I can’t help but think sometimes that it looks as if Google actually did the carriers a huge favor in the long-run because they’ve taken many of the bells and whistles that drove users to the iPhone in the first place and opened them up for the carriers to use as glittering lures to rope customers back into their traps.
Remember the ever-half-joking, half-serious talk of open-source zealots of the mythical, promised "year of Linux on the desktop"? Strange indeed how the first truly mass-market Linux distribution ended up skipping the desktop entirely, and then excelling at restricting users.
People in the U.S. should really look into sensible telecoms regulation like the entire rest of the world has.
Because your current preferred solution to carrier abuses, which appears to be that everyone should buy iPhones, is insane. It's Sarah Palin "Death Panel" level craziness, which is apparently only obvious to those of us outside the U.S.
Also, your irony is at least a decade late, you should read up on Tivoization (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tivoization) which qualifies as mass-market linux without final user control, but the debate about people using open code for purposes you don't like (e.g. guiding missiles, mass-surveillance) goes back much further.
TiVo is taking software that was intended to be and remain free and betraying the spirit of its license by preventing end-users from changing the devices they own.
While I won't say it's wrong or unjustifiable, I prefer more open and friendly devices and, so, I don't - and probably won't - own a TiVo, as I don't want to enable such conduct.
TiVo is taking software that was intended to be
and remain free and betraying the spirit
of its license
Linus Tolvards himself said he has no problem with Tivo, so I don't know what the fuck you're talking about, but just because somebody chose an open-source license doesn't mean it adheres to any political agenda you happen to agree with.
The term implies no moral judgment, it simply is used to describe the technical process/effect.
The term can be used by detractors in a negative fashion, and the term can be used in a positive way by people who might be interested in doing it themselves. It's a word, it has not political opinions.
It is telling that you assume it has inherent negative connotations though.
One major danger that GPLv3 will block
is tivoization ... The manufacturers of
these computers take advantage of the freedom
that free software provides, but they don't
let you do likewise.
If this doesn't have a negative connotation, that I don't know what does.
Some people disagree with what Tivo did, that doesn't make the word itself "offensive", nor does it imply wrongdoing, nor is it really a connotation, more a denotation.
If they'd went with "digital slavery" or "software piracy" then I could see where you were coming from.
Linux has been on the mass-market for a long time. It has been used well and it has been used badly, but it indeed has never been used on the mass-market desktop.
The carriers (again, in the U.S. in particular) are using Android’s openness to perform many of their same old tricks.
This is just incredibly woolly thinking, if not actually disingenuous.
Carriers have power to influence or dictate handset features because carrier promotions are the primary means of distribution for handsets, because they (not the handset manufacturers) own the consumer relationship, and because carrier subsidies are the only way anyone but power users will buy any but the cheapest phones. (This is true in the UK, and seems to be even more true in the US.) They'll exercise that power in some way.
In the case of dumbphones they do so by having their own brand dominate the manufacturer's, so consumers associate with their carrier instead of their handset manufacturer.
With "closed" smartphones (whatever "open" and "closed" mean, but let's assume the iPhone is "closed") they used to do so by only allowing customised and branded variants of the phones onto their networks. The iPhone was the first carrier-sold smartphone to take a stand against carrier customisation. This is one explanation for why the iPhone was so successful: most people's experience with every previous smartphone was actually of variants loaded with carrier crapware.
The iPhone is a desirable handset, and Apple has the marketing skills and brand to reach consumers directly, which takes back some of the bargaining power from the carriers, but it's hardly out from under their yoke. Most obvious piece of evidence: AT&T exclusivity in the US. The features you can use over WLAN but not 3G are also very likely to be carrier-influenced.
So how exactly does the "openness" of Android, whatever that means, help the carriers? They can read the source code... but why bother when they can dictate features directly to the handset manufacturers? They can install apps on the phones, even write custom apps... oh wait, they were doing that already. It's plausible Android might ship with some nicely documented compiler flags for carriers to switch off the features they don't want, rather than their engineers having to actually dive into the source drop they got from the handset manufacturer and disable the features themselves, but other smartphone platforms have been doing that for the last ten years - and anyway nobody is claiming Android is open because of its nicely documented feature killswitches.
