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Android Chief Andy Rubin Sends His First Tweet — And It’s Aimed At Steve Jobs

87 points by tzury 16y ago

demallien 16y ago
Hmmm, a couple of points for Andy: 1) I just tried that line out on my Fedora machine - it doesn't work, doesn't know what repo is. 2) after running 'make' does my computer turn into an Android device? 3) If not, what is the hardware I have to use 4) where are the instructions for loading the newly compiled code onto my device - I see a make, but no make install... I mean I like binaries as much as the next geek, but they aren't terribly interesting unless they, you know, run. 5) I tried loading the binary on my device, but it refused - something about unauthenticated code - what should I do to use your wonderful open system? OK, obviously I'm trolling a little here, but Andy's tweet is every bit as much a troll. I doubt very much that RMS agrees with Andy as to the openness of Android... In fact, I just went and looked, here's his thoughts on the subject: Android's source code is free software, but in many phones the binaries of Android are not free, because the phones are set up to refuse to run modified versions if the user installs them. [This practice is called ‘tivoization’, named after the product that pioneered it.] If the software in Android were under version 3 of the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL), users would be guaranteed the freedom to install their own modified versions. Even when Android is not tivoized, it needs non-free drivers or firmware to run. As far as I know, no smartphone is made that can be run without proprietary software. None respects its users' freedom. The shortest path to making it possible to run a smartphone without non-free software is to reverse engineer those non-free drivers or firmware and write free replacements - RMS So that would be a 'no'
- davidw 16y ago
  Android is really the best hope for a free and open mobile experience though, at this point. It may not be 100% RMS approved, but it's fairly close, and the weight of Google means it is actually getting traction, unlike, say, OpenMoko. I guess MeeGo or something might count too, but that all seems quite vague at this point. I think that, with time, we'll see more truly open, Nexus One style phones. I really wish they hadn't given it up so easily: something like that would be competitive in Europe where it's much more common to pay full price for an unlocked phone. Sometimes, I think people forget just how cool open source is in terms of being able to take stuff and hack on it.
  - demallien 16y ago
    You are right that it's the best that we have at the moment, but from where I'm standing, openness in phones is decreasing, not increasing - each new generation of Android devices seems to contain more and more locked-down proprietry code. Maybe I'm being naive, but when I hear 'open' I'm thinking that that means that if I don't like a small part of my otherwise great smartphone, I can go in and modify the code that handles that specific part, compile it, and download the modified code onto my phone so that it does what it wants. That is several orders of magnitude of effort away from today's reality of: - find a security flaw - design an exploit of the security flaw so that I can root my device - extract the drivers from the binary so that I can add them back into my new image after recompiling - modify code and compile - reload new image onto phone I just feel that the open source community is getting sucked in to supporting this solution that is dragging us away from what would truly be an open platform. If Rubin was being honest about an 'open' Android, it would be under GPLv3, as RMS says. It's not, and the reason it isn;t is because it is not open. Rubin is spinning this, and I do not respect that.
    - davidw 16y ago
      The Apache license is liberal and open, and very much free. RMS doesn't like the fact that you can build proprietary stuff on top of it, but sometimes you need that freedom in order to involve companies in your community. I agree that we're still not seeing manufacturers do quite what we'd like, but I think it'll come with time, most likely in places that are not the United States: Europe and China most likely. And, to be clear, there's not a snowball's chance in hell that it's going to come from Apple.
      - Locke1689 16y ago
        This is a logical fallacy -- you define and use two definitions of the word "free" in the same context. On the one hand you associate freedom with RMS's context, which must include the ability to actually run the free code. RMS views the software and the specialized hardware it runs on as one and the same -- inseparable in freedom. In the sentence just before it, though, you argue that freedom is simply the Apache license as applied to software. In fact, what you are actually arguing begs the question because you assert that the software is free because it is under the Apache license, but we know that the Apache license is free because the software is liberal and open, as defined by the Apache license. Before you can approach whether or not the software is free you must first define what free is. The parent poster is relatively safe in this because he provides RMS's definition of free, which is encoded in the GPLv3. Until you provide a similar definition I don't think one can state the software is either free or unfree. I agree that we're still not seeing manufacturers do quite what we'd like, but I think it'll come with time, most likely in places that are not the United States: Europe and China most likely. And, to be clear, there's not a snowball's chance in hell that it's going to come from Apple. I think this is just speculation.
- mseebach 16y ago
  > it doesn't work, doesn't know what repo is. I think that should have said "git" instead of "repo"
  - joezydeco 16y ago
    'repo' is a google-authored tool (in python) to nagivate their repositories and grab the correct build. There are a dozen dependencies not listed in that tweet to build android. JDK5.0-12, flex, bison, libncurses, etc etc etc.
- gilgad13 16y ago
  The best comment I've heard on the free-ness of Android is: "Everyone thought that Android would usher in a new era of freedom for handset users. Unfortunately, it just turned out that Android is more open not for users, but for Carriers to do as they please. Compare the crapware installed on Android phones vs. the iPhone. In a weird way, Apple has done more to push freedom for the (non-hacker) end user than Android has."
- balakk 16y ago
  Perhaps he meant it's open enough for a phone manufacturer? Not that I completely agree with that definition of "Open".
MrScruff 16y ago
Wonder why he left out the 'make install'? Oh, right...
awakeasleep 16y ago
Hm.. He didn't actually respond to Mr. Jobs, though-- right? Mr. Jobs said that the issue of openness was a side issue to the real issue of fragmentation/integration, iirc. So regardless of the accuracy of that statement, a response would have to address that point.
- RexRollman 16y ago
  No he didn't, and I find that I agree with Mr. Jobs when it comes to the issues of Android fragmentation. It seems to me that Google is creating a smart-phones version of the Windows/PC paradigm: cheap and plentiful but lacking polish.
