can do about it.

TheAnimus• 12 years ago

For me, it's the design of Metro UI.

I remember the first WIMP computer I had (well my dad had) an A5000, with 4mb of RAM (this had to be soldered on, and was considered wantantly excessive). If I wanted 256 colours, resolution would suffer as it lacked VRAM.

Windows 98 had gradient title bars, I this was a big deal. I remember being impressed by how smooth it looked. I wasn't completely used to high resolution, high colour systems.

Metro shuns this, information is put above anything else, the fact that I only want to see my mobile signal if I've a problem by default, it is hidden unless I have none.

It doesn't take long before this really starts to make sense. I'm tired, I don't want to be bamboozled by information, I want important stuff put up above anything else.

It's exactly the same reason Web Browsers have 'hidden' away the lesser used functions. I type this on a desktop with 2 * 30" of screen real estate, yet I still want my browser to hide the file menu, have no favourites bar, not waste space for the tabs and the title bar. You get where I'm going with this.

I also have a few Android devices, and a iPad, I find it almost tiring to use them in a way, I'm no longer impressed by having a 3d glass effect or similar, it just impedes my usability. I don't like skeuomorphic patterns, I'm an veteran user, I don't need familiarity, I want information presented as effortlessly as possible.

That said, I hate the lack of a notification timeline. I am genuinely saddened to see how Windows Phone team appears to have lost their release cycle momentum (three years ago major features came fast and frequent, now... not much).

wambotron4• 12 years ago

Live tiles, arranging my start screen to show exactly what I want without having to open any apps, I think is the single biggest feature that I love about WP. I also love the text prediction and correction when typing. I haven't seen any other mobile OS do it as well.

Android and iOS are pretty much one and the same for me. They do similar things and they come stock with a very similar UI. I'm not big on the list of icons/folders and multiple pages setup.

Regarding ios7, I don't like the new text-as-button thing they have going. It's hard to find them sometimes. I also really dislike the difference in pre-ios7 apps and ios7 apps as far as UI goes. It's jarring to me. It'd be like having a windows XP window pop up in Windows 8, or an OS9 window pop up in OSX.

I am also not a fan of the all-caps ios keyboard. Windows Phone keyboard displays the characters exactly as they're about to appear, but in ios they are always capitals (just differently sized) and it makes for a good bit of errors for me. I still have an ipad with ios7, so I interact with it second-most of all mobile operating systems.

bad_user3• 12 years ago

I also have a Lumia that I use as a secondary phone. The device is nice, Nokia can surely make good hardware, however my problem is the OS.

The Metro UI is kind of nice, but it gets obnoxious. I've began to hate those animations. And when I do need in-your-face notifications, like for the weather or something, you don't have the nice widgets that you get with Android.

Also, Microsoft is in charge of the Facebook app and I don't get how in the world they managed to treat the login in that Facebook app as something separate than the phone's accounts. I also want to be able to manage what accounts are synchronized or not - because synchronization uses battery, plus notifications are annoying and for many accounts I only want to view the latest messages or whatever only when I open the app - and haven't found an option for doing so, unless you turn the battery savings on. While we are on the subject, the notifications bar is a joke.

The app store is full of crap. Microsoft has played the app numbers game, allowing some genuine crap in their store. Of course, both Google Play and iTunes are filled with crap, but the search and the ratings are usually enough for finding good stuff and both Google Play and iTunes also have very polished, very good apps for everything.

But the above don't really bother me as much as my last point - Windows Phone is at its core as restrictive as iOS. It does not allow installs of apps from third party sources and is basically defective by design ... for example, to do Wifi tethering, the mobile career has to wire you the settings that allow it. And it's been a PITA for me, because my mobile career couldn't wire me the settings automatically, since they don't have my phone model in their database. Isn't that awesome?

andrewflnr• 12 years ago

Aren't in-your-face widgets the biggest thing in the Windows phone UI? Those big tiles in all the ads? I seem to be confused.

wambotron4• 12 years ago

I use Amazing Weather hd as my lock screen, which takes care of the weather issue for me. But as far as other live tiles, you can turn any of them off if you want. I mean, you COULD just make a start screen that looked like android/ios with a ton of icons if you really wanted to.

