It's certified by the OSI, whose definition of "Open-source" is available at http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php. To summarize, open-source means (1) The software and modifications can be redistributed freely, (2) The source code is available, (3) Users are free to modify the software. Android meets these requirements.
The software is open-source. The project development is not open: See http://www.lua.org/license.html
> Lua is free open-source software, distributed under a very liberal license (the well-known MIT license). It may be used for any purpose, including commercial purposes, at absolutely no cost. Just download it and use it.
> Where does Lua come from?
> Lua is designed, implemented, and maintained by a team at PUC-Rio, the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. Lua was born and raised in Tecgraf, the Computer Graphics Technology Group of PUC-Rio, and is now housed at Lablua. Both Tecgraf and Lablua are laboratories of the Department of Computer Science of PUC-Rio.
and http://lua-list.2524044.n2.nabble.com/Lua-open-source-or-not...
> An "open-source project" has one meaning, an "open-source software" has another. The project is not open source, the software (the result of the project) is.
Few people have had a problem with this principle as applied to Lua. I'm not sure why this is confusing or newsworthy when it's applied to Android.
Whether Google intentionally positioned Android as such or whether that's just the wishful thinking of its fans is irrelevant now. The expectation for Android is that it will be completely open.
People complain about things when they are disappointed, or when they perceive hypocrisy or broken (real or imagined) promises. There's no absolute scale.
This is why people have a problem: http://twitter.com/#!/Arubin/status/27808662429
I think a lot of people's problem comes from Google having not yet released the Honeycomb source code. It's one thing to say you're open source, provide all your source for each release, but develop in private. It's another thing to say you're open source, develop in private, and not release the source code to your released software.
You can see the _source code_ when they're finished with it, and bundle it with a product. That is significant, or do you happen to have a copy of iOS 3 lying around that you can bundle with your own non-apple phone?
http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/07/the-bombshell-that-wasnt-fo...
There wasn't anything new in those documents. We already knew that Google only put out final releases and we already knew about lead phones. It was all public knowledge.
That doesn't mean that it has no bearing on the case, but it's not revelatory.
The real news here (as far as I am concerned) is that the judge has suggested settlement talks, which to me, in my legal ignorance, sounds like he thinks the case has some merit?
This just looks like smoke in the eyes from Oracle lawyers.
Open-Source does mean that I (as an individual) have a lot of rights, including having the right to fork it in case I don't like the current stewardship.
Most of the Android eco-system is actually as
closed as with every other platform
The Android eco-system includes thousands of open-sourced Java libraries and cross-platform development tools that are also open-source. I can develop Android apps on Linux or Windows or OS X, depending on my mood. And I can modify those tools to make me more productive.
Yes, I don't have a direct influence on what Samsung might deploy on their phones, or on the code getting deployed in Android's master ; but then again, it's equally hard to have that effect on Linux, the kernel.
If you don't like it, fork it. That's what open source is about.
except the false advertising
They claim that the code "is not ready yet for public use", whatever that means.
Either Gingerbread is the last public release, or Google switched to a model where only the second-latest version is publicly available.
Why? I'm not trying to be snarky, I'm truly curious. What would be the benefits?
Under Google's governance Android has become quite powerful and a true competitor to the iPhone. Something that no other company has been able to achieve with their own phones/OS. Microsoft, RIM, Palm/HP, Nokia; they've all failed so far. At this moment it is not broken so why fix it?
So in my opinion they either stop bragging about how open they are or actually practice what they preach.
Meanwhile Apple rakes in billions with closed source software. What's more, people cheer them on for it and hail them as the saviors of mankind.
Not sure that competitor is Google though, because they seem to be more interested in controlling the platform than in creating an open platform. Open is a bit of a marketing buzzword with Android.
[citation needed]?
Nobody is specifically cheering because it's closed source. I would cheer even more if they had iOS and opened it up for minor tinkering.
It almost sounds as if there was a law that companies have to open source their products, which I am pretty sure does not exist (IANAL, though).
This does make the Android development process less than open. It does not stop Android being open source.
The relationship to the court case is that Google's development process is very much at question in the issue of whether there is a violation of Oracle's IP.
http://www.economist.com/node/593691
The situation is very different with android, but the analogy is obvious.