[alphamerik]

Agreed, I don't understand what all of the anger is about like in this highly opinionated and skewed Ars Technica piece: http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2011/03/android-open...

The source will be released when Google is happy with the product. For people to be up in arms that they aren't releasing the source to an unfinished product is ridiculous. Seems like they are damned if they do, damned it they don't.

[djacobs]

I don't know if it's anger so much as confusion over why they are closing off the source that (up until now) they've called 'open'.

[recoiledsnake]

>The source will be released when Google is happy with the product. For people to be up in arms that they aren't releasing the source to an unfinished product is ridiculous. Seems like they are damned if they do, damned it they don't

The Motorola Xoom is already out.. so how is Honeycomb an unfinished product if it's in consumers' hands? The basic spirit of FOSS is that users and developers should be able to modify the code. The article you linked to says this:

>The lack of Honeycomb code availability is especially bad for enthusiasts who were hoping to be able to install custom firmware on their Android tablets. Without the code, it will be difficult for the modding community to produce custom builds that fix the software problems that plague the Xoom and other upcoming Android tablets. Users who were looking forward to better Honeycomb builds for the Nook Color and other budget devices are also going to have to wait.

>For now, only a privileged few hardware vendors will have access to Honeycomb while the rest are left with uncertainty about the future of the platform. Even after the matter is resolved, the fact that Google is willing to withhold source code at its whim for competitive reasons is going to continue to cast a dark shadow over the company's increasingly hollow claim that Android is an open platform.

I don't see how the above is wrong.

>The source will be released when Google is happy with the product.

Doesn't Android use the Linux kernel which is GPL'ed (among other parts)? Can they legally withhold code for a shipping product by saying the software isn't finished?

[daniel_solano]

> Doesn't Android use the Linux kernel which is GPL'ed (among other parts)? Can they legally withhold code for a shipping product by saying the software isn't finished?

Yes, the kernel is GPL, so they have released that source. It's the rest of the platform they are withholding, which is generally under an Apache license.

[sjs]

> The Motorola Xoom is already out.. so how is Honeycomb an unfinished product if it's in consumers' hands?

It's unfinished because it doesn't ship with major features that it claims to support such as LTE and Adobe Flash. Every review has said that the Xoom feels like a beta at best and it is simply not ready for the masses, and a large part of that is due to Android 3.

[bonch]

The anger is explained in the introduction to that article. Google presented Android as an open gift to the world in a fight against strictly controlled platforms, yet Google is now withholding source code and requiring final approval over modifications to the operating system.

That they're allegedly holding up Android phones which utilize a rival search engine, Bing, is especially troubling. Is Android supposed to be an open platform or a Google platform?