Android is not open source – Computerworld.nl

Opinion – Ever Android started as an open source project. As we know the mobile OS in the year 2014, but has very little to do with open source.

My colleague Galen Gruman, with who I do not always agree but always writes interesting articles, the once told this week that open source projects are doomed on the mobile surface to fail. I’m not agree, but the reasoning is interesting and it has partly right. The lack of clear leadership that calls Gruman is indeed a problem, for example Tizen which is used by Samsung as a political ping-pong ball

Google Android vs. AOSP

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If success is getting Android called . Google has done a good job with the project. I heard only in 2008 for the first time on Android, and follow the project since then with any enthusiasm. The base is open source and every Android OEM can use at will. Developers can examine and modify the source code and made it popular with OS open source developers.

But of course there is a big difference between Android that we all know, call it for convenience as Google Android and the Android Open Source Project (AOSP). The first uses the latter as the basis for the OS that we know very well, and there further builds on. That’s good, because open source is nice, but “commercially vulnerable open source is better.

The philosophy is that if more people can work without interference and consents in advance, innovation can run faster. Somewhere fairly Hence comes true innovation often from small teams with rapid switching with open code – and eventually swallowed by a giant who then continue to build. As Google’s Android Inc.. inlijfde.

Android neglected

It is important that the development of Google Android is closed and does not happen in such a beautiful collaboration. The Android that most consumers get their hands but has very little to do with open source, except that it is built. Google continues to develop its own proprietary elements and the AOSP alternatives are seriously neglected. AOSP developers have therefore been frustrated for years about this state of affairs.

What do you know about Android and / or open source?

It gets worse. The open source software should pick up on proprietary hardware elements and manufacturers refuse increasingly come with code to support them. Integration with the AOSP over the bridge Kartrekker Jean-Baptiste Queru got angry because even Google’s flagship Nexus – please note the reference Android – could not be supported by the AOSP. Canonical Ubuntu Touch provides open source hardware to combat this problem, but good luck with that, Shuttleworth. Seeing is believing.

Fixed to partner Google

In the meantime, Google Android becoming Googliger . Google’s Play Services is now firmly embedded in the OS. This has several advantages, but it also engages in such a way at the core of the OS that Play Services in fact a closed gate is an open base. AOSP various elements, such as the keyboard, are no longer relevant. Many 4.x elements that we all know by now not even exist in that form in the AOSP. Charge once an AOSP ROM in a VM and you get a different operating system than the Android you choose from the store.

Meanwhile, Google uses the Open Handset Alliance (OHA) to connect OEMs to enforce Google services default to roll. Of course, you can use an AOSP version, as do many manufacturers in Asia, but then so do you lose things like Google Play. Producers who are members of the OHA and get involved with an Android fork in their head can count on hits by Google, such as Acer experienced in 2012.

Under the care of Google

Galen Gruman

is right: Google’s Android is not open source strategy, but a Trojan horse strategy. But is it really? The old Android was open, but that’s not necessarily a good thing for users. Google Android fragmentation causes a smaller problem, because all versions are supported by Play Services.

Play Services screens, but also. Protects us Android malware is not a problem in our region thanks to Google and Google’s Play Bouncer and bugs are addressed by the Play Services in the OS layer as has already been shown twice with potentially major security problems Bluebox has pointed out. Without Play Services we twice had a big problem, now it is becoming a storm in a teacup proved.

So it’s really not that much to Android as we know, few open source is developed. But call Android is not open source, unless you’re talking about an AOSP-based version, as you sometimes see in very cheap models remaindered at a drugstore.