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Android 4.0 Source Code Coming "Soon"
itwbennett writes "Good news today for those of you who have been waiting for news about whether Google would be opening up the ICS source and for those of you who thought it was gone for good. Android engineer Dan Morrill revealed new information in the Android Building Google group yesterday evening, saying that Google plans 'to release the source for the recently-announced Ice Cream Sandwich soon, once it's available on devices.'"
Did you even read the summary? They haven't said anything about making sure it's stable (which doesn't mean they haven't done so, before any trolls leap on that), but they have said they're waiting until the devices are released. Probably because they don't want people's first impression of Ice Cream Sandwich to be a barely functional custom ROM with half the drivers missing.
which is totally what she said
The big question has been, since 'Ice Cream Sandwich', whether it would continue to be closed development/open source, or whether it would go closed entirely, except for a few GPL-obligated kernel bits...
No, that's never been a question for anyone other then the conspiracy minded. Google has been extremely clear and consistent about their reason for not releasing Honeycomb's source and about continuing with the open sourcing of Android as soon as the code base is fixed in ICS.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
Yes, the ICS tree that will be released to AOSP is the same code used to do the build for Galaxy Nexus (among other products).
Instructions on building for Galaxy Nexus will likely end up here (alongside Nexus S):
http://source.android.com/source/building-devices.html
The handful of closed source userspace pieces necessary (some firmware, the hardware opengl libraries, samsung radio library, etc) will end up here:
http://code.google.com/android/nexus/drivers.html
(please disregard the unfortunate use of "drivers" here -- all the kernel drivers are GPLv2, none are closed source)
What's not included is the Google Mobile Apps (gmail, gcalendar, gtalk, maps, etc). These are proprietary Google applications, not part of the core Android platform (which consists of the lower level libraries, dalvik vm, framework libraries, services, core apps like phone, contacts, launcher, settings, etc, etc).