

Google really doesn’t want Honeycomb on phones - ivoflipse
http://www.unwiredview.com/2011/03/24/google-really-doesnt-want-honeycomb-on-phones-wont-open-source-it-anytime-soon/

======
blub
I'm also inclined to think that this is a pragmatic move by Google.

Sometimes you have to "close" the source for a period of time to satisfy
commercial restrictions and all is well when it is opened again.

~~~
joebananas
Maybe it is, but you really can't go around claiming openness when you don't
provide it.

~~~
anamax
>Maybe it is, but you really can't go around claiming openness when you don't
provide it.

How does "closed Honeycomb" reflect on any of the code that you previously
would have considered "open"?

Before someone commits code to an open-source project, that code isn't
available. No one would claim that the existence of that unavailable code says
anything about the openness of the available code. And that wouldn't change if
the unavailable code was shared with some of the author's friends.

So why does "closed Honeycomb" have that effect?

~~~
notaddicted
What if the author in your example and his friends shipped the unavailable
code as a consumer product and called it _Android Smart Tablet_?

They've been making a lot of noise for years about Android the open source
software stack for mobile devices. Now they 're releasing mobile devices,
calling it Android, basing it on Android, and keeping the source to
themselves; Weak.

~~~
anamax
> What if the author in your example and his friends shipped the unavailable
> code as a consumer product and called it Android Smart Tablet?

Would you have not complained if they had called it "Banana" instead? Or,
would you have complained when they open-sourced Banana because it was really
Android.

They open-sourced a huge amount of code and you're complaining because they
didn't open-source some other code because that other code has the same name?

Wowsers.

------
Pewpewarrows
No, they don't. They want Ice Cream (the 3.1 version that combines the tablet
and phone "forks" of Android) on it. They don't want people trying to hack
Honeycomb onto a phone when they know it's going to turn out horribly.

~~~
asdr
actually, the article says exactly the same thing...

------
ajays
FTA, quoting Andy Rubin: “To make our schedule to ship the tablet, we made
some design tradeoffs. We didn’t want to think about what it would take for
the same software to run on phones. It would have required a lot of additional
resources and extended our schedule beyond what we thought was reasonable. So
we took a shortcut. We have no idea if it will even work on phones.”

I'm no Apple Fanboi (I'm a Linux fanboi, if anything), but this shows what a
phenomenal job Apple has done with iOS.

~~~
apike
Well, Apple did exactly the same thing with iOS. iOS 3.2 was a tablet-only
branch that didn't merge with the phone branch until iOS 4.2.

------
ffumarola
If they are truly only closing it temporarily for usability and user
experience reasons (e.g. 3.0 won't work well on most phones right now), then I
have no problem with it.

~~~
georgemcbay
I don't see why they would or should care about "usability and user
experience" for 3rd party devices.

Closing Honeycomb's source is not going to stop cut-rate handset manufacturers
from shipping a terrible Android experience on their phones, it is merely
going to mean the terrible experience will be built on Gingerbread or lower
instead of Honeycomb. Either way whatever damage might be done to Android via
the user's own bad choices is done and in any case that's a caveat emptor
situation that Google can't and shouldn't try to control.

I'm not sure what the actual reasons are behind this but IMO the consequences
are all pretty negative. This move makes Andy Rubin look like a bit of a
hypocrite in light of his public twitter-spat with Steve Jobs, it generates
ill will for them among the open source community, it mildly kneecaps one of
the important things that make a subset of tech-trendsetters favor Android
over iOS, etc, and for what purpose exactly? No good one that is visible from
the outside looking in.

Ultimately Android is Google's thing and they can take their ball and go home
for any reason, but if they are going to do so they should really give a
better explaination of why they are doing it because the one they seem to be
going with rings hollow.

~~~
ffumarola
> I don't see why they would or should care about "usability and user
> experience" for 3rd party devices.

Because it degrades the users experience with Android.

Sure, some manufacturers will create a bad experience using Android 2.2. But,
if Google knows that Honeycomb WILL have issues with most handsets, it would
be prudent to hold off until those issues are resolved.

Just a possibility I'm throwing out there. Haven't read up on the issue yet.

------
Zak
Cheap crappy manufacturers are rushing to get the latest version on their
phones even if it doesn't work well, while big-name manufacturers use horribly
outdated versions that don't work as well as the current one? It seems like
only Google cares about actually delivering a good experience to the user.

Can someone with insight in to the industry explain this?

~~~
cpeterso
I assume that big name manufacturers don't care about updates because they
already have the consumers' money. Underdog manufacturers are shipping
bleeding edge Android to differentiate their product and then get your money.

~~~
Zak
People replace phones every two years. You'd think those big-name
manufacturers would care about getting your money next time.

------
willvarfar
Until Android is open-source in the public development sense there will always
be hope and hype for a properly-free open alternative.

What the world really needs is for some small competitor to Google in some
space to make a very public attempt to get some tech into the tree. For
example, for one of the smallest mapping companies to try and make an API for
in-app mapping-services.

Then Google will wake up.

~~~
shareme
ahem,

You are aware that OEM engineers who are open source comitters to android do
have access, right?

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
That's more less closed than open though isn't it?

~~~
seabee
If it were open in the public development sense, how many more committers do
you think there would be? 10% more? 50%? 200%?

In the context of the rapidly-changing ubiquitous computing space with open-
source (or even commoditised) hardware nowhere to be seen, I just don't see
what gains would come from an OSS project rather than Android's 'eventually-
open' model.

------
trotsky
I'm surprised to find out that none of the reused components are GPL besides
the kernel. Is the whole tree otherwise licenses like Apache that don't
require releasing the sources?

~~~
ZeroGravitas
That was one of the original design goals of Android. Apparently the device
manufacturers & carriers wouldn't have played ball if this was not the case.

