[gibwell]

This falls pray to a reductio ad absurdum. The android you can do this with is nothing like the android that ships on consumer's phones.

So no, you absolutely cannot do this with what almost everyone thinks of as 'Android'.

You can do it with a different thing that also has the name 'Android', but isn't the same.

I assume you haven't noticed this, because otherwise you would be deliberately trying to spread a misleading view.

[DannyBee]

Do you not think this will happen to Firefox OS (as a random example).

Regardless of what Mozilla does, the manufacturers are not going to sell non-differentiated phones for very long. They are going to keep that differentiation closed source, as they do now.

If one of them becomes very popular (say, Samsung), the Firefox OS you can do things with will be nothing like the Firefox OS on consumer's phones.

This is the way of the world, not just the way of Android.

[gibwell]

Sure, but this isn't just the manufacturers working somehow against Google's goal to have android be truly open. Google is actively participating in this process rather than resisting it. Android is, for example not licensed with copyleft or some other construction designed to keep it open, and Google itself builds its most significant end-user functionality as closed components.

I note that you are implicitly conceding that what is commonly considered to be Android is indeed not open.

[DannyBee]

"Android is, for example not licensed with copyleft or some other construction designed to keep it open"

No, instead it's licensed in a way that lets the rest of the world decide what they want to do with it, and the complaint is "we don't like what the world is doing with it". You must also realize if android was GPL'd, nobody would have used it, right[1] ?

" and Google itself builds its most significant end-user functionality as closed components."

I don't agree this is true, but even if i did, if you want to compete, compete. If you don't, don't. Essentially this whole complaint boils down to "i have to do my own work in order to compete seriously, i don't get to freeride anymore after x number of years".

I'll point out the mariadb folks did this, rather than simply complain.

In any case, the fact that someone may build closed source stuff on top of an open platform does not make that open platform less open. It may make that platform less useful as time goes on, but not less open.

"I note that you are implicitly conceding that what is commonly considered to be Android is indeed not open."

I haven't conceded anything, actually.

It's just not a point worth arguing with someone who holds a position that clearly conflicts with mine and is highly unlikely to change it.

[1] I wouldn't try arguing with this, this is a case where i was there, and I literally know the answers and positions of the phone makers, which was essentially 'never ever ever'.

[frabcus]

Just to point out to readers that DannyBee works for Google (reference: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6658276)

DannyBee - have you read Moral Mazes by Robert Jackall (http://www.amazon.com/Moral-Mazes-World-Corporate-Managers/d...)? It was one of Aaron Swartz's favorite books.

It's an excellent, and fair to all sides, dissection of morality in corporate management. It explains how and why managers rehearse to explain actions their company's have taken.

In this particular comment of yours, you say lots of true things. However, you are not acting in a straightforward "hacker" way, as befits this site, telling the truth how it is.

Google can continue to behave in this way as a company, but it will alas find it harder and harder to hire good geeks.

[tptacek]

What a truly fatuous and obnoxious comment. You've managed to hit most of the HN bullshit argument dog-whistles: accusing people of being shills, invoking Aaron Swartz, arguing on behalf of "hackers", speaking for the rest of the site, and accusing the person you're debating of dishonesty. And you managed to do it in an argument about software licensing. Well played.

[frabcus]

Sorry if you find it obnoxious - I was trying to avoid picky, semantic arguments about individual sentences by explaining what was happening at a higher level.

For the record, I'm specifically not accusing DannyBee of dishonesty. The reason I mentioned Moral Mazes as a book is because it explains what happens from the point of view of the managers, and why it comes across to outsiders as dishonest.

This stuff is subtle and systemic.

Fair point about speaking for the site.

[DannyBee]

"However, you are not acting in a straightforward "hacker" way, as befits this site, telling the truth how it is."

I'm not even sure where to start with your comment, because it implies so much, and has so little to offer.

Rather than address it point by point, i'll just say things:

When i'm speaking for the company I work for, you'll know it, because it'll be a press release that says Google on it. Maybe you are unable to separate your personal and professional lives, and hold opinions separate from your corporations. For me, Google is a company I work for. While I love my job, Google certainly does things i don't always agree with. When it does, i'm certainly not going to avoid saying something because i am "rehearsing to explain the actions my company has taken".

