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RMS: 'Is Android Really Free Software?'
An anonymous reader points out an article by Richard Stallman in The Guardian which questions whether Android should be described as 'free' or 'open.' Quoting:
"Google has complied with the requirements of the GNU General Public License for Linux, but the Apache license on the rest of Android does not require source release. Google has said it will never publish the source code of Android 3.0 (aside from Linux), even though executables have been released to the public. Android 3.1 source code is also being withheld. Thus, Android 3, apart from Linux, is non-free software, pure and simple. ... Android is a major step towards an ethical, user-controlled, free-software portable phone, but there is a long way to go. Hackers are working on Replicant, but it's a big job to support a new phone model, and there remains the problem of the firmware. Even though the Android phones of today are considerably less bad than Apple or Windows smartphones, they cannot be said to respect your freedom."
Marketing: The art of making something seem better than it really is. And sadly, most people fall for it, which is why they keep using that approach.
Isn't a developer free to license something however they want, within the constraints of the licenses of whatever is being used? If Google suddenly said they weren't ever publishing source again, I'd be pretty peeved, but they had reasonable, non-evil reasons for not releasing 3.x, and have committed to releasing Ice Cream Sandwich. I'd like to see 3.x released, but as long as it's a non-regular occurrence, it doesn't bother me any - but i'm not quite as idealistic as RDS - if that were possible.
Of course it's not. Not only is it not free in the RMS sense of the world, withholding source is not the openness Google always claimed it was promoting. Android exists solely to get people onto Google services for purposes of web advertising. The only reason it got so much support from techies is because it runs on Linux, and Google's PR department convinced them that it represented the usual unrealistic OSS fantasies about free ecosystems. Most users don't even care about such things. Apple is still the #1 smartphone vendor, and iOS the #1 mobile operating system counting iPads, iPhones, and iPods.
Remember, Google's main business is a closed, proprietary product--the search engine. Web traffic is regulated by a closed product run by an advertising megacorp. They are not some benevolent cheerleader of openness. They won't even implement Do Not Track in Chrome because it would interfere with their ad business.
Because Google has been promoting its supposed openness for years now, so it's kind of a big deal when one of the founders of the movement calls them out.
They also release some iOS 4 source parts. Is Android really more open/free?
The whole reason for android being closed source now is that there were five different versions of android that are/were incompatible with each other. This way google can rein in the errant OEM modifications that led to these incompatibilities.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Each tenet of his philosophy?! How can something be open or free at all if the source code isn't even available? That's the fundamental basis of the whole idea.
On the phone, Android is free software.
Ice Cream Sandwich is supposed to be Open Source.
Android 3 is not for phones, and the fact that people would complain about Android 3, and then follow up with "Android is a major step towards an ethical, user-controlled, free-software portable phone, but there is a long way to go" is why they did not release the source. People are clearly demonstrating they can't be trusted to keep it off the phone (I also imagine there was a little bit of pressure from tablet makers wanting to establish a market before the knock-offs could drop the price point).
Android is open source for the phone, and allegedly will remain into the future (along with becoming open source on the tablet).
All complaints about Android in summary focus on tablets, all complaints about devices focus on phones. Let's make are rants make sense please.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
You need hardcore idealists to make progress, but yeah, it's generally best not to take everything they say too seriously.
Take `em out of their respective cages once in a while, let them scream about something for a bit, then put `em away till next year.
someone will leak the source code.
Read radical news here
Small correction for you - The world doesn't even care that it's open.
Which phone operating system were you writing and using your own applications for before Android?
Rod Taylor
I wouldn't say Android is a move away from openness but if it's a move towards greater openness at all, it's a very tiny one.
In practice an Android phone with a locked bootloader (and running a closed-source Android version) is as closed as an iPhone. How is that a significant step towards greater openness? Because the kernel is a distant relative of the Linux kernel? Big deal, some Windows versions used a BSD network stack and nobody was cheering.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Really? It's a big deal when RMS criticizes something for its supposed lack of moral purity? Please. RMS is a one-man outrage brigade who has long, LONG since outlived his usefulness. If you can find an article talking about Stallman doing something OTHER than being outraged that someone in the software field actually lives in the real world, THAT would be a Big Deal.
WHY are they less bad? For whom?
Because Android respects at least freedom 0 with respect to user applications: "The freedom to run the program, for any purpose."
What does this mean? Phones running Android are less bad than phones running iOS or Windows Phone 7 for people who use applications distributed as free software because Android has the "Unknown sources" checkbox.* This lets the user obtain free applications from anywhere and hire anybody to improve them without having to seek the OS maker's permission to run them.
*Yes, even AT&T lately; citation available.
You don't really get to submit to Android like you do other open source software programs. There is a NIH (not invented here) attitude. It is "open sauce". Add your favorite sauce on top of it after it is done, but that is truly about it,.
Google has said it will never publish the source code of Android 3.0
As far as I know, this isn't true.
What they said was that they were going to skip releasing the source to Honeycomb (3.0) and release the next version when it's ready.
Due to the nature of the source control system (in Android's case that'd be Git, I guess) the release will come with the complete commit history attached, so you can recreate Honeycomb if you wish.
They did say that they weren't sure if the Honeycomb releases would be properly tagged, though.
That's only true if you define "world" to be people who want it open.
If you want to define the "world" as every potential user of Android, the vast majority DON'T CARE if it's open. They care that it works, that's all.
