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Android's Success a Threat To Free Software?

Posted by Soulskill on from the unintended-consequences dept.

Glyn Moody writes "Two years after its launch, Google's Linux-based Android platform is finally making its presence felt in the world of smartphones. Around 20,000 apps have been written for it. Although well behind the iPhone's tally, that's significantly more than just a few months ago. But there's a problem: few of these Android apps are free software. Instead, we seem to be witnessing the birth of a new hybrid stack — open source underneath, and proprietary on top. If, as many believe, mobile phones will become the main computing platform for most of the world, that could be a big problem for the health of the free software ecosystem. So what, if anything, should the community be doing about it?"

3 of 416 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Okay, I'll be the one to say it... by BitZtream · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    Sadly, just like the desktop market, for the same reasons you just said, FOSS apps will be crappy on the phone too, since it'll just be people scratching an itch with very little motivation to make a good general product for others.

    --
    Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
  2. Re:Okay, I'll be the one to say it... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    What are you doing to bring about "good, foss apps"? Tip: bitching on slashdot isn't the answer.

  3. Anonymous Coward by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    All programmers should be barred from collecting income. Generation of new software should strictly be a charitable excerise and programmers should be expected, like monks or priests, to forgo material posessions and live off the charity of others. Many are already celebate anyway...