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0 pointsDannyBee13y ago0 comments

I'm not going to start a general argument with you, but Android does in fact, accept patches from the community.

They certainly think plenty of people are smart enough to contribute (though that was a nice ad-hominen attack on the Android team).

Open-washing. Now there is a great phrase. As if there was a "one true definition" of open, and Android was abusing it. Could you let me know who controls this definition?

I've been contributing to open source and free software projects for 14+ years now, and they all have had different levels of openness. So I guess half of them were just "open washing"?

It's really great that you can speak about this as if there was general agreement in the community on what it means for a project to be open. Instead, from where I sit, there are different people who think it means different things.

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10 comments · 4 top-level

Argorak13y ago· 3 in thread

The thing is: android point releases are open source and open. Changes in the codebase that happen during development however, are not. To some, that is enough. Using OSI definitions and everything, Android is open source.

What differs is whats "open" to you. For my tastes, Android is not open enough to be "_the_ open mobile OS", it is still developed by a corporate entity that could (potentially) decide to not release the next Android release.

For Firefox OS, all development, even before the launch of the OS happens in the open. If the engineering team decides to change something, it is immediately visible. I can see the cards they play. With Android, I cannot. Thats a different level.

Still, thats a very personal thing and only of interest for people that want to integrate with a platform and have certain expectations. I wouldn't start a fight over it, although I will immediately buy a Firefox OS device for philosophical reasons only :), with Android, I did not.

DannyBeeOP13y ago

If you don't want a corporate entity, you should not use Firefox OS either. Mozilla does a bad job of making it clear, but mozilla.org the non profit and mozilla.com the corporation are not the same entity at all.

callahad13y ago

I'm a Mozilla Corporation (MoCo) employee, as are most "Mozilla employees." The thing is, Mozilla Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of the honest-to-goodness 501(c)(3) nonprofit Mozilla Foundation. Thanks to this structure, our work is in the service of the Mozilla Manifesto, http://www.mozilla.org/about/manifesto.en.html, not in pursuit of enriching shareholders.

Mozilla Corporation has been growing -- I think it's around ~700 paid folks right now -- but that's still very, very small compared to the number of people employed by its peer organizations at Apple, Microsoft, and Google.

But that's irrelevant, because the Mozilla project, emphatically, is not the Corporation. Mozilla didn't change the world by having the most money, or hiring the most engineers. It changed the world through the contributions of the world. By being born of the open source movement, and recognizing the potential of an open web. Insofar as Mozilla exists at all, it exists to support you, and the open web. Consider getting involved: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/contribute/

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Argorak13y ago

They actually do a good job at it, in my opinon. Also, Mozilla Corporation is still owned by the Mozilla foundation and aligned to their goals.

I didn't write that I don't want a corporate entity, I want a fully open product.

But while we're at it: Google is a corporate entity that did decide to keep development closed and showed their willingness to delay source code releases multiple times.

Mozilla (be it company or not) showed the willingness to keep everything in full open from the moment they announced the project.

This comes down to a question of governance.

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MatthewPhillips13y ago· 3 in thread

I didn't mean to start an argument about what is and isn't open. Certainly open is a spectrum and Android fits somewhere in the spectrum. What I meant by open-washing was the intent. It is my opinion that Google open-sources Android for the PR benefit.

> They certainly think plenty of people are smart enough to contribute (though that was a nice ad-hominen attack on the Android team).

It came out in the Oracle trial that Google didn't include Sun in the development of Android because they didn't think they were smart enough to contribute anything.

azakai13y ago

> It is my opinion that Google open-sources Android for the PR benefit.

Clearly Android is less open than some OSes, but I don't agree it was open sourced just for PR. There is also a huge benefit in that many other parties have picked up Android as the basis for their products, which would not happen if it were not open source. For example, the kindle, nook, various chinese-market devices, etc.

There isn't always a big benefit to that, Google doesn't directly make money from the kindle to my knowledge. But (1) it prevents another OS from being used in those places and getting a foothold in the market, and (2) it creates a large potential ecosystem of developers and apps, even if things don't just work across that entire ecosystem, they are much closer to doing so than say between Android and Blackberry OS. If versions of Android dominate the market, Google is in a great position to benefit from that, even if "official Android" is just part of that.

That strategy has been a huge success over the last few years. Much more useful than any PR benefits.

DannyBeeOP13y ago

I can categorically state that google Open Sourced android for the right reasons. I was literally in the room when it happened. It still open sources it for the right reasons. You don't have to believe me, of course, but ...

I can't really talk about the Oracle trial, but i don't believe that is accurate.

MatthewPhillips13y ago

Your right reasons and my right reasons differ. I think if they did it for the right reasons it would be developed in the open, and non-Google employees could earn commit privileges. And they wouldn't punish parties who used the source in ways Google disapproves.

graue13y ago

As a neat historical note, OpenBSD was forked from NetBSD partly over this: NetBSD's releases were BSD licensed, but were developed in secret. OpenBSD adopted a public anonymous CVS server so anyone could watch development as it was going on. Apparently they were the first project to do this[1]. A step on the way to GitHub, today, where code is the first thing you see and can be forked with a click of a button.

In 2012, development in public is so normal that I think it's completely fair to call Android less open than it could be. It's great that you can get the source code for Android's point releases (sometimes... 3.0 was completely closed-source, because Google said the code was too messy). But a code dump a couple times a year is not fully in the spirit of open source.

[1] http://www.usenix.org/event/usenix99/full_papers/cranor_f/cr... (pdf)

streptomycin13y ago

There's not one true definition, but it is often obvious when X is more open than Y. For instance, if Y has an open core but includes a ton of proprietary software but X is entirely open source.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

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10 comments · 4 top-level

Argorak13y ago· 3 in thread

DannyBeeOP13y ago

callahad13y ago

1 more reply

Argorak13y ago

They actually do a good job at it, in my opinon. Also, Mozilla Corporation is still owned by the Mozilla foundation and aligned to their goals.

I didn't write that I don't want a corporate entity, I want a fully open product.

But while we're at it: Google is a corporate entity that did decide to keep development closed and showed their willingness to delay source code releases multiple times.

Mozilla (be it company or not) showed the willingness to keep everything in full open from the moment they announced the project.

This comes down to a question of governance.

1 more reply

MatthewPhillips13y ago· 3 in thread

> They certainly think plenty of people are smart enough to contribute (though that was a nice ad-hominen attack on the Android team).

It came out in the Oracle trial that Google didn't include Sun in the development of Android because they didn't think they were smart enough to contribute anything.

azakai13y ago

> It is my opinion that Google open-sources Android for the PR benefit.

That strategy has been a huge success over the last few years. Much more useful than any PR benefits.

DannyBeeOP13y ago

I can't really talk about the Oracle trial, but i don't believe that is accurate.

MatthewPhillips13y ago

graue13y ago

[1] http://www.usenix.org/event/usenix99/full_papers/cranor_f/cr... (pdf)

streptomycin13y ago

There's not one true definition, but it is often obvious when X is more open than Y. For instance, if Y has an open core but includes a ton of proprietary software but X is entirely open source.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse