Google Delays Distribution of New Android Tablet Source Code

[olivercameron]

http://businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2011/tc20110324_269784.htm

[nazgulnarsil]

I'm sure samsung, motorola, HTC have nothing to do with this decision.~

[wmf → nazgulnarsil]

Can you elaborate? Do you think they fear competition from non-OHA members?

[rbarooah]

Can we still call it 'open'?

[olivercameron → rbarooah]

It's open, when they decide you can see it.

[ceejayoz → olivercameron]

Apple's iOS is open when they decide you can see it, too.

[bmorrison → ceejayoz]

Oh, I guess it was Phil Shiller that tweeted: http://twitter.com/Arubin/status/27808662429#

[rbarooah → bmorrison]

I think the point is that if you own a Xoom, that tweet is empty.

[olivercameron → ceejayoz]

But they don't claim that it is "open", unlike Google.

[rbarooah → olivercameron]

So it's not open for the people who bought Xooms then.

[zmmmmm → rbarooah]

Has the exact code for a specific device ever been open?

The way I understand it there is 'vanilla' Android which is open and then there are all the devices which, even when they stay 'vanilla', still get tweaks or at very least drivers added and are not 'open'.

It sounds to me like this is just business as usual, the difference being that Google did a device specific release first for the Xoom and only now are producing the 'vanilla' branch.

[wmf → zmmmmm]

The article gives me the impression that Honeycomb source won't be ever be released; it sounds like they're only going to release Ice Cream source.

[nexneo]

When I read http://crackberry.com/press-release-rim-expands-application-... makes lot of sense now.

[darrenkopp]

I'm guessing that this isn't at all about competition from Apple or RIM. I'm guessing that Google is taking extra time to go over all of the source code to make sure when they release it they aren't inadvertently helping out Oracle's current lawsuit against them regarding Java.

[nexneo]

Please change definition first: http://twitter.com/#!/Arubin/status/27808662429

[shareme]

Unfortunately the author has the facts wrong..

There were other android releases where the opensource commit was delayed for similar reasons, in this case its to port parts of Honeycomb back to the phone branch and once that is complete than honeycomb will be committed to kernel.org.

Also note the opensource committers that work at OEMs do in fact have access..something author glossed over..as they commit code under the Apache License