- dasil003 16y ago
  Jobs is just pulling a calculated PR move of framing the conversation. If you address "fragmentation/integration" then he's already won, because the way it's worded is in Apple's favor. What Andy failed to do is shift the language back to something both favorable and understandable, such as "actually it's about choice vs dictatorship".
snotrockets 16y ago
My definition of open is more relaxed: it's open if you can extend and change it without getting permission first.
GHFigs 16y ago
Note the absence of 'make money;'.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- GHFigs 16y ago
  Note the absence of 'make money;'. Edit: Apparently some of you are either offended by money or have mistaken this for a joke. My bad in either case. I was (and am) unable to think of a way to point to the proverbial elephant in the room without sounding at least a little bit smarmy. I am not an uncomprehending oaf here. I can look at this and say "Oh, neat!", too, but if this is to be taken as a reaction to Jobs's criticism, then I don't think you can escape the context of that criticism. Jobs did not say "open is not neat", he said "open does not always win"--where "winning" is inescapably to do with profit--and this, I believe, only serves to clarify what exactly does not win without actually refuting the claim. "Open" is not a panacea. It is not magic pixie dust that turns shit into gold. It's a cop out answer to the tough question of how do you build a great product, and it makes correspondingly little money for Google. If you were in Jobs's position would you not take this as a sign that your approach--the approach which relies dramatically less on partner companies not dropping the ball and that has already made you money hand over fist--is one to have greater confidence in?
apl 16y ago
That's all great and witty and so on. But his pseudo-definition of "free" is rather misleading. I don't think Jobs argues that Android isn't free in the sense of being closed-source, or being sold for money, or not being available on most devices. It is. I know that I can compile it right now, from my command line. I know that I wouldn't have to spend any money. I know that, with enough tinkering, I can put it on my iPhone or whatever. In the real world, on the other hand, this free Android doesn't exist. When I buy a Samsung or HTC or Motorola Android phone, I don't get plain vanilla Android - I get a distorted version full of crap and software I neither need nor want. In the real world, Android is almost never the pure version Rubin wants it to be. It's a weird hybrid, coerced into submission by Verizon, Motorola and friends. The jailbreak community for Android is as large as the one for the iPhone, meaning that in a very import sense, real-world Android is about as open as iOS and webOS. I don't care about theoretical openness. That's just rhetorics. Jobs merely points that out.
- drivebyacct2 16y ago
  That's obviously not the point Jobs is going after. He'd be silly to do so. The warped, personalized, differentiated Android variants is exactly why Android is taking off.
  - apl 16y ago
    Hm, obviousness aside - would you mind elaborating on that? Additionally, even if warped, personalized and differentiated Android variants have turned the underlying OS into a success, that doesn't imply that it's a good thing. Coincidence, iffy business tactics and "being good enough" are exactly why Windows took off.
  - ThomPete 16y ago
    This is beneficial for the phone companies only, not for the customers. And that is what Jobs is getting at. He want to make the best possible experience for the customers not create a fragmented ecosystem that allows anyone to make a version of how they see Android.
    - 16y ago
pilif 16y ago
What is all this proclaimed openness worth if it still boils down to exploiting security systems if you want to run that system you just modified? Of all the android devices currently available, the N1 (which is around a year old and getting outpaced by newer devices) is the only one that even remotely allows you to play with it in a truly open way. Open isn't "it's able to run mostly-google-certified apps". Open is: Let me modify this OS here and upload it to that device there. Open isn't being unable to uninstall bloatware and trialware put in place by carriers to get a couple of extra bucks. Open isn't not being able to use all the features of a handset/os just because a carrier decided they don't like the feature (with no official way of turning the functionality back on)
- bad_user 16y ago
  > What is all this proclaimed openness worth if it still boils down to exploiting security systems if you want to run that system you just modified? Yes, because everybody can make an Android phone, even if it's too technically challenging: there will always be smaller companies that will compete on openness. HTC, Motorolla, Samsung are competing on features, but just wait another 2 or 3 iterations. At least Android (both the OS and the Marketplace) gives you this possibility.
  - pilif 16y ago
    but to really make a compelling Android phone, you'd also need the google apps (even if it's just for the Android Market, or now the c2d services and who knows what other features will require the google tools later on). To get these, you have to agree to some licensing terms with Google. The terms are not publically disclosed and for what we know, it's Google forcing these security-features into these devices. Android is all but open.
    - nuclear_eclipse 16y ago
      Android is completely open; it's Apache licensed and freely available and freely redistributable. The Google apps, the device drivers, and the phones themselves are not. There is a difference. They are not all considered "Android". You can very easily live without any of those closed features if you so desire. Buy my Openmoko Freerunner from me, and you can run a 100% open Android system. You can even find or make replacement applications for all of the proprietary Google apps if you want to.
rimantas 16y ago
Well, if that defines typical user experience, Apple has little to fear.
jakevoytko 16y ago
If you lack the dependencies, bootstrapping this command is also a whimsical one-liner: sudo apt-get install git-core wget && mkdir -p ~/bin && export PATH=$PATH:~/bin \ && wget http://android.git.kernel.org/repo && chmod a+x ./repo \ && mv ./repo ~/bin && mkdir android && cd android \ && repo init -u git://android.git.kernel.org/platform/manifest.git \ ; repo sync ; make I ran this on an Ubuntu 9.04 installation inside of VirtualBox. Total dollars spent between the VM, OS, GNU toolkit, package manager, external programs, build environment, and the Android source code: $0.00. I never stop being surprised that giving software away for free is a viable business model for so many different companies.
jscore 16y ago
Touché
lpgauth 16y ago
Oh common. Openness != Open Source "Don't worry dad, you can remove those pre-installed apps from your carrier by re-building the OS." Right.
sahaj 16y ago
it's obvious what jobs is doing here. he's throwing an opinion to build public consensus/sides-line on (doesn't matter if it's wrong or right). this is exactly what news stations like FOX and such do.

87 points by tzury 16y ago

Hmmm, a couple of points for Andy: 1) I just tried that line out on my Fedora machine - it doesn't work, doesn't know what repo is. 2) after running 'make' does my computer turn into an Android device? 3) If not, what is the hardware I have to use 4) where are the instructions for loading the newly compiled code onto my device - I see a make, but no make install... I mean I like binaries as much as the next geek, but they aren't terribly interesting unless they, you know, run. 5) I tried loading the binary on my device, but it refused - something about unauthenticated code - what should I do to use your wonderful open system? OK, obviously I'm trolling a little here, but Andy's tweet is every bit as much a troll. I doubt very much that RMS agrees with Andy as to the openness of Android... In fact, I just went and looked, here's his thoughts on the subject: Android's source code is free software, but in many phones the binaries of Android are not free, because the phones are set up to refuse to run modified versions if the user installs them. [This practice is called ‘tivoization’, named after the product that pioneered it.] If the software in Android were under version 3 of the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL), users would be guaranteed the freedom to install their own modified versions. Even when Android is not tivoized, it needs non-free drivers or firmware to run. As far as I know, no smartphone is made that can be run without proprietary software. None respects its users' freedom. The shortest path to making it possible to run a smartphone without non-free software is to reverse engineer those non-free drivers or firmware and write free replacements - RMS So that would be a 'no'

