IMO I think "The dirty little secret about Google Android" is that it's not actually as open as people assume it is. Yes, Android is more open than iOS but tha

IMO I think "The dirty little secret about Google Android" is that it's not actually as open as people assume it is. Yes, Android is more open than iOS but that's not really saying much. The comparison I tend to make is ("< is less open"): iOS < Android < MeeGo/Moblin/Maemo In a similar way to: Windows < OS X < Linux For example, while OS X is based on an open platform (FreeBSD) it's got a whole pile of proprietary stuff on top which AFAIK is pretty much how Android operates also (in terms of core applications etc). Not only that but my understanding is that the Android kernel is so different from when it was forked that it is also no straight-forward task to port features (e.g. drivers) from it back to the mainline kernel. And AIUI Google has shown no great desire to anyway. In comparison with Maemo (which I've had more familiarity with than Moblin/MeeGo but assume there's similarities) where Nokia (over time, admittedly) worked with upstream projects and companies to get a lot more of the system into existing open projects. By way of example, "getting root" amounted to checking a box, installing a terminal and executing a shell command. All with warranty intact. Getting root on a Nexus One requires voiding your hardware warranty. Without root access you don't even get complete read-only access to your phone's filesystem. That's not open. Even with my proprietary PalmOS Treo 650 I could at least read every single file off the device if I wanted (well, there were some "no copy" settings for some apps but I'm not sure if the non-official tools obeyed them anyway). Particularly in this aspect Android is a huge step backwards. Of course, the problem with MeeGo/Maemo/Moblin is that outside of the N900 you can't buy a phone with it--so its openness is somewhat of a moot point. Okay, rant over for now. :)