I don't use Facebook so I can't comment on that, but most apps I've used (twitter, linkedin, hacker news, readit) have settings for syncing. I only let readit sync in the background personally.

The notifications bar itself is only there for a few seconds, so I'm not sure what issue you could possibly have with it. Notifications appear on the app tiles themselves, which I prefer (especially for when I add a person to my start screen and they call/text/email me). It doesn't function the same way as android/ios, but I prefer it.

Every App Store is full of garbage, there's no denying it. I've found the windows App Store much easier to wade through, though. It's still far below the amount of apps in the android/ios stores, and the few top rated apps are almost always the official (or best) apps. I haven't found an issue with apps, but it am not a huge app guy. I mostly use twitter and readit (for reddit, obviously).

I haven't faced any issues like your last one either, so I can't really comment. I have verizon and they have next to no support for windows phone, so I could see it happening.

bandushrew• 12 years ago

my partner owns a nokia lumia.

She loves it, but it has had to be taken back to the shop we bought it from twice so far, because apparently everytime Microsoft releases an upgrade, it effectively bricks the device during the install attempt.

It amazes me how badly Microsoft seems to manage its software compared to Apple.

OTOH, she does love it.

ksherlock• 12 years ago

Android is already forked[1].

  Gingerbread: 20%
  Ice Cream Sandwich: 16%
  Jelly Bean: 60%
  KitKat: 2%

1: http://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html

scholia5• 12 years ago

Not forked, fragmented.

cwyers5• 12 years ago

I want to like the article, because the idea that Microsoft should fork Android is kinda silly. The idea that nobody should do it is even sillier, though.

The article, in the course of explaining why it can't be done, names two major examples of where it already has been done successfully -- Amazon's Kindle ecosystem and any number of Chinese OEMs. It doesn't mention other (admittedly less successful) forks, like B&N's Nook tablets or the Ouya. It also doesn't mention how far along the road Samsung was to having the ability to ship Android without Google Mobile Services, until Samsung and Google made a peace treaty that involved sending Motorola off to live with Lenovo.

Yes, if you fork Android, you lose Google's ecosystem. It's not impossible to duplicate, though -- Amazon's done it, Samsung just about did it. And Microsoft already owns all the things it'd need to do it -- that's how Windows Phone has an ecosystem. Losing Google's ecosystem isn't the downside of forking Android, it's the entire point.

Once you've done it, though, you need to convince people to use your fork instead of Google's. Microsoft's success at prying people towards Windows Phone and away from Android can basically boil down to:

1) The ability to run on lower-powered and thus cheaper hardware and still provide a polished experience, and 2) Nokia's build quality.

Switching OS cores to AOSP instead of the current Windows Phone OS wouldn't entirely solve Microsoft's app problem (look at the Amazon app store), and it would piss away the only competitive advantage their platform (as opposed to their OEM partner) has against Google's Android experience. Microsoft isn't Amazon -- they aren't a cloud company looking for an OS to give to consumers, they already have an OS. They just need to make their ecosystem more appealing, and giving up on Windows Phone now wouldn't do that.

recuter2• 12 years ago

1) The ability to run on lower-powered and thus cheaper hardware and still provide a polished experience, and 2) Nokia's build quality.

The Moto G has put a price floor on things. Even if Microsoft/Nokia could limbo under it, why would anybody buy a basically-the-same Nokia for $150 instead of $179 Real Android? Its too late, these are commodities.

cwyers5• 12 years ago

You can get a Nokia 520/521 for a little over a third of $150.

girvo• 12 years ago

When you're dealing with budget phones, you're talking about super price sensitive buyers. The 520 goes for what, $70 or so? And it's actually a good experience, and a nice phone for that money. Sure, the Moto G is at least 2X better, but with the consumers we're talking about here, that doesn't matter. It's a fascinating area to watch!

sirkneeland5• 12 years ago

"They just need to make their ecosystem more appealing"

You say "just" but that is literally the hardest thing to do. They've been trying very, very hard to make their ecosystem more appealing with tremendous amounts of money and manpower.

cwyers5• 12 years ago

Sure, but that problem doesn't go away if they switch to using AOSP.

cpks• 12 years ago

Just about the smartest thing Microsoft could do is port Windows to run on the Android/Linux kernel.