davidw 16y ago
Android is really the best hope for a free and open mobile experience though, at this point. It may not be 100% RMS approved, but it's fairly close, and the weight of Google means it is actually getting traction, unlike, say, OpenMoko. I guess MeeGo or something might count too, but that all seems quite vague at this point. I think that, with time, we'll see more truly open, Nexus One style phones. I really wish they hadn't given it up so easily: something like that would be competitive in Europe where it's much more common to pay full price for an unlocked phone. Sometimes, I think people forget just how cool open source is in terms of being able to take stuff and hack on it.
- demallien 16y ago
  You are right that it's the best that we have at the moment, but from where I'm standing, openness in phones is decreasing, not increasing - each new generation of Android devices seems to contain more and more locked-down proprietry code. Maybe I'm being naive, but when I hear 'open' I'm thinking that that means that if I don't like a small part of my otherwise great smartphone, I can go in and modify the code that handles that specific part, compile it, and download the modified code onto my phone so that it does what it wants. That is several orders of magnitude of effort away from today's reality of: - find a security flaw - design an exploit of the security flaw so that I can root my device - extract the drivers from the binary so that I can add them back into my new image after recompiling - modify code and compile - reload new image onto phone I just feel that the open source community is getting sucked in to supporting this solution that is dragging us away from what would truly be an open platform. If Rubin was being honest about an 'open' Android, it would be under GPLv3, as RMS says. It's not, and the reason it isn;t is because it is not open. Rubin is spinning this, and I do not respect that.
  - davidw 16y ago
    The Apache license is liberal and open, and very much free. RMS doesn't like the fact that you can build proprietary stuff on top of it, but sometimes you need that freedom in order to involve companies in your community. I agree that we're still not seeing manufacturers do quite what we'd like, but I think it'll come with time, most likely in places that are not the United States: Europe and China most likely. And, to be clear, there's not a snowball's chance in hell that it's going to come from Apple.
    - Locke1689 16y ago
      This is a logical fallacy -- you define and use two definitions of the word "free" in the same context. On the one hand you associate freedom with RMS's context, which must include the ability to actually run the free code. RMS views the software and the specialized hardware it runs on as one and the same -- inseparable in freedom. In the sentence just before it, though, you argue that freedom is simply the Apache license as applied to software. In fact, what you are actually arguing begs the question because you assert that the software is free because it is under the Apache license, but we know that the Apache license is free because the software is liberal and open, as defined by the Apache license. Before you can approach whether or not the software is free you must first define what free is. The parent poster is relatively safe in this because he provides RMS's definition of free, which is encoded in the GPLv3. Until you provide a similar definition I don't think one can state the software is either free or unfree. I agree that we're still not seeing manufacturers do quite what we'd like, but I think it'll come with time, most likely in places that are not the United States: Europe and China most likely. And, to be clear, there's not a snowball's chance in hell that it's going to come from Apple. I think this is just speculation.
mseebach 16y ago
> it doesn't work, doesn't know what repo is. I think that should have said "git" instead of "repo"
- joezydeco 16y ago
  'repo' is a google-authored tool (in python) to nagivate their repositories and grab the correct build. There are a dozen dependencies not listed in that tweet to build android. JDK5.0-12, flex, bison, libncurses, etc etc etc.
gilgad13 16y ago
The best comment I've heard on the free-ness of Android is: "Everyone thought that Android would usher in a new era of freedom for handset users. Unfortunately, it just turned out that Android is more open not for users, but for Carriers to do as they please. Compare the crapware installed on Android phones vs. the iPhone. In a weird way, Apple has done more to push freedom for the (non-hacker) end user than Android has."
balakk 16y ago
Perhaps he meant it's open enough for a phone manufacturer? Not that I completely agree with that definition of "Open".

MrScruff 16y ago

Wonder why he left out the 'make install'? Oh, right...

awakeasleep 16y ago

Hm.. He didn't actually respond to Mr. Jobs, though-- right? Mr. Jobs said that the issue of openness was a side issue to the real issue of fragmentation/integration, iirc. So regardless of the accuracy of that statement, a response would have to address that point.

RexRollman 16y ago
No he didn't, and I find that I agree with Mr. Jobs when it comes to the issues of Android fragmentation. It seems to me that Google is creating a smart-phones version of the Windows/PC paradigm: cheap and plentiful but lacking polish.
dasil003 16y ago
Jobs is just pulling a calculated PR move of framing the conversation. If you address "fragmentation/integration" then he's already won, because the way it's worded is in Apple's favor. What Andy failed to do is shift the language back to something both favorable and understandable, such as "actually it's about choice vs dictatorship".

snotrockets 16y ago

My definition of open is more relaxed: it's open if you can extend and change it without getting permission first.

