Android's Success a Threat To Free Software?

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?"

Comments

Uh...build your own free app?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see the problem.

Re:Uh...build your own free app?

[GrantRobertson]

Exactly! How in the world can the platform be at fault just because open source developers have not jumped onto it yet.

This posting is just trying to create a controversy out of thin air. Must be a slow news day.

Re:Uh...build your own free app?

[sopssa]

Exactly, and big part of the reason theres so many apps already is because innovation is greatly driven by money and many people want to jump in.

Actually if Android was limiting itself to only open source, free software I don't think there would be so many apps made. This is especially true because they usually lack in UI and graphical terms, where the first one is really important in mobile apps.

Whole Android would be a lot less open if it didn't let commercial software on it. Even Windows Mobile is more open because you can install any app on it, unlike with iPhone (no, jailbreaking doesn't count)

Re:Uh...build your own free app?

[tverbeek]

So after all these years of fretting that users of free OSes are unwilling to support worthwhile commercial development for them (e.g. ports of popular apps and games to Linux, to free people from the tyranny of Windows and Mac OS), we now have a Linux-based platform that is attracting commercial development and that's a problem?

Okay, I'll be the one to say it...

[FauxPasIII]

> So what, if anything, should the community be doing about it?

Ummm... writing good, foss apps to do the things you need/want to do? Seems obvious.

Re:Okay, I'll be the one to say it...

[killmenow]

Exactly. There's nothing to see here. There is tremendous drive right now for developers with an interest in making money to develop apps for Android. The drive is there because the "promise" of riches is there. But, just like the desktop computing environment before, the commercial developers will be followed by OSS developers who just have an itch to scratch that no existing app handles, or they realize people are charging money for an app that is essentially twenty lines of code and they say, "really? they charge money for that? How ridiculous!" and write a better version under a FLOSS license. I have added a crapload of apps to my droid, all free as in beer and some free as in speech. It's cool to realize some of the games I play on my phone I could contribute patches to if I so desired.

One of the reasons I chose this phone is because I use the Android SDK and have written a few (VERY simple) apps and know if there's something I want bad enough, I can develop it myself and I don't have to root (or "jailbreak") my phone (voiding warranties) or get Google or Apple's approval to install it.

Re:Okay, I'll be the one to say it...

[petes_PoV]

The problem won't be writing the apps. The problem will be who is the "gatekeeper" which allows these to be loaded and executed on the phone. At present, it seems to me that the network operators are the ones who determine what can and cannot be run - not because of the access to the phone but by allowing or disallowing access to their network. That's what they're trying to protect - not the phone hardware.

The obvious answer

[PolyDwarf]

So what, if anything, should the community be doing about it?

Gonna go out on a limb here and say "Develop apps for Android."

What an Oddly Backwards Opinion Piece

[eldavojohn]

Worse, ifeffortsto enable Android apps to run on distros like Ubuntu succeed, then we may see closed-source software being used on the free software stack there, too. Ironically, Android's success could harm not just open source's chances in the world of mobile phones, but even on the desktop.

Huh, that's a really funny statement. I thought one of the biggest barriers to Linux on the desktop was the fact that we couldn't entice proprietary manufacturers (from device drivers to bulky enterprise solutions) to also release and thoroughly support a Linux distribution of their software. Hell, every other week we're bitching about the sad state of gaming on Linux or sound on Linux and let's just face it: you need to improve that before people will buy Linux for that purpose. And now we're concerned that proprietary will be released on Android? And it might challenge Linux? Good. If it can manage that, good for it. I assure you that if proprietary manufacturers see Android as a viable release alternative to Windows CE, Symbian, etc, that is when you're going to see everyone embrace an open source product.

And really, what's wrong with that? The people who wanted to release their open source software still are but now the people that want to release their closed source software still are and can. And the best part about it is everyone's using an open source stack to support their application.

I don't know about you but if you could replace Windows with Linux on the desktop even though 99% of the apps running on it were proprietary, I would be much more happy with the state of things.

We need both FOSS and proprietary software. Give both of them what they want like options to achieve their goals and then you will have a truly great product that helps the community and humanity as a whole in utilizing computers.

Well, let's see

[ceoyoyo]

"The community" could come up with a very restrictive license that doesn't allow that sort of thing, which Google et. al. will just not use anyway.

The point of open source and free software is that it's supposed to be better than proprietary. It's supposed to win on merit, not restrictive licensing or "the community" trying to force things.

Not New: Apple's stack is hybrid too

[Raffaello]

This is not news in any way. Apple's platforms (Mac and iPhone) have been successful for precisely the same reason. They exploit open source for the infrastructure (OS and developer tool chain) and layer proprietary applications on top for profitability.

Re:Not New: Apple's stack is hybrid too

[idiot900]

In a sense Apple's contributions to open-source projects are a way to protect their investment. Even under a BSD license, not contributing back upstream is equivalent to forking the project. If they did that they'd have to spend a lot of time and money merging upstream changes down the line, instead of having upstream do the work for free.

Also I'd imagine the sort of engineer who would be able to contribute good code to something like LLVM is not too common, and (s)he would have a strong sense of wanting to give back. To keep people like that, a company needs to make them feel enfranchised.

This is silly

[Chrisq]

Its like saying that Linux is a threat to feee software because you can run commercial applications. Surley the key to it taking off is having a mix of free and commercial applications.

What could be healthier?

[rpp3po]

I'm sick of those fundamentalists. What could be healthier than an open source platform without vendor lock-in, that anybody can use to generate some income. I love what has been produced in the spirit of open source and nobody won't take this away. But the everything must be free mentality is a bigger threat than people making money by selling software in binary form for a living. Good software means months of work and pizza and coffee need to be paid for. And experience has shown that at max 0.5% of people pay for something that they can get for free easily and legally.