People who rigidly cling to the notion that any software which hasn't been provided in a ideologically pure enough way is a Great Evil ... well, those people are as rabid and narrow minded as any other fanatic.
It's sad you got a Troll mod for pointing out that not everyone cares what RMS has to say. Because, an awful lot of us tuned him out years ago. Sure, he's a smart guy who has been an advocate for free software ... but his completely inflexible view that all software must live up to his notion, well, I just can't agree with him.
To me, he's that crazy guy on the corner with a "The End is Nigh" sign. Most of the times when I hear what he has to say, I disagree with him and then tune him out.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
PalmOS, Windows Mobile (amusingly)
The hope, of course, is that we GAIN in functionality and capability, instead of progressing along with closed down platforms and having that lockdown creep up the stack.
He is one of the founders of the Open source movement. Just because he called on your beloved company google for their pissing on Open source and its philosophy doesn't mean some of the techies do not care. May be as others have noted, main stream people may not care. Being in the tech world I guess if you belive in OSS you ought to care.
Definitely PalmOS. Still use the thing (treo 650), as I have 100% control over it. Plus, the parts are nearly free, and the battery life is measured in days... Finally, its built like a tank. I actually tried to break on at one point, and was only successful at breaking the screen and dislodging the battery connector. 20 minutes later I had it working again.
The dev kits are also free software.
He's got an android, and the hurd kernel is in development.
> so it's kind of a big deal when one of the founders of the
> movement calls them out.
Not really.
RMS has called out damn near everyone with anything to do with free/open source software. I think it's almost at the point now where most projects/organizations should take it as a badge of honour when they've gotten large and important enough that RMS considers it a problem if they aren't 100% compliant with his concept of freedom.
Log in or piss off.
Without Stallmanites sticking to their convictions, there would be little or no Open or Free software, THAT'S FUCKING WHY.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Problem is most people don't think enough about things, and by the time they start caring too late.
Like people who think you're a nut for not liking region locks on media, right until the point where they move to another country, and find that their collection doesn't work on local players, and they can't play movies they buy from their home country.
Disagreement is fine, calling people "rabid Stallmanites" is insulting and gets a troll mod from me automatically. If you seriously want to make that point you can make it a bit more politely.
It's sometimes difficult to not think like then when you're confronted with someone who has a rigid, ideological position, whose starting point in all discussions is that they're right and you're wrong, and there is no room for any give.
RMS and some people who agree with him are sufficiently fixed in their ideology that it's hard not to end up saying "rabid Stallmanites".
You might as well try to convince someone their religion is wrong as try to convince RMS that not all software needs to be open. He and others are pretty inflexible on this position.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Naivete... Apple and MS have both come under fire over user privacy issues. here's a major difference. On my ACA droid build, I have this nice app, it's called LBE Security Service. Thankfully, monitors every app that tries to access any type of information and do something with it. While giving me complete control over what is allowed to look at my data, what data it is trying to see and what it can do with it IF I allow it to see it. On WinMo 7, I have yet to find an application that comes even close.
I'm very surprised The Guardian published this article as-is. A non-geek won't have a clue what most of the article means! Maybe it shows how far removed from reality RMS really is. A layman's not going to know what a binary blob or a firmware is, and they aren't explained. Very strange for mainstream news in my opinion.
Am I the only one who noticed he didn't call it GNU/Linux? Is he finally conceding on that point?
Doubtful. Does Android have GNU stuff in it, or is it just a modified Linux kernel?
... can you spell it?
I swear I'm not trying to troll here. The argument that OSS is "innovative" has another strike against it as we see the reinvention of computing with mobile devices. Everyone who's pushing the state of the art ahead is working in private industry. Nothing groundbreaking has come from the open source world even though computing has been turned upside down in the last couple of years. The theorists would say that this is the perfect time to break old paradigms, but every open-source effort is pretty much completely derivative from a functionality standpoint.
The open-source model is great, but current events are showing that the pioneers are going to come from closed-source developers.
Many of us find RMS's concept of freedom useful.
In particular, it is news to me that the source of Android 3.0+ is not available. I have been considering learning Android development. It is useful to know what the situation is.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
There's no point in being flexible in the position.
Imagine say, Martin Luther King being flexible in his position. "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character... when the authorities feel like it".
There's just no point to that, because it changes nothing. If Stallman wasn't inflexible he wouldn't be effectively saying anything, and you wouldn't have heard of him (and probably what resulted from his efforts) in the first place.
Nobody seriously dedicated to something is flexible in their dedication. All the people who got something big done were uncompromising about it.
Yeah right... the use of GNU/Linux is an ideological term for RMS, no way he's going to stop doing that. He'll stick to the term just like he sticks to the ideal of everything running free (in the RMS/GNU sense) software and users reprogramming their software.
According to their ideas, though, GNU/Linux is the name for the full OS such as most distros. Linux is the name for the kernel. Android doesn't use all GNU components that Linux distros typically do. It doesn't support glibc and probably makes little, if any, use of GNU software.
Okay, yes, as many people seem to be parroting in the comments, most people don't care whether or not their software is free (as in freedom) and open source. However, I don't really see how that's an argument for proprietary software or the behavior of companies like Apple, Microsoft, and yes, Google. (And the statement is indeed being used to make such an argument.)
