[jacobsenscott]

For all practical purposes no, being open source does not help. Yes, Android is OS, but the device manufacturers and carriers lock down their devices so you do not have the freedom do install changes or make modifications to your own device. They do not accept contributions from the OS community.

I believe this will eventually be true for everything - from servers to desktops to laptops, etc.

[ikeboy]

Counterpoint: every device that cyanogenmod runs on.

[jacobsenscott]

Sure, I install cyanogenmod when I can. Ordinary users cannot do that. Samsung is actively hostile to this and samsung makes some of the most popular android devices.