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Google Pushes Openness Over Rooting
jamlam writes "The Android developers blog has a comment from their dev team on the recent 'rooting' of their Nexus S phones. It contains a call from Google to handset manufacturers to open up their phones to give users choice. But will this ever happen in a market dominated by lock-'em-down cellular networks?"
"It contains a call from Google to handset manufacturers to open up their phones to give users choice. But will this ever happen in a market dominated by lock-'em-down cellular networks?"
No. The only solution is for Google to roll out their own infrastructure and run their own telecommunications network. They're big enough to compete with the other big boys like At&t.
But, but...Google will be mining our data and knowing everything about us...
Like At&t doesn't?! Also, Ph1r5t P05t. May we all have a comfortable and hassle-free series of end-of-year rituals.
I don't understand this. Google, the creator of the software, has basically said "we want this to be changeable by the user". Which means that, by locking the OS down, the manufacturers are going against the spirit of the developers' wishes. Why didn't Google put a clause in the manufacturer/provider contract "The user will always be allowed full access to the device being managed by this operating system"?
"It contains a call from Google to handset manufacturers to open up their phones to give users choice."
What possible incentive would they have to do that? The vast majority of consumers already have all the choice they want.
If you can put latest and greatest Android on an end-of-lifed handset they haven't gotten money for in two years, they get nothing.
If they successfully lock things down so that you need to buy a *new* handset to get the snazzy new features. If most of the reason people get new things is for software, then the hardware vendor has their own interests in making sure their stuff comes along for the ride.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
More like a correction of Engadget's hysteria and a lamentation at the lack of openness.
The gist of it is that Engadget claims Android's security is shit since you can root it so easily.
The Android devs respond by saying you shouldn't call it "rooting" since the Nexus S was intended to allow users to install their own OS. To do that, you need to be able gain root access. In fact, they tell you how in the blog: fastboot oem unlock. That's it.
Rooting a phone implies root access was not intended, and you must exploit a security flaw to gain access. If root access was intended from the beginning, how can running the command to do so possibly be considered exploiting a security flaw?
To put it another way, is sudo a security flaw in Linux? That's basically what Engadget is saying, and the Android devs are saying that's stupid, and oh yeah phones should be open so rooting goes the way of the do-do bird.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
All applications are required to declare the permissions they use, ensuring the user is in control of the information they share.
I want more than the application to declare what permission it uses.
I want to be able to run an application that say wants access to my GPS coordinates, but I can say no you get fake GPS access.
The same with internet access, phone directory access, and so on.
I do not want to be restricted to all or nothing, and have to forgo an app all together over a potential security issue.
The best example I have is the Bible app from LifeChurch.tv. I love the app, but for awhile it wanted access to my GPS coordinates.
Why? God knows where I am already LifeChurch. But unlike the nagging iPhone version which I could deny location information every time I ran the app it was all or nothing, location information transmitted.
Heck I want everything the damn apps do logged, if I allow them internet access I want to know what pages and logs on the packets sent.
Then we can really avoid these naughty apps that are transmitting things, because the OS says hey this app is transmitting this user, and the user can say hells no.
I do not ever want to install an anti-virus application to my phone. Never ever, I do not need them on my desktop, do not need them on my phone. Die McAfee and Norton, die!
Just my two cents. Perhaps I should download the source and make my own build. But it would be much easier on me if a Google engineer did it.
First off, the people who are talking about "rooting" an open platform are morons. The rooting occurs when the carrier and phone manufacturer -- yes I'm talking to YOU, HTC-- put gobs of needless, expensive, and ultimately pointless security on top of stock AOSP.
They want control. The EFF (did everyone donate this year?) helped affirm our rights to control over our own equipment, but the carriers and manufacturers are responding with more and more technical hurdles.
These short-sighted obstacles cost them money in R&D, which is ultimately passed on to us, the customer, or absorbed by their stockholders. These technical measures (locked emmcs) are pointless, immoral, bad for business, and an entire subculture has emerged dedicated to sidestepping them.
Google has some mixed motivations here, but one thing I can think Google might do about this is to license their Google apps (or "Gapps"-- Maps, GMail, etc.) to community firmware so that they can legitimately compete with the carriers in the market. The competition and choice would benefit the consumer (example: Gingerbread is already running on the T-Mobile G2 and Froyo is available only on other platforms through community roms not offered by the carrier, who has abandoned older phones.). Plus support for community roms would help Google reach those customers who are now "locked out" of the Google market.
The downside might be more support headaches or returned bricked phones for the phone companies. But can't they look at that as a potential new market? Yeah, when you sell someone a computer and they trash it, it's a headache. A headache you can charge them to fix. Right now people brick their phones after trying to install a rom in the shadows and then return them. If phones were treated by carriers as the computers they ARE, it would be no different than someone trashing their DELL and needing Best-Buy or whomever to reinstall Windows. Or maybe they'd pay $10/hr in support.
The point is-- if tomorrow people were locked out of their computers' operating system by the manufacturers or told what software they could run on their laptops by their ISPs, there would be revolt (I would hope). But we're slowly being conditioned to accept such control starting with smartphones, working up to tables...
what's next?
The operators say that misbehaving phones can disrupt their network. That could be true for a very large number of bad phones.
The truth is that I don't know a out any "mod" touching the radio stuff.
It's just FUD.
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
Android is based upon the Linux kernel, which is GPLv2. Though some GPL software says "version X or later", the kernel does not.