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Android Ice Cream Sandwich Source Released
grcumb writes "Looks like the folks at Google have made good on their promise to release the Android 4.0 source code. Android software engineer Jean-Baptiste Queru writes: 'Hi! We just released a bit of code we thought this group might be interested in. Over at our Android Open-Source Project git servers, the source code for Android version 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) is now available. ... This is actually the source code for version 4.0.1 of Android, which is the specific version that will ship on the Galaxy Nexus, the first Android 4.0 device. In the source tree, you will find a device build target named "full_maguro" that you can use to build a system image for Galaxy Nexus. Build configurations for other devices will come later.' "
Once nice side-effect of this is that the revision history for the non-free Honeycomb series is also available, albeit without any release tags.
google: a little bit less evil.
that Google has followed through on releasing the source code. This is awesome news after Honeycomb went MIA as far as source release.
Hopefully that means we will see ICS ported to other devices in the near future, it should be interesting to see how it performs on older devices.
Good to see that ICS is an open source version of Android after the closed-source Honeycomb created that possibility (however unlikely) of other Android versions following suit.
Well here it is,
Just like Google promised, they were quite open about why they didnt release the Honeycomb source (not that it stopped ROM cookers) and that the changes in 3.x would be released in 4.0.
It's nice that a large company actually adheres to its word.
Now how long before CyanogenMod 9 is released.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
GitHub provides a friendly interface to view the source without having to use the repo tool and downloading the whole thing, so I'm eagerly waiting for this to get pushed there as well. Shouldn't take long.
https://github.com/android/
Come on, we all already know goes into an ice Cream Sandwich. You get two graham crackers, put ice cream between them, and serve with a side of randomly lock up my phone for no reason. Easy.
Just like Google promised, they were quite open about why they didnt release the Honeycomb source ...and no it isn't for Honeycomb - The history is there, but the tags aren't. Add tags to match the released devices globally, and all would be well.
It's nice that a large company actually adheres to its word.
It's easy to do it when you're opaque.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Yeah! "Cupcake", "Eclair", "Ice Cream", what the hell kind of names are those? Sounds more like something from a dinner menu than a release list!
The OSS movement really needs to take a page from the book of professional companies like Microsoft. They know how to give their product versions classy names, like "Mango". See how much better that is?
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The tags aren't necessarily relevant to the outside world, and perhaps provide a little too much insight into the development process.
I once tagged something "shitFinallyFixedNow" at 4AM while working on a final project in school. Needless to say, I didn't push that tag to the professor....
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
So Ice Cream Sandwich is designed to be compatible with both phones and tablets. Do you have set a specific flag when you build the code depending on what kind of device you want to put it on? Or is it relatively device agnostic? Can it determine the screen size by querying the hardware and figure out what to do automagically on its own?
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stupid names that don't have any fucking link with what the project is all about.
Like how Apple names their OS releases after big cats, because big cats and operating systems have so much in common?
You clearly have never worked in any real tech industry job, otherwise you would know that cool-sounding, themed, but ultimately meaningless project code names are ubiquitous.
They had no other choice legally, or else this wouldn't have happened.
Uh, no. First, they never distributed binaries, so they weren't required to release anything.
Second, the parts that *were* required to be released (by the manufacturers, not Google) were in fact released, and you could always get them. They're in the ASUS site, for example.
Thirdly, most of the code that actually makes up Android is Apache2 licensed, which means they are never required to release it - you can use it on proprietary code.
Can I type make install? Or are we still in tivo land?
That's up to the manufacturers, not Google.
Dilbert RSS feed
Look, clearly the Android names are working up to something specific. The release that causes the singularity will be named Bacon.
I'm going to remove mod points for peeps but couldn't resist posting... Speaking of names, how about Bing? What kind of a name is that? "Here let me bing that for you", just doesn't gel.
They had no other choice legally, or else this wouldn't have happened.
Of course they did, the only thing they have to release is the kernel code since nothing in the ASL requires them to release source code and that's why Honeycomb didn't have to be released.
Caffeine much? Sorry, didn't observe the title bar.
If you have to eat your own dogfood, better that it have a tasty name
IMHO, not good enough to not release the entire platform
How about this for rationale: Its their code and they dont owe you a darn thing.
Seriously, someone comes out with a new semi-revolutionary embedded device OS (revolutionary in that it took the market by storm and is reasonably open / easy to root), and then they release the source for the first several releases. But when they miss one, people act like theyre OWED something. You know what? Go use one of the OTHER open-source phone OSes if you feel so strongly about it.
