Google's Open Source Mobile Platform

As expected, today Google took the wraps off of the gPhone (as the media have for months been referring to the rumored project). Google is "leading a broad industry alliance to transform mobile phones into powerful mobile computers," and will be licensing its software to all comers on an open source basis under the Apache license. (The Wall Street Journal's Ben Worthen demonstrates a miserable grasp of what "open source" means.) Google's US partners include Nextel and Sprint, but not AT&T nor Verizon. Phones will be available in the second half of 2008 — not the spring as earlier reports had speculated. News.com's analysis warns that Google won't take over the mobile market overnight, though they quote Forrester in the opinion that Google may be one of the three biggest mobile players after several years of shakeout.

Comments

Re:Software Development Skills / Security

[cheater512]

You read the article I take it?

Viruses need to self replicate.
Social Enginnering 'OMG Download this cool app d00dz' doesnt count.

There arent any easy ways to get a phone to send a virus to another phone.
The easiest way is Bluetooth or Wifi and then its still a pain in the ass to make it spread.

With Bluetooth you first need to somehow get another phone to connect to you, without user intervention which is impossible (without flaws in the stack).
Then you need to send data to the other phone in a way which makes it execute the code. Also basically impossible.

Whats the chance of Google's code having fundamental bugs like that? Nil.

Re:first psot!!!

[Datamonstar]

No, it's not at all harsh for what is supposed to be a professional writer. He starts off with an idea, a dangerous beginning in the first place, that there should be some sort of software security specifically for interfacing phones and PCs in the office. A good idea (perhaps even a profitable one) and doesn't think it through at all. He starts off, not with the good idea, but with a broad, one-sided assumption that all open applications are prone to security issues simply because they are open. If he were somewhere in the ballpark range of competent he would have reversed the two topics and stated that we need security software for smart phone to PC interfaces and that the result of not developing it could be rogue open applications creating a security nightmare. But he didn't. He speculated on something that went well in hand with his idea, but he didn't have a clue about it worked, and also didn't do any research on it to get more knowledge. He even pretty much says all this (sans admitting that he doesn't know what he's talking about and didn't do any research, but that much is very obvious) in his rehash he added to the article to address the people who e-mailed him about his mistake. The update is almost as large as the article itself. I'd say he pretty much deserves to be criticized on his grasp of Open Source as it is demonstrated by this article.

Re:Still moronic.

[emurphy42]

But more importantly, he's assuming that cell phone viruses are somehow new with this phone, and that they will somehow cause problems for a corporate network, and that the way to deal with it is anti-virus.

This is wrong on all counts. Cell phone (and mobile) viruses are not new, though they've never been widespread. They generally don't jump to desktop machines -- the corporate network should be safe. And generally, no one's stupid enough to run anti-virus software on Linux, and very few on the Mac -- even on Windows, the usefulness of anti-virus is questionable.

Things might change if this platform becomes ubiquitous. I'm not saying it's likely, mind you, and anyway the same arguments could be applied to the iPhone SDK (once the bad guys yoink themselves a copy of those dev tools).

Re:Phone or Platform?

[davester666]

It's not the 'openness' of the platform that matters. It's the openness of the end-product, that is delivered to the customer [namely you and me] that matters [well, to you and me]. And that's an issue that's pretty much independent of what OS the phone is running. Particularly in the US.

And Sprint being part of this 'group' means nothing w.r.t. how open the shipping product will be.

The US wireless carriers will fight tooth and nail to NOT be treated as what they are: wireless service providers.

On the other hand, if anything this could make customer demand for 'openness' more difficult, because this fractures the market for developers a bit more. Now, to develop a ubiquitous app, you need to support another platform. One that with the source available, developers can't necessarily count on a given set of API's even being available on a 'googleos' phone...

I think it'll still take quite a while before the US wireless carriers permit much advancement. Even Apple had to deliberately cripple iTunes support on the iPhone so you can't use it over your "unlimited data plan" EDGE connection.

Re:Won't take over the market overnight?

[imemyself]

There are already plenty of phones that you can install your own software on and not have to pay for ringtones (I can't believe that people are stupid enough to do that). For example, I have a Treo (Windows Mobile) - I can install any software I want on it, and easily create my own Compact .NET Framework apps for it if I want to - it doesn't have to be signed by the carrier or anything. I believe I can use any MP3 file as a ringtone, though I just use one of the MIDI's that came with it. Song ringtones annoy the hell out of me. Text messages aren't free - but that obviously has nothing to do with the phone and isn't going to ever happen. You'll always be paying a service provider for text messages - whether its per text, for unlimited text messages, or bundled in with some plan.

If Google is really successful it'll be because they are able to lower the price of smartphones from several hundred dollars to where the cheap toy phones (that don't let you install software/ringtones/etc) currently are. While I do not know how much of the cost of smartphones is for the OS, I highly doubt that a free OS will make smartphones that much cheaper. Maybe they'll subsidize some of the cost through AdSense or something, though I personally would hate to have a phone that forced me to look at ads.

More competition is a good thing though, at the very least it'll hopefully drive prices down a bit.