[sangnoir]

I strongly suspect Android's uptake by manufacturers and MNOs would have been far less if it was licensed as GPL. So there would have been an opportunity cost to Google (that is certainly not $0).

Do you think Sony, let alone Verizon would cave and agree to the terms of the GPL? Remember this is in 2008 - Sony's DRM/rootkit scandal was only 3 years prior (2005).

Edited: fixed my years

[pron]

Verizon doesn't make phones (I think; not too familiar with them), so what do they care? But Sony, yes, I think that when the app store opened in mid 2008, they would have realized they have no other choice but to rally around a single software platform, and one that's made by a company with a bigger brand in the software world than them. If GPL was the bitter pill they had to swallow, they would have. The upside to GPL from their perspective would have been that all of their competitors have to abide by it, too.

Also, just to clarify, the pill really isn't all too bitter. Use of OpenJDK wouldn't have dictated that all apps must be GPL -- not even bundled apps made by the manufacturer. The OpenJDK has a clear "classpath exception", which makes it more like LGPL -- any code dynamically linked with it is not required to be GPL. The only implication is that any modification they make to the actual runtime itself would have needed to be GPLed. I don't think phone manufacturers make any technologically groundbreaking, game-changing changes to the runtime -- anything that could hurt their competitiveness had it been free.

So I can understand Google's decision, and they certainly believed going GPL was an opportunity cost, but in retrospect, choosing OpenJDK would have -- at the very worst -- delayed Android's adoption by a single year, but would have ended making everyone's life much easier. I think that in hindsight, it's clear that passing on OpenJDK was a big mistake. Don't fear the GPL.

[sangnoir]

Verizon does not make phones - it sells them. It was responsible for much of Android's early success in the US with it's multimillion dollar "Droid does" ad campaign to the extent that "Droid" was synonymous with "Android".