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Android's "Non-Fragmentation Agreement"
superglaze writes "The biggest doubt cast over Android (whose SDK was released yesterday) has been the fact that much of it is licensed under Apache. There have been worries that manufacturers might fork the code road in a non-interoperable kind of way. I.e., they would have no obligation to feed back code to the wider Open Handset Alliance, or even tell the other members what alterations have been made. However, it turns out that Google made all the members sign a 'non-fragmentation agreement' to make sure everything works with everything. In theory at least. 'All of the partners have signed a non-fragmentation agreement saying they won't modify [the code] in non-compatible ways ... That is not to say that a company that is not part of the OHA could not do so.' Google's spokesperson highlighted the historical dangers of working with Java, the programming language that lies at the heart of Android. 'One of the current problems with mobile Java development is that Java has fragmented ... Java virtual machines have fragmented, but all the members of the OHA have agreed to use one virtual machine that can run script in Java'"
Without Linus FOSS is tossed. Not following Linus is dangerous for the survival of FOSS. What are you getting on about?
Look, I know I'm going after a sacred cow around here, but if Linus had decided to do something else with his time instead of Linux, it wouldn't have been nearly as big a deal as you're making it out to be. He was the right person, at the right time, satisfying a very specific need, namely for a freely-licensed OS kernel. In the worst-case scenario, the whole thing would have been set back a year or two, waiting on the BSD kernel. More likely, I think somebody else from the MINIX community might have done it (who knows, maybe Andrew Tanenbaum might have done it himself, had he not gotten in a pissing match with Torvalds). We'll never really know, but the key point is that Linux was evolutionary; it was what was needed at the time, it was there first, and it gained traction as a result. (And at least early on, it wasn't all that great from a software engineering perspective; it was the license that distinguished it from technologically superior alternatives, not the other way around.)
But the fact that the demand for a free kernel existed at all is due to a whole lot of other people, and I'm not sure why you'd give Linus' opinion more weight than you'd give to the people who created the license that made Linux successful.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I'm not sure if I should mod you flamebait, insightful, or funny. Well I guess it doesn't really matter now...
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