Most people don't care about much at all. They seem to care when, for example, a televised address from the President prevents them from watching their favorite program on the idiot box. They seem to care when their local sports team is beaten by another sports team. But when they are told that the company that controls the software on their mobile phone (already they are nodding off...) is spying on them, recording their location, and selling their personal information to other companies for profit, do they care? No. They don't even seem to care when can only install programs on their phones that the OS-maker allows them to. (Of course they don't care, they can still install Angry Birds.) They especially don't care when their phone company turns over their private conversations to the police without even putting up a fight for the consumer. That would be because it isn't *their* private conversations, it's the private conversations of those angry hooligans marching in the streets asking for change.
Most people don't care about freedom in general unless it interferes with their daily pleasures/addictions, and cannot see the long-term consequences of the slow unraveling of their freedoms. The fact remains that proprietary software *is* an attack on our freedoms that we may well end up regretting some day. The fact remains that there *is* an alternative in FOSS. The fact remains that we still have enough freedoms to take a stand against the corporations and the corruption in government. And, in my opinion, those of us that understand these things should indeed take a stand, as RMS is doing.
When?
I've seen fanboys promoting its openness and how much greater it is than evil competitions product, but I've not seen Google actually say anything of the sort.
Google actually has been marketing it based on things people ACTUALLY care about, which interestingly enough, has nothing to do with source code.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Android for mobile phones is still completedly free and open sourced. If you want the source, get the Gingerbread 2.3.4 source code, which is the latest version of Android for mobile phones. Honeycomb is NOT a mobile phone OS, therefore it's not valid to say that Android is not open-sourced for mobile phones.
Android for tablets is currently not open-sourced. I have access to the Honeycomb source code and it's not hard to see why - Google has pretty much hacked in tablet support and it looks like a rush job to get a tablet version of Android out so that Motorola, Samsung, etc will be able to push out tablets to compete with the iPad. Think of Honeycomb as a fork off Android, or a feature branch.
Android is apparently first and foremost a mobile phone OS, and Google apparently only wants to release the Android source code that is able to run on mobile phones. The good news is, Ice Cream Sandwich is the release where all the features of Honeycomb will be properly merged back into the mobile phone trunk code. Higher resolution mobile phones will be able to use the Honeycomb UI features like Fragments.
Not true, freedom 0 is the ability to run third party software. With iProducts you can't run anything not blessed by Apple. With Android you at least get that. It's not much, but it's a start.
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
My beloved company? I cary an iPhone. I don't give a fuzzy rat's ass about ideological purity when it comes to software. I just want it to work.
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
Without Linus Torvalds, there would be little or no open source software. Linus is hardly a rabid Stallmanite.
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
It's all private industry, unless you know of a government lab doing this.
And nothing truly groundbreaking has come from the closed source space, either. Mostly you see the efforts of massive marketing waves and a decent user interface.
Development happens where the money is. MS, Apple, and Google are dumping money into their own platforms and not others. Thus activity is happening there.
I'm sure if you funded an open source project as well as you funded some closed source projects, you'd see something pioneering crop up. But I don't really see pioneering, I see dumbing down and an increase in walled gardens paired with lots and lots of marketing.
Yes, but unlike Martin Luther King and civil rights, I'm in favor of software not always being something which needs to be open.
Sure, RMS believes in it ... that's fine. But not everybody agrees with him. At a certain point, his opinion becomes him telling other people what they're free to do.
If he holds a rigid "either/or" position on if, for example, software that I write needs to be open or not ... well, he can go to hell because he doesn't get a vote on what it I do with code I write.
If all you're doing is trying to tell me that I'm committing some form of sin because I write proprietary software, you're a rabid zealot, and I will treat you as such.
Which, is what a lot of people do with RMS ... they just tune him out as someone who has a very loud opinion, but that it's none of his damned business.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Why would he call the Linux kernel GNU/Linux?
A "troll" mod is just a moderator's way of saying "you're wrong but I can't say why, so I'll just mark you down". I ignore them.
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
Some in the FOSS community seem to have taken a page from the Tea Party handbook. Go all or nothing, and don't attack the closed, but rather that of those who are the most open... just not open enough for the all or nothing croud. Then again, what else do we expect from RMS?
I8-D
The Internet, Wikileaks, Linux, Wikipedia, Bitcoin, ... Pick one.
I don't get what you're getting at.
Whether you agree or not with his position doesn't have anything to do with what I'm saying.
My point is that during MLK's time there were plenty people around who didn't agree with him. But if he just had shut up and decided to compromise he wouldn't have got anywhere.
The same way, it makes no sense for Stallman to shut up, because then he wouldn't be saying anything at all. Your agreement or disagreement is entirely irrelevant, if Stallman really wants to get something done, he's got to keep saying what he does, whether you like it or not.
Sure he does. He for instance can choose not to buy proprietary software if he wishes, and that's effectively a vote because there's no point in writing any if nobody buys it. If he manages to convince enough people that he's got a point that's your vote right there.
You do the same thing every time you decide to buy or not to buy a music CD, that sort of thing is effectively a vote on whether the next album get made.
I'm not saying anything about my own opinion on the matter actually. And I don't really care if you think I'm a zealot or not, that's your own business.
"Even though the Android phones of today are considerably less bad than Apple or Windows smartphones ..."
Written like someone who has never actually looked into WP7 phones.
MS far is less evil than both Apple and Google now when it comes down to anything that matters with your phone.
I currently have an Android phone, and my next phone (which I don't expect to buy for at least another year), will be a WP8 phone if Google doesn't clean up their act.
The only 'innovative' thing on that list is the Internet, and it was devloped by DARPA.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
That's the point. Linus chose GPLv2 almost by accident without deep consideration - hence thanks to Stallman. Linus has indicated (according to the gossip chains) that he might not have chosen GPL if he were choosing today.
Thus RMS putting GPLv2 into Linus hands gave us a system around which freedom zealots can assemble. (As we don't have hurd). BSD doesn't attract zealots and so makes less progress.
blog.sam.liddicott.com
Stop asking yourself easy questions to make yourself look smart, RMS.
Please substantiate this.
Compared to what mobile OS that actually has any decent market share is Android a move in the wrong direction as far as openness?
PalmOS? Always closed-source, and when someone figured out how to "cook" custom PalmOS ROMs for the Treo 650, Palm was VERY aggressive at shutting them down.
Windows Mobile? - Always closed-source, and sadly, prior to Android, WM was the most open of the mainstream mobile OSes.
Blackberry? - Highly closed and tightly controlled
Apple iOS? - With the exception of dumphone OSes, it's the epitome of closed
Symbian? - Never had significant market share, and the issue of Symbian and openness seems to be a yo-yo
OpenMoko? - Did they ever even release a fully functional device? If they did, it was an EDGE device in a UMTS era.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
It's a shame your whole post falls flat due to the simple fact that RMS never defended Open Source. The name and concept of the open source development model comes from a different 'faction', that want to downplay the moral argument of Free Software and promote the technical advantages.
RMS theory of Free Software relates to the rights of the *users*, and how proprietary software is immoral since it takes away such rights. Where the software comes from is more or less irrelevant.
Dilbert RSS feed
It has some GNU stuff in it, but VERY little compared to your typical Linux distro.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
GNU/Linux is the full operating system. The kernel itself is just Linux. Android does not run the GNU stack, just the Linux kernel. So he is right calling it Linux and not GNU/Linux. The mainstream Debian runs GNU/Linux. However, the kfreebsd architecture runs the freebsd kernel on top of the GNU userland and so it is called (or at least should be called) GNU/kfreebsd. (The k is there to express only the kernel is used, all the system tools come from GNU)
If it's news to you, you must be hiding under a rock, or at least not paying attention at all to Android.
To summarize the situation:
Google has been temporarily withholding the 3.x source for two reasons:
1) They needed time to work on their anti-fragmentation strategy after the rampant Tivoization and poison-pilling that many of the manufacturers (especially) practiced with 1.x and 2.x - This may have been a side aspect to their purchase of Motorola, since Moto was the worst of the major Android handset manufacturers in terms of Tivoization and poison-pill handsets. Once the Motorola purchase completes they can put a kibosh on Moto's insane bootloader-locking practices. (However it remains to be seen whether or not they actually do this - but it would be stupid of them not to.)
2) 3.x had a lot of tablet-specific cruft in it that Google did not want anyone shoehorning back into a phone handset
They've clearly stated that when the tablet (3.x) and phone (1.x/2.x) branches are merged in ICS (most likely 4.0), the source for ICS will be released. I believe they have also stated that 3.x source will be retroactively released once ICS is out.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Yeah, now we just need to ask which side is being idealistic and which is being practical.
Person A: "Software needs to be maintainable!"
Person B: "Software needs to protect the reputation of related brands!"
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
It's still no excuse. Open source isn't about releasing binaries first, and then promising to release the source when you deem it appropriate. If Google wants to market themselves under the open source banner, then they should play by the rules.
Symbian was the top-selling smartphone OS until fairly recently, with extremely strong market share in Europe and Asia. I wouldn't call ~50% of global smartphone sales "never had significant market share."
Only some Android phones have locked bootloaders, and their number seems to be decreasing.
I'm not aware of any Android phones running closed-source Android versions (i.e. Honeycomb); only tablets do.
All in all, Android does not guarantee openness, but in practice the Android ecosystem is much more open, since you can buy a phone that is open, while still enjoying the extensive app selection and other bonuses of a commercialized platform.
It's just a way of explaining that the iOS platform is vibrant and viable even if Android marketshare were increasing.
Lately you guys use Apple's insane profits (i.e. the fact they ruthlessly screw as many dollars out of you fans as possible) as a positive.
You misunderstand, profit for Apple = lots of apps sold = happy developers = continued development for us in future.
I don't see where I am supposedly being screwed out of my money, when I compare phones at the store Androids that are comparable to the iPhone 4 in build quality (ie. not a creaking plastic pos) have a comparable price attached to them, and apps are dirt cheap (I figure I pay about EUR 2 or 3 on average.)
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
I mentioned that very thing in another slashdot article. It's totally baffling to me.
It's hard to conflate "I spent too much" with "Our side is teh winnar", but the Apple fanbois seem to manage it.
God is imaginary
Both of those are idealistic statements.
Practically speaking, Android is adequately maintainable. It's not like we're expecting to see many phones running for a decade or more, and they're certainly not running mission critical applications.
From a practical point of view, for the platform to be a success, it does need buy-in from various brands. This may well mean compromising some other aspects. That's a political decision. As a developer I can't really say I care too much. I've happily developed for considerably more closed platforms.
I notice a trend among the Apple fanbois. It took a while to notice what was wrong but once I hit on the answer it was shocking.
So I'm an apple fanboi yet I don't own a single piece of apple hardware and on the other hand I've owned multiple Android phones the latest being a Galaxy S. Wait, what?
Lately you guys use Apple's insane profits (i.e. the fact they ruthlessly screw as many dollars out of you fans as possible) as a positive. You always cite sales figures, profits, and other things that stockholders of Apple should be approving of but a customer who isn't totally emotionally invested in the Cult of Mac shouldn't care so much for.
Why? Marketshare means dick if you're making a pittance in profit. This is the very reason why IBM and HP have left the PC business since you can have great market share but your profits are going to be razor thin. Whilst you fandroids crow about market share figures Apple is laughing all the way to the bank at the expense of the Android manufacturers who are making less and less in profit margins quarter over quarter. But hey, keep flailing around and calling me a fanboi when the only fanboi here is you.
Not that the the anti side doesn't gleefully note that Macs are a 10% niche,
Yes and both HP and IBM had far larger market share yet they both ditched their PC divisions. I'd rather have the 10% niche that pulls in a magnitude or more profits then the only that is 2-3 times larger yet is making 10 times less profits.
iPhone has been eclipsed by Android, etc.
Sure, as long as you lump all Android phones together which is dozens upon dozens of models vs 4 models of iPhone. On the other hand, there is no single Android model that has outsold the iPhone 3GS or 4.
but you don't see our side extolling the financial strength of Samsung or Dell or giddy about how Dell shafted us lately.
Good for you?
Yeah, it's totally baffling that the more important part of the success of a business is how much profit they make rather than market share figures. Oh wait, it's not. If you were running a business would you rather have 20% market share and make 2/3rds of the profit for that entire product segment or would you rather be one of a half dozen or more companies who are fighting for the last 1/3rd of an ever shrinking profit pool?
Until I can tell T-Mobile to shove their forced bloatware up their ass without rooting my phone, my phone isn't open at all.
its tied to the carriers network, and you are ultimately under their control by contract.
I don't doubt this source withholding has a lot to do with carriers demands on Google, much as a lot of the restrictions with Iphones were demanded by AT&T..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
> Oh wait, it's not. If you were running a business...
But I'm not. And I suspect you aren't either. I have owned Apple, Inc. stock at a few points, but mostly I'm a user of computing products. As a user I want low affordable prices, features, shiny, nerd things. As long as a key tech supplier isn't losing so badly I'm afraid their tech is about to do the buyout, reorg and fade into obscurity (see Palm) dance I could care less how much cash the guys in charge are carrying out in bulging sacks.
Apple users on the other hand seem emotionally attached to Apple the company almost as much as they like the products. It seems to account for the fact they can admit Apple stuff is way overpriced but that is good since it contributes to the health of their beloved corporate overlord and are thus happy to contribute a premium to ensure it's survival. That is what was wierd when I noticed it. Nobody feels that way about any other hardware or software maker outside Team OS/2 or Team Amiga.
Democrat delenda est
This is simple to explain away.
Unlike "before", when there were some fairly interesting and innovative ideas on the mobile realm from open source in both hardware and software, there's actually a fair amount of R&D competition. Nokia's N800, N880, N900 and such, on Maemo, were open source to their core, with some fairly solid design philosophies. That was about it in terms of "open source mobile", and it had a fair amount of effort behind it (it, as well as fltk, tinyX, etc. on which it was based, and then later, Qt).
Now, however, you can actually get a job to work on this shit. Once taht's done, however, you're likely to have an NDA/noncomp which would inhibit your ability to work on OSS... oh well. (They're likely making serious bank in a down economy; don't jinx that shit.)
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Yet an Android phone of similar spec and quality to an iPhone is a similar price. So Android users are being ripped off too if they buy the good phones?
The solution is to buy the poor quality Android handsets?
But it does seem to highlight something I have been wondering, and maybe someone here will have the figures.
Now the last report I saw estimated that Google was spending about 1 billion dollars a year on Android, when you count up development, marketing, and support. Now while i'm sure ads are lucrative I seriously doubt Google is getting over a billion dollars in cell phone ad revenue, so lets say for the sake of argument that get 200 million in ad revenue from Android phones.
So then the question becomes how long is Google willing to lose money? as we have seen with several other experiments in the past Google has no problem pulling the plug if they don't see a future in a product, and i'm sure Page and brin know you can't sell a product at a loss and make up for it on volume. so how much are they willing to lose? 10 billion? 5 billion? And what is their plan to actually make Android into a money maker instead of taker?
As for TFA is there anything that fits RMS' definition of free? I remember reading for awhile even Emacs didn't fit his uber strict definition of free. and as far as I know the only OS that fits his uber strict definition is Gnusense, So is there a "happy middle" or do you always get burnt in degrees, like with Android making it harder and harder to roll your own, thanks to lack of drivers and firmware?
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Personally I feel like an idiot for falling for the PR hype and supporting Android. Now I find it was all a lie and I still don't have a secure phone. Lied to, used and cheated. You could say Apple are closed but are are at least straightforward about it.
That said, we did get contributions back to linux didn't we? No, we didn't get much of that either.
I get more and more in agreement with RMS as time goes on. You got to be hard with people and companies, it's the only thing they understand. It's getting better but for the meantime, extremism is what people seem to want.
I don't want to sound angry with Google, rather I am embarrassed of myself for falling for it. Perhaps more could have been done at inception. Perhaps there's more we can do now, somehow...
A blog I run for the wealth
It's not semantics. It's a fundamentally different approach. Open Source is about the model of development, Free Software is about the users (regardless of the model). There's no reason to think RMS would be grouchy about the lack of success of the OS development model, since his concerns were always related to the users' rights, not the developers.
RMS himself has written a whole article about the issue: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html
Dilbert RSS feed
Without Linus Torvalds, there would be little or no open source software. Linus is hardly a rabid Stallmanite.
GNU tools were in widespread use before Linux (which famously used rather a lot of GNU), and are still in widespread use on systems other than just Linux. The GPL as a licence was already growing in popularity prior to Linux. As was the BSD, MIT, and other open source licences. Whereas the GPL licence itself owes its existence to Stallman and a spat over a printer driver.
Odd, as a consumer I don't see that as bad. In fact the higher the revenue in an App store the worse that market seems for me.
But maybe I am just to used to Linux on the desktop/laptop and the cheapness of just installing what I need for free.
I don't play simplistic games that were old fashioned on the commodore for just a few bucks (but if you count investment makes them more expensive then full price games) and the idea of having to pay a buck here and a buck there for trivial functionality that on a desktop is just part of the base makes no sense to me.
Maybe I am just being allergic to being nickle and dimed to death but when people say they got several hundred dollars worth of apps on their phones I take the hint and stay well clear.
To put it simple, you just proven that a fool with an iPhone is soon parted from his money. Taking all your money, there is an app for that.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
In practice an Android phone with a locked bootloader (and running a closed-source Android version) is as closed as an iPhone.
No. First off, all versions of Android that run on phones are open-source. Even on tablets, though, where Honeycomb is not open-source, you're free to run whatever apps you want without having to get anyone's approval. On the iPad, you can't (without jailbreaking). That, to me (and I think to many others as well), is the most important distinction.
I assume GP meant "never had significant market share in North America". Not once have I ever seen a Symbian phone in person.
Let's reverse the argument a little.
If Apple had very thin margins it would simply cease to be Apple. It would stop doing R&D and the design work that you hate. However, you don't have to buy or even like Apple to enjoy the benefits of their R&D. Android's interface would likely never had seen the light of day without Apple's iPhone, or at the very least much later. Do you remember Symbian from the smartphone market leaders of 2006 ?
So you should encourage fanbois. Keep them buying Apple's products. It's not your loss, it is actually your gain.
Why are you picking "sides" at all? Don't you realise how silly it makes you seem? Feel free to dislike Apple as a company, feel free to dislike how they price their products, and feel free to dislike their marketing... and go on living your life rather than picking the "side" that Google are on and having these petty, futile arguments. Believe me, Google are not on your side.
Or in the tl;dr version: "You might get the code... some day" The previous bullshit I heard was that only 3.0 would be closed, once it was cleaned up in 3.1 it would be released. Now they're feeding you more bullshit and you're swallowing it like a sucker.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
He's probably waiting for the Replicant phone. And once that's there, he'll discover that one has to put one's real identity while getting one, which he'll be as opposed to as much as he is against Facebook & Google+, and refuse to endorse this either. To be fair, he's not stuck on Hurd - he's himself lost interest in it, and just prefers to force Linux to be called GNU/Linux, which is easier than figuring out which kernel to use for Hurd.
Incidentally, does he still live in the MIT lab?
In such a case, from version 3 onwards, he should simply have packed it w/ the BSD license. Or MIT. Or Lucent. Or Mozilla. Or Apache. Or...
Mostly you see the efforts of massive marketing waves and a decent user interface.
I don't think that's true, but even then, what OSS usually lacks is a well designed user interface.
I'm sure if you funded an open source project as well as you funded some closed source projects
Well apparently OSS isn't being funded on the same level then. Maybe because it's harder to make money that way. Sure RedHat, MySQL(now Oracle) and a few others make some money, but none of them seem to have been able to become really large scale players.
If you look at the OSS that is successful, it seems to be mostly stuff that doesn't have a user interface, like kernels, and mail, database and web servers.
RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor
The obvious answer to this is that iPhones are much more expensive than similarly specced Androids. When I bought my HTC Desire, the iPhone 4 had just come out. They were roughly comparable - the iPhone had a better screen, the HTC had a faster processor and more RAM (I think), but they were pretty similar. The Desire was being advertised at £30/mo for 2 years. The iPhone 4 was being advertised at £60/mo for 2 years. I ended up getting my Desire for £22/mo with a bit of bargaining.
Moving to the present, the iPhone 4 is still at £35/mo + £69 upfront or £40/mo. The HTC Sensation, which is leaps and bounds more powerful than the Iphone, is £30/mo.
Sure, as long as you lump all Android phones together which is dozens upon dozens of models vs 4 models of iPhone. On the other hand, there is no single Android model that has outsold the iPhone 3GS or 4.