There are a lot of things Android could do better. But in the end, what I see over the years is a lot of whining that it's never enough. From where I sit, Google has taken a lot of flack for actually pushing the ball forward, because it doesn't always go as far as the open source community wants. First they wanted Google to beat up the carriers (without understanding why this is pretty much impossible). Then they complain when we don't. Heck, some people complain android is "too open", because we can't force carriers to give people what they want. I could go on here for hours. Look at the complaints of a lack of a nexus 4 and nexus 5 on certain carriers . Google releases an entire platform, on which other open platforms are now based, and people complain that they have value-added apps that provide a lot of functionality, and haven't opened them. Well great, good for them. This is supposed to be an innovative community. Create your own. Do it better. Do it open, and win. Prove that they made the wrong choice.

Let's stop and be honest for a second. Do you really think something like Firefox OS would even exist (not even just because it is/was based on Android at the lower levels, like Gonk) in the market today if Android had not pushed the ball forward?

When Android was first released, one of my good friends told me no matter what Google did, people would never see it as enough, no matter how open it was. The saddest part to me of all this is that he was right.

Android was never meant to be the end solution, it was meant to be the beginning.

[frabcus]

Thanks for this comment - it's much better and clearer than the grandparent at explaining what Google are doing.

All the hard work on Android is much appreciated - I'm really glad Apple didn't gain a monopoly.

[Apocryphon]

Firefox OS certainly would not exist without Google signing the Mozilla Foundation nice big paychecks.

But the mobile web is inevitable. Eventually there will be parity in performance between web apps and native apps. (And Android is on the wrong side of that divide, and Dalvik doesn't exactly help.) Even if Firefox OS isn't doing what it is now, someone would have tried to push for a mobile OS focused on web apps. Perhaps even Samsung.

[gibwell]

I don't agree with the parent poster's implication that 'because you work for Google you are a spokesperson'

But.. You have certainly claimed to have authority to speak about parts of Google's strategy because you were in certain meetings.

[tmzt]

Is the same true of the bionic library and and core OS libraries? How many vendors actually released closed forks of those, or required that Google restrict the availability of source code for the version of the core (C) libraries and utilities on their version of the device?

How much time did using this port from BSD take over shipping with a GPLv2/LGPLv2.1 version of libc and coreutils?

(Note, I'm explicitly referring to the Unix base operating system, not drivers, audio or video codecs or libraries or anything else, only Bionic and the core Unix utilities)

[gibwell]

I don't disagree with most of what you are saying except for the part about Google putting its own most significant parts of android into closed source components.

Your comment about 'You don't get to freeride after X years' is perfectly reasonable if google's goal is to stop contributing to the open parts of android.

I am not disputing Google's right to do whatever it takes to compete, or that there is somehow something morally wrong about that.

I am disputing the canard that 'Android is open' when really only a part of it is, and that part is not what most people think of as Android.

I do thing there is something morally wrong with perpetuating this misleading idea, even though it furthers Google's PR goals.

I know that corporations mislead us all the time with communications that are technically true but pragmatically false. I realize it may be naive to expect different behavior, but it's certainly not going to stop if it isn't called out.

[DannyBee]

"I am disputing the canard that 'Android is open' "

This is because of what you define Android as.

Of course, the humorous part is that when all of this first started, Google tried very hard to make sure Android was defined in terms of what the Android Open Source Project was and had, but failed miserably here, so they gave up.

[gibwell]

This is absolutely disingenuous. Google routinely refers to 'Android activations', and the success of Android in public communications. This use is clearly not confined to carefully referring to the AOSP.

If as you say, Google intended to have 'Android' mean the AOSP at one point, and it has stopped trying for that definition now because it failed to make the distinction to the public, then that only strengthens the point that Google (and you) know that what people think of as 'Android' is not open, and so are knowingly exploiting the ambiguity between 'Android' and the AOSP when you perpetuate that idea.