4 ms·
Android is open source and the Pixel allows custom ROMs. Worst point ever seems like a stretch of a statement.
by limeblack 9y ago
Android is open source and the Pixel allows custom ROMs. Worst point ever seems like a stretch of a statement.
- pcwalton 9y agoNot to mention we have the whole Raspberry Pi ecosystem for embedded ARM development. That's been a huge leap forward for open embedded systems. And Broadcom deserves credit for hiring Eric Anholt to make open drivers for the hardware. I think freedom will be fine as long as low-cost open devices like the Pi exist. If they go under and Android continues on its trajectory of becoming more closed, then I'll be more concerned.
- saurik 9y agoWhat makes it fun for a kid to pick up a device and play with it often comes down to "a bunch of my friends also have this same device and so my software can be used by them and it makes them happy", not "I get to sit alone with the Pi that my parents got me and play with technical stuff". This is the same argument for why platforms with more market share get more innovation as there are more developers all over the world who think "if I bother to build that, there are people out there who can use it and might even pay me for it". That's why the programmable TI calculator ecosystem was so powerful, why jailbroken iPods as a development platform for kids was so powerful, why having open PCs with compatible open expansion ports was extremely powerful, and why it just isn't sufficient or really even terribly relevant that there exists an open platform but that the platforms people have are open.
- pcwalton 9y agoI agree to some extent, and I'm worried about the war on general purpose computing too, but in the case of the Pi it's mitigated by the fact that the hardware starts at $5. That's a fraction of the cost of, say, a PC in the '90s.