Seriously, this sense of entitlement bugs the heck out of me. The world doesnt owe you a thing.
People look at me like I'm weird, but I still find myself wanting to pronounce it "bin-gee" ;-)
The point usually made is that this applies to the android kernel source, which has indeed been promptly released directly to the kernel developers (and for download for anyone who cares). Much more promptly, by the way, than required by the licence.
It does *NOT* apply to the full android system, nor will it ever. Android itself (the various subprojects have separate licences, which I think you'll find, are all proprietary).
Just distributing a linux kernel running distribution does *not* make it GPL.
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/open-source/linus-torvalds-on-android-the-linux-fork/9426
Google did release all of Android Honycomb that was GPL'd. In particular the Kernel, and a few other userland tools. However, everything that makes Andrioid Android, and not just another linux distro is licensed under the Apache license which allows for proprietary modifications. This includes the Dalvik VM, the Harmony Java libraries, and the Android APIs. Google was perfectly with the law to not release this code, not to mention the fact that they wrote half of it themselves.
This has already been discussed ad'nausem on Slashdot, so there is no excuse for this misinformation to be moderated up. I swear only idiots that hardly read the site get moderation points anymore.
I can almost guarantee that there are at least a half-dozen guys who won't be going to bed tonight just so they can post a semi-working bootable ICS distro for Xoom before dawn breaks over western Europe (and earn bragging rights over their peers with Transformers, A500s, Galaxy Tabs, and Thrives). A version you're likely to regard as stable will probably take a week or two. Moto's official build will probably get released to a yawn 3 months from now, long after everyone who passionately cares about ICS has already upgraded to it on their own.
Personally, I'm thrilled. I can't wait to rip into the code that handles the power button, and try overloading it to create a new double-click gesture that means "unlock the orientation, read the accelerometer, reorient the screen if appropriate, then lock the orientation again" so I'll never, ever have to choose between the frustration of having the screen rotate inappropriately while I'm laying in bed, and screwing with 30 seconds of active gesturing to try and switch it between landscape and portrait. :)
OK, here's a thread to post the links to all the haters' comments where they guaranteed that Google had gone Evil and would never release ICS source.
Granted, I full well expect six people will rebuff, stating that since 4.0.1 was released but not 4.0.0 that they were precisely correct and that this is proof of Google's evil intentions.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Google are:
- releasing source code to their operating system for free, under no obligation. The Nook Tablet and Color and Kindle Fire are great examples of how this can work against Google - Android devices that make no payment to Google and do not come with access to Google's Android Marketplace, or Google's proprietary apps.
- virtually the only major silicon valley company left (compared to Apple, Amazon, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Amazon etc) who haven't patent trolled anyone (except in retaliation of course), although they could have, Google still has thousands of patents even though companies like Microsoft have far more, some of them are a lot more important than Apple GUI animation patents. e.g. http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2010/01/googles-mapreduce-patent-what-does-it-mean-for-hadoop.ars
- been far better at sticking to privacy promises and openness compared to the likes of Facebook
- have entire divisions of their company and features that make no revenue for them (and are not R&D projects in hope of future earnings) but are retained. e.g. Free offline and IMAP/SMTP/POP access to gmail from day one, google docs for personal use (I can open and edit files with no ads anywhere), AOSP, Google chrome/ chromium, google.org
- principled stand on net neutrality
- taking a principled stand and pulling out of China
Somehow Google are still constantly attacked, way more than companies like Apple and Microsoft these days, they deserve some credit. Sure, they are far from the do no evil motto, but these days, doing a lot less evil than other megacorps is still remarkable.
If you put a free website as more evil than a dongle-encryped piece of crap that you pay thousands of dollars for.
There are people on slashdot who see it as their mission to paint Google evil for any reason. If they can misinterpret a license that most people don't understand and thus incorrectly hold it out as Google being evil, that's what they're going to do. It doesn't play very well, if you look around this thread - in fact, they're probably doing their "evil Google" campaign more harm than good trying it here where so many active participants actually know better. They should take their work to PCWorld and CNet, where it would work better. Yet still, they try here but don't be misled: It's not about license compliance, it's about getting some tar on Google any way they can in the minds of folk who don't know better. They're not really GPL fans or they would understand what is required, and why, and that Google is - and has always been - in compliance with the terms and above that generous with contributions of all sorts.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
So not to be confused with their previous release, Froyo. Their picture in your mind would be practically the same. Now it's more distinct.
