[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.