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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?"
Personally, I'd rather see an open operating system used for all apps. This way people can improve and build upon it and write competing systems easier. That way, if you buy Photoshop/Game/Autocad for Linux, there's a better chance that it will run (or be quickly ported) on a competitor so you don't feel locked to a specific company because you spent thousands on a specific app for a specific job.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
[quote]Gaming will work itself out if Wine continues apace.[/quote]
I really applaud the efforts of the Wine developers. I think their product is truly amazing.
It will always be playing catch up however. And last time I checked, The Sims is the best selling PC title of all time. It is also an old game that the Wine developers still haven't gotten to work. If they can't get the best selling game of all time to work, that seriously hurts your reputation as a true alternative to Windows for gaming.
I love me some Linux, but I rarely bother with Wine. Most of the games I got to work with Wine, I had to use a crack to remove DRM first. Most end users aren't capable of doing this, and technically it is illegal in the US. I keep a Windows partition exclusively for gaming because of this.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
I actually like the Hybrid Open Source Closed source code...
The Stallman GNU view of the world is way to restrictive and doesn't foster large support. Yes People are greedy, but except for fighting the greed, make an environment where greed can be used for good.
There are some things Open Source has always had trouble with. The most basic is making integrated User Interfaces, it is very hard to find a large base of developers who are willing to give a good UI for free as well working with non-programmers who don't care about open source to help create work (such as graphic designers) for free. I am not saying it can't be done for a particular project as I am sure Slashdot will give a me a slew of projects that have a great UI. But to have it don't for many projects gets much harder.
But there are things that Open Source does much better then commercial such as security and stability, and a lot of core functionality and features. These are things that good programers like to do and are willing to give it out just to help the community and/or make them selfs look good.
Hybrid really brings the best to both worlds. A UI and integration can be recoded and redone as the need exists and the backend that does the real work can open so compatibility and interportability can be established and prevent anyone from having a strangle hold on the systems knowledge.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The big difference is Linux is free. Android is not. It's open source and free to use, but you have to be kidding yourself if you don't think that Google makes money off of Android. It's tied into all of their services. It's pushing them more advertisement revenue. Linux is most definitely not developed around a business model to make money.
Even heard of Red Hat, Canonical or even Firefox that gets paid by Google to include them as the primary search engine?
Or how people are been telling for ages that "but you can make money with OSS by support and such things".
Advertising is the largest revenue model for OSS now. With proprietary software you pay the developer directly and you don't usually get fucked over by the developer by losing your privacy for advertisers. You get what you pay for.
Not true.
I am all for commercial and FOSS development because I see it as a win win. The truth is that FOSS can produce very good programs.
Firefox is a great browser.
Thunderbird is a very good email client.
Gimp is a very good graphics program. I will not argue that Photoshop is better but Gimp is much more powerful than Photoshop Elements.
I really like DeeVeeDee for making DVDs is super easy to use.
VLC
Audacity
Adium
7Zip
and on and on.
There is a lot of very good FOSS software out there. Now is there a lot of total crap? You bet but there is a ton of total crap closed source software as well.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
What kind of blasphemy is this? Everybody knows the government drives innovation, not independent players in a market scenario.
Yes, what innovation did government ever come up with other than minor ones like the computer, the space shuttle, the internet, and the atomic bomb?