The actual situation is that Android phones are getting loaded with carrier crapware and nerfs not because they're "open" (whatever that means), but because that's what's happened to all phones throughout history. The iPhone is an exception to some extent, not because it's "closed" (whatever that means), but because of Apple's ingenious strategy of actually giving a shit about the user experience, not to mention their world-class marketing department. The only way this ridiculous TechCrunchism makes any sense at all is if you're not really talking about "closed" vs "open", but "iPhone" vs "not iPhone".
So although the author protests that he has no skin in the game, this silly argument is actually yet another instance of the standard fanboy cry: "Why won't all these other handset companies just admit that Apple has won, and move into some other industry like flowerpots?" (Which is pretty irritating to anyone who doesn't think the game is over yet.)
I think the argument goes that usually "walled garden" and "give a damn about the user" are inseparable. If that's true then Google did a disservice to users and it's showing as carriers exert more weight.
Now I'm not totally convinced that they are inseperable, moreover I'd say that even had Google done the "walled garden" method they'd still not have the clout and balls to fight the carriers like Apple did/does (who else could?). That all said, though, in the larger dialogue comparing the smartphone philosophies of Google and Apple where things like open and closed are used mostly as inaccurate rhetoric tools the empirical evidence that carriers add a bunch of often undesirable drift to most phones they carry is a huge punch to Android and it's easy to scramble to explain it away as an open/closed effect. Whatever that means.
My impression of your closing paragraph is that you may be looking a bit too hard for that sentiment – I've seen it and been annoyed by it too, but I don't see it in Siegler's post. If anything, it's the opposite, equally annoying sentiment that the game is over because Android's destiny is now manifest. The game is far from over, though, and I don't see anyone credibly claiming otherwise.
I read Siegler's post as basically an attempt by him to reconcile those two annoying sentiments, both of which I detected in the text. They both share the misconceptions that this is a two-horse race, and that "winning" is meaningful in a market which (due to the inertia caused by factors like carrier behaviour) takes years to evolve.
One interesting point Siegler didn't make is that Google is making some modest strides toward weakening the carriers' grip on the handset market (e.g. selling Nexus One unlocked themselves, and Nexus S unlocked through vendors). Sure, they're niche devices and the Nexus One direct sales model didn't work out that well, but they're testing the water. I'm pretty sure their goal there is to increase general consumer acceptance of buying unlocked, carrier-untouched phones. And that helps every smartphone maker, perhaps especially Apple (who probably stand the best chance of selling large numbers of $600 handsets without carrier subsidy).
Apple themselves could have made this play, by offering (and promoting) the iPhone unlocked at launch (or since), but they chose instead to work with the carriers (a reasonable decision to maximise short-term success).
1. Just because currently the "carrier subsidized phone" model is the working one, it a. doesn't mean this will continue once the smartphone is prevalent and people start to understand the use cases and b. may actually be more about carrier lock in that seeding the market.[1]
2. Closed and open and well defined. Quit pretending they are not well understood terms -- fuzzy edges does not mean the whole term is useless.[2]
3. The part where you commentgasm about apple experiences makes me suspect you are astroturfing. Or even worse, are a goddamn fanboi
[1] This is wooly thinking, when you don't consider completely reasonable alternatives. More or less by definition. +
[2] This is disingenuous thinking, once again by definition. +
+ Obviously you are just trolling with your hypocrisy.
If the definitions of open and closed are so well understood, I'm sure someone will be kind enough to post them here, or at least link to them. :)
Also, that's the first time I've been called an Apple fanboy. In fact given my concluding paragraph I'm amused you could draw that conclusion. (FWIW I don't own a single Apple product.)
Remember the ever-half-joking, half-serious talk of open-source zealots of the mythical, promised "year of Linux on the desktop"? Strange indeed how the first truly mass-market Linux distribution ended up skipping the desktop entirely, and then excelling at restricting users.