Ummm, so? Would you use the same argument comparing Windows PCs to Apples? The story is about Android, and this part of the thread is Android vs IOS. The number of models don't matter. To some extent, including Ipods and Ipads makes sense because they add more IOS devices in use, but as they're not phones, they're slightly different. Still, including them would make a lot more sense than claiming that lots of options in the Android ecosystem is a bad thing. Different people want different things from their phones. I want something powerful with a decent res screen for watching films and reading ebooks and for it to be easy to copy software and media on and off. My mum wants something small and light so it doesn't take up too much space in her bag. One of my friends wants a huge screen because his eyes aren't as good. Android can satisfy us all (HTC Desire, HTC Wildfire S, Dell Streak respectively), wheras an Iphone would've been a compromise for any of us.
I seriously doubt Google's only profits from Android are just ads. They probably charge phone manufacturers licensing fees for the software. They probably take a percentage of the profits for downloaded sales on the marketplace. Not saying that these account for all the money, but you are only looking at one of their incomes.
They could be still losing money, though. I don't think they are since they are footing the bill for a lot of phones, but who knows. I certainly don't care as long as they aren't going to drop out of the market anytime soon, which I highly doubt.
I mentioned that very thing in another slashdot article. It's totally baffling to me.
It's hard to conflate "I spent too much" with "Our side is teh winnar", but the Apple fanbois seem to manage it.
I guess you never bought a large computer back in the day.
We were always being bombarded by press releases from our suppliers (Tandem for example) telling us how great their profits were.
I called our account rep one day and asked him "Why do you keep tellng us how badly you're screwing us?"
Didn't stop the press releases.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
No.... High margin income for Apple is lower user base for developers. So profit is meaningless beyond results of one company. Will it fuel further development in the product line? We just don't know. For all we know, Apple is making the next/next gen device now.
Last year, Apple had a meager 1 billion income from app sales(based on 4bn global market with Apple owning 100%)*. Their expenses for maintaining that thing are really considerable.
* - Other sources claim ~510mil, based on 1.7bn AppStore sales. I go for higher, just to show that it's really not their interest to sell apps, it's their interest to sell more devices at $200 -> $500 margins.
The in store prices are comparable. And remeber that Apple does not reduce the price of older models until new ones come out. All other consumer electronics manufacturers actually reduce their prices with time, even without new devices. Therefore, HTC Sensation is probably already a bit cheaper to the operator than an iPhone4.
What other than a branded phone will work on a CDMA2000 network (that is, any U.S. network that isn't now or soon owned by AT&T)?
it's not his choice now. Not all the code is his. All the contributors have also used GPLv2
If Linus had the choice, maybe he would go X11 or Apache or BSD...
but thanks to Stallman being there, we got GPLv2. Because Stallman cared about freedom, we get the updates from all the other kernel contributors making the whole kernel cool, instead of each proprietary release cool in a special fiscally licensable way.
blog.sam.liddicott.com
You said, "Google has done nothing to encourage Free Software."
You said nothing valid, nothing backed up by any evidence. So, very hypocritical if you yourself can't make a valid rebuttal.
However, you perfectly gave me evidence. All or nothing. You say Google has done nothing to encourage free software.
You completely ignore code.google.com.
You completely ignore Chromium.
You completely ignore Android and the ecosystem of free and oss apps that have built around it.
I could go on. Fact is, you are the all or nothing person that I believe is the problem with FOSS. And quite frankly, while you response was flamebait, the entire all or nothing FOSS is flamebait to more moderate users with ridiculous claims, using your words, such as "Google has done nothing". That isn't just ridiculous, but a complete lie. Whereas, my point is perfectly proven by such lies.
FOSS adopting MS F.U.D. It's sad, pitiful, and more should be expected from supposedly smart individuals.
But give those individuals a fanatical cause, and you get PETA, Tea Party, or RMS. Thank you for proving my point.
I8-D
That guy just proved my point. I don't want to rehash, but read my response to him. It's all or nothing for some of these people. It's extremism, and it has no place for groups that don't want ridiculed like the other groups I mentioned. It makes FOSS community look like digital jihadists fighting a war of purity.
It's very very unproductive and only attacks moderates, not the real enemies of FOSS.
I8-D
Google never said Android was free software. Google does maintain that Android is open, and they'll release the source code when they think it's ready. Android does not have to meet the FSF's strict definition of free and open source software; it doesn't even use the same license. A reality check by Brian Proffitt: http://www.itworld.com/mobile-wireless/204973/more-partisanship-free-software-leadership
Sometimes I worry that I'll develop Alzheimer's disease, but no one will notice.
No.... High margin income for Apple is lower user base for developers. So profit is meaningless beyond results of one company. Will it fuel further development in the product line? We just don't know. For all we know, Apple is making the next/next gen device now.
The size of the user base isn't that important, what is important is how many of those users you can activate. A lot of evidence points towards a higher activation rate for iOS users than Android users. In other words, more iOS users buy apps and they are willing to pay more while a lot of those Android users either aren't buying apps or are using their smartphone as a "dumb phone."
Last year, Apple had a meager 1 billion income from app sales(based on 4bn global market with Apple owning 100%)*. Their expenses for maintaining that thing are really considerable.
Well, Apple does claim that their 30% on app sales is what they need to break even. So what does this mean for Android (or other platforms) app stores, where a lot more apps are "free" and get their revenue from in-app advertising ? Are those stores actually profitable and viable long term ?
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
I've never heard this. It has always been "once it's cleaned up in ICS it will be released".
3.1 is not ICS.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Wrong. That's what the GPL is about.
The Apache license has no such requirements.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
No, you're wrong. I didn't mention the GPL. I said, "If Google wants to market themselves under the open source banner, then they should play by the rules."