Ironically, they would buy themselves a tremendous amount of hardware support that way. They'd lose very little in the process. The Windows kernel is pretty decrepit.

Achshar• 12 years ago

It also doesn't mention how far along the road Samsung was to having the ability to ship Android without Google Mobile Services, until Samsung and Google made a peace treaty that involved sending Motorola off to live with Lenovo.

Do you have a source on that? When I think about it seems logical but it never occoured to me that Google could have been "forced" into leaving motorola. Clearly any sane exec would choose Samsung having google apps over mororola under different owner. But I would like to know where you got the idea from.

cwyers5• 12 years ago

Here you go:

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/01/nuclear-stand-down-go...

The most germane part to the author's premise is the graphic that illustrates how Samsung has apps to duplicate pretty much every app Google has. (With, admittedly, the very notable exception of Maps. Even Apple has had a rough time of getting away from Google Maps, I think that'd be a very difficult piece for Samsung without going to Nokia for help.)

mwcampbell2• 12 years ago

As the developer of a couple of small Android apps, I know that I would rather post them to a Microsoft or Nokia Android app store than port them to Windows Phone. Of course, it helps that I specifically avoided using the Google Play Services APIs, but even if I had used those APIs, it would be easier to make my apps Google-independent than to port them to a whole other platform with miniscule market share.

stefantalpalaru• 12 years ago

What do they mean unforkable? Cyanogen Mod[1] has been doing it for years.

[1] http://www.cyanogenmod.org/

bad_user3• 12 years ago

Amazon also did it.

TazeTSchnitzel• 12 years ago

Cyanogen Mod cheats by backing up GMS prior to install.

ZeroGravitas4• 12 years ago

Dianne Hackborn (who works on Android) responds in the comments:

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/02/neithe...

mkr-hn• 12 years ago

Not having Google Play hasn't limited my Kindle Fire experience so far. All the important apps are on the Amazon store, and most of the rest are low quality IAP bait.

ryen• 12 years ago

Has Microsoft, Nokia, etc considered some kind of app api bridge or outright code converter tool for Android/Java apps into their own native SDKs?

Seems that if a lack of apps is your main problem then easing the time to port an app to your ecosystem should be a high priority. Sure you'd have to re-implement some proprietary api features, but they likely already have equivalents in the Windows phone SDK (location services, in-app purchasing, etc).

css771• 12 years ago

AOSP is open source, period. Just because Google apps aren't doesn't make the entire thing closed. The binary blobs and baseband firmware might as well be on any "open" phone. The issue here is not whether Android phones are open or not, it's whether phones in general can truly be "open" or not.

DannyBee• 12 years ago

Oh, another Peter Bright ("Microsoft Editor at Ars Technica") clickbait article. Yay. The author of such fine pieces as:

"Firefox ships, but we shouldn’t really pay attention"

"Android OEMs should hear Microsoft, Nokia out on Google-Motorola combo"

"Android tablets may provide sales, but profitability is another matter."

etc

Sadly, judging by the old argument rehash going on here so far, it looks like it's working :(

erikb• 12 years ago

Hm. It sounds a little like Google would be doing really bad to seize control over their infrastructure. But since they do, the whole Android world has improved, at least in my opinion. Think about the upgrade complains we had a few years back. As far as I know that's gone now.(?) So I think it's actually good what Google is doing in that regard.

From my own experience with developing FOSS is also that other people don't try to integrate their solutions into your system. Everybody heads off and makes their own stuff.

Stupid forking is no problem for a project like GCC. But Android is a brand name. And if other people fork it and head off doing their own stuff and fail, then it is always Android that fails.

And really as a developer I also fight for the freedom of software, but as an end user I want to be able to go to a shop and buy an "Android phone" and it just works. Therefore, yes, please, Google take control! Good job!

tmzt9• 12 years ago

There's a response from Dianne Hackborn (hackbod) of Android.

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/02/neithe...

Neither Microsoft, Nokia, nor anyone else should fork Android. It’s unforkable.

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