Android Honeycomb Will Not Be Open Sourced

Posted by timothy on Tuesday May 10, 2011 @03:00PM from the hard-to-see-the-harm-really dept.

At the ongoing Google I/O conference in San Francisco, Google today officially announced the next version of Android, named Ice Cream Sandwich, as well as Android 3.1, an "incremental platform release" of Honeycomb. An anonymous reader writes "In an effort to understand the landscape for developers, Andy Rubin was asked if, since Ice Cream Sandwich would be open, Android 3.0 and/or 3.1 will be granted the same courtesy. Rubin answered definitively in the negative. Honeycomb on its own would not be open, because its phone functionality is very broken. Ice Cream Sandwich will take all of the Honeycomb functionality and open source it alongside code that is much more universally friendly."

1 of 295 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

Re:User perception by IamTheRealMike · 2011-05-10 20:52 · Score: 5, Informative

Right, TiVo-ization. That's why Googles own devices are reflashable out of the box, and that's why Android is open source (it doesn't have to be, right?).
Your bizarre rant might make a shred of sense if Android was heavily based on GPLd code written by other people. Other than the kernel and one or two components, the vast bulk is non-GPLd code written by Google.