In Googlemerica, you eat OS.
In Soviet Apple, OS eats YOU!
Like how Apple names their OS releases after big cats, because big cats and operating systems have so much in common?
Because Apple users are pussies? /Ducks
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
What does selling have to do with anything?
Android isn't GPL. Its an Apache2 license. Only the Linux kernel is GPL and they have been releasing the source for the kernel mods on time.
Two great OS's that breath new life into my now ancient but still awesome HTC HD2 or as WP sees it, HD7 :) If this thing had a front facing camera I would never want to get rid of it. Gingerbread is getting kinda old now but I find it more "fun" to use than WP7.5 but I find WP7.5 more fun to hack around with and use on a day to day basis. Now if I could just stop it from DESTROYING my battery.
>>Speaking of names, how about Bing? What kind of a name is that?
There was talk for a while inside of Microsoft of naming it Koomuk. (Cumook? Cumik? Something like that.)
Compared to that, "Bing" is fucking brilliant.
No, it has to be a sweet... so it would be Chocolate Coated Bacon... sadly, we would then have to wait for it to wrap right round the alphabet to come back through "C"... they're doing it in alphabetical order if you hadn't noticed...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Nothing at all. Anonymous Coward seems to be getting less intelligent as he ages.
Perhaps that's why the version that ships on Galaxy Nexus is 4.0.1?
So Microsoft follows the GNU recursive acronym naming scheme?
They've done worse...
My other account has a 3-digit UID.
I'm looking forward to version 10.8: "Lolcat" and version 10.9: "Pussy".
My other account has a 3-digit UID.
... to many devices with ICS ... guess the CyanogenMod team has already locked itself in the attic and is coding ;)
Thanks to both Google for the code and of course the Modders for their work!!!
[BSD/Apache are] not really "free software" licenses in the "freedom" sense...
Bzzzt! Bzzt! Going to Orange Alert on the yet-another-BSD-vs.-GPL-holy-war-thread-hijack warning scale.
Incident has not occurred yet, but danger of tedious rabid zealots taking over the thread with a repeat of the same boring discussion is high.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Ha, yeah, at least with the dessert names you can tell which one is the latest.
Though I suppose the large cats help indicate what they will do to your wallet when they're released... om nom nom.
The same applies to code comments, so let's filter out all comments before releasing the source!
My first program:
Hell Segmentation fault
They were never evil. They're not MS/Apple. Do you have a short term memory loss? Honeycomb was withheld, and they told people why.
They said basically honeycomb was a bad implementation, they didn't want people to move forward with it, they do want people to move forward on ICS. It's not like a "honeycomb is a goddamn secret!" This has been announced like 500x. It's like a design for a car that they say "this design causes engines to explode" so they don't release the design. Is this a surprise that they then release ICS source? Did you hear them say "ICS is a bad implementation"? No.
That's not a lack of transparency either, they announced this repeatedly.
Scans through check in comments
Yeah, I think we'll just strip all the metadata.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Finally released... http://www.montuori.net/
Just pick the revision of it there. Because the 3.0 source code, rolled back before any 4.x changes exists in that repository. Good job :)
It's not a matter of entitlement, it's a matter of holding people to their promises. If you want all the accolades and fuzzy warmth from adopting open source, then live by it. Otherwise, expect backlash, and rightfully so.
Seriously, the Google apologists bug the heck out of me.
...Google's NOT evil? Oh my L-rd, What are all the whiny a-holes on Slashdot to do now???
Tell me, since when does open source (which doesn't mean what you falsely imply it does) explicitly say they can't do what is exactly within the apache license, dumbass?
It doesn't become open source until you actually release that source code, if MS said the Windows source was under BSD license but never released the code would you consider it to be open source?
Up until now Honeycomb was closed source for the obvious reason that the source code was not released, hence not open.
Except from the Open Source definition:
The program must include source code, and must allow distribution in source code as well as compiled form.
http://www.opensource.org/osd.html
Just to be clear the only one of the GP's assertions I agree with is that Honeycomb wasn't open source (until now) and I wouldn't even say Google is 'evil' for not releasing it earlier, in fact I entirely understand and support them doing so, their reasoning made perfect sense. But it's obvious that Honeycomb was closed-source up until now.
Yes, yes it is. Compared to Hitler, Stalin was brilliant as well! Actually i have no idea who was worse and not trying to start anything. But you get my point... Now will I get urs?
hahah, I have total respect for the name now :P
Might send them over a bottle of wine for choosing such a great name.