It's not that Google is violating a license. It's that they market Android as an open source operating system but don't actually adhere to open source principles. That's fraud.
A quick google gets this story from January 2011.
First line: "Google today announced a 29 percent surge in quarterly profits, due in large part to the continued success of its Android business. "
God is imaginary
I really don't understand what you are saying, but I'll try my best to respond to clear up what I think is a confusion.
Calling them GNU/Linux and Android/Linux would help to clear up the confusion that the original poster had. Personally, if I were describing the typical "Linux" system in a context where it would be confused, I would probably say GNU/X/Linux, because this describes what I want to know. Most people who describe a "Linux" system really only care about the GNU/X part. For example, I noticed recently that Debian has a distribution using the Free BSD kernel instead of the Linux kernel. I haven't checked, but I assume it uses GNU. As a user, I don't really care that much whether my kernel is Free BSD or Linux, as long as my hardware is supported. It hardly makes any difference to me. I can't imagine it makes much difference to most other people either. What I want is a GNU system with X.
If I installed a "Linux" system and found that it was Android rather than GNU, I would be very disappointed. I don't want Android n my desktop. It's not useful to me. The fact that it runs a Linux kernel is completely unrelated to what I care about. Similarly, if Google decided to use a different kernel on my phone instead of Linux, I wouldn't give a monkey's because it doesn't affect me as a user (as long as my hardware is supported). Assuming I want Android (though, to me honest more and more I think I'd rather have GNU on my phone... too bad Meego is dead...) I'll be happy.
The thing about Red Hat is that it is a GNU/Linux system. That's all they distribute. So I'm quite happy to call a distribution "Red Hat" and revel in the lack of confusion. Even Debian with a choice of different kernels isn't so bad. I know what I'm getting. When I need to specify, I can say Debian/Free BSD or Debian/Linux. It's GNU and X. I know that, because it's all they do. Red Hat and Debian are brands.
But if you are talking about GNU with the Linux kernel and saying what software you want to run, etc, etc, calling it "Linux" is just plain confusing. GNU and X is the important part to the user, not Linux. I can replace the Linux part and not much will change (assuming my hardware is supported). The other way around is untrue.
One thing I'll give you is that the FSF did a *very* bad job of explaining this issue. It was wrapped up in a lot of emotional language. This caused people like yourself to respond in a similarly emotional way. I don't blame you. You see this guy getting all worked up over something and you can't understand why. You think he's just a nutter. And since he's talking on and on about morality you think he's attacking you. It's fair enough that you get upset. When the whole GNU/Linux thing erupted I couldn't see the point either because *all* Linux distros were GNU and X. That's not true anymore and I spend quite a lot of time clearing up confusion that would be easier to deal with if people would simply talk about the parts that are important to them and not the kernel.
I see even in the US you can get uncontracted phones e.g. on ebay, amazon etc.
Where can I try the screen and touch screen of an uncontracted phone before I buy it?
Ipod touch is simply smartphone without phone. In these days of mass production, it doesn't cost much to add the gsm chip
Then why does an iPhone without a contract (in those countries where it is offered) cost twice as much as an iPod touch?
If I had any mod points, I'd mod you up.
Maemo and later Meego, were/are the only truly open phone efforts that have gained any traction.
Microsoft (probably in collusion with Apple and Google) is trying so very hard to kill Meego, but just like Linux, it'll be just about impossible for them to accomplish since it's already better in every single technical aspect.
FOSS is like a sleeping bear, slow, but when awoken, extremely hard to ignore.
I never bought an Android phone due to the lies Google made about the platform right from the start.
It was supposed to be free (it never was)
It was supposed to use Linux and therefore compatible (it uses it's java-slow-ass-walled-garden-reimplement-everything-approach)
Still using symbian due to the overwhelmingly better standby-time compared to all other competing OSes.
Only a truly free Linux has any chance of competing with this (using power profiling, and a mature platform)
aww, this is all true. To be honest I've held off on Android and iPhone... I still have a Symbian phone (!) because I'm waiting on all this mess.
What about OpenPhone, I wonder what happened to that.
What got me thinking about all this was when I was abroad and needed to contact my Bank but didn't want to pay an international rate.
VoIP - I use a Betamax provider. The only way to secure it I could think of would be PPTP to a VPN(kinda only option for Symbian as it's so old). I had a go but couldn't get it working... it's not perfect but I'd settle for it
Callback services to a mobilephone - can work, I'd use this next time but at the time I didn't have it.
Email - how safe is email via a closed source phone anyway?
You can buy `securephones` but where's the source? Usually there is none so how can it be secure?
Is Cyanogenmod any better?
The best I can think of it taking a cheap Android based netbook/tablet for VoIP via a VPN, loading Ubuntu on it and matching that with a 3G dongle. But that's a bit bulky for casual use.
A blog I run for the wealth
If the argument is Android vs iOS, why are you comparing Android to iPhone? That's apples to oranges. When you count iOS vs Android, iOS outsells Android more than 2:1. Sorry.
Lower user base is still lower addressable user base. Selling apps is a dead end business, regardless of platform.
Considering, that Google doesn't actually need to support the same infrastructure are Apple, I'd say Android Market is viable. Remember, that Apple has the whole approval process which I assume is rather costly to operate. In addition Google's infrastructure is already in place, while Apple had to expand it.