GHFigs 16y ago

Note the absence of 'make money;'.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
GHFigs 16y ago
Note the absence of 'make money;'. Edit: Apparently some of you are either offended by money or have mistaken this for a joke. My bad in either case. I was (and am) unable to think of a way to point to the proverbial elephant in the room without sounding at least a little bit smarmy. I am not an uncomprehending oaf here. I can look at this and say "Oh, neat!", too, but if this is to be taken as a reaction to Jobs's criticism, then I don't think you can escape the context of that criticism. Jobs did not say "open is not neat", he said "open does not always win"--where "winning" is inescapably to do with profit--and this, I believe, only serves to clarify what exactly does not win without actually refuting the claim. "Open" is not a panacea. It is not magic pixie dust that turns shit into gold. It's a cop out answer to the tough question of how do you build a great product, and it makes correspondingly little money for Google. If you were in Jobs's position would you not take this as a sign that your approach--the approach which relies dramatically less on partner companies not dropping the ball and that has already made you money hand over fist--is one to have greater confidence in?

apl 16y ago

That's all great and witty and so on. But his pseudo-definition of "free" is rather misleading. I don't think Jobs argues that Android isn't free in the sense of being closed-source, or being sold for money, or not being available on most devices. It is. I know that I can compile it right now, from my command line. I know that I wouldn't have to spend any money. I know that, with enough tinkering, I can put it on my iPhone or whatever. In the real world, on the other hand, this free Android doesn't exist. When I buy a Samsung or HTC or Motorola Android phone, I don't get plain vanilla Android - I get a distorted version full of crap and software I neither need nor want. In the real world, Android is almost never the pure version Rubin wants it to be. It's a weird hybrid, coerced into submission by Verizon, Motorola and friends. The jailbreak community for Android is as large as the one for the iPhone, meaning that in a very import sense, real-world Android is about as open as iOS and webOS. I don't care about theoretical openness. That's just rhetorics. Jobs merely points that out.

drivebyacct2 16y ago
That's obviously not the point Jobs is going after. He'd be silly to do so. The warped, personalized, differentiated Android variants is exactly why Android is taking off.
- apl 16y ago
  Hm, obviousness aside - would you mind elaborating on that? Additionally, even if warped, personalized and differentiated Android variants have turned the underlying OS into a success, that doesn't imply that it's a good thing. Coincidence, iffy business tactics and "being good enough" are exactly why Windows took off.
- ThomPete 16y ago
  This is beneficial for the phone companies only, not for the customers. And that is what Jobs is getting at. He want to make the best possible experience for the customers not create a fragmented ecosystem that allows anyone to make a version of how they see Android.
  - 16y ago

pilif 16y ago

What is all this proclaimed openness worth if it still boils down to exploiting security systems if you want to run that system you just modified? Of all the android devices currently available, the N1 (which is around a year old and getting outpaced by newer devices) is the only one that even remotely allows you to play with it in a truly open way. Open isn't "it's able to run mostly-google-certified apps". Open is: Let me modify this OS here and upload it to that device there. Open isn't being unable to uninstall bloatware and trialware put in place by carriers to get a couple of extra bucks. Open isn't not being able to use all the features of a handset/os just because a carrier decided they don't like the feature (with no official way of turning the functionality back on)

bad_user 16y ago
> What is all this proclaimed openness worth if it still boils down to exploiting security systems if you want to run that system you just modified? Yes, because everybody can make an Android phone, even if it's too technically challenging: there will always be smaller companies that will compete on openness. HTC, Motorolla, Samsung are competing on features, but just wait another 2 or 3 iterations. At least Android (both the OS and the Marketplace) gives you this possibility.
- pilif 16y ago
  but to really make a compelling Android phone, you'd also need the google apps (even if it's just for the Android Market, or now the c2d services and who knows what other features will require the google tools later on). To get these, you have to agree to some licensing terms with Google. The terms are not publically disclosed and for what we know, it's Google forcing these security-features into these devices. Android is all but open.
  - nuclear_eclipse 16y ago
    Android is completely open; it's Apache licensed and freely available and freely redistributable. The Google apps, the device drivers, and the phones themselves are not. There is a difference. They are not all considered "Android". You can very easily live without any of those closed features if you so desire. Buy my Openmoko Freerunner from me, and you can run a 100% open Android system. You can even find or make replacement applications for all of the proprietary Google apps if you want to.

rimantas 16y ago

Well, if that defines typical user experience, Apple has little to fear.

jakevoytko 16y ago

If you lack the dependencies, bootstrapping this command is also a whimsical one-liner: sudo apt-get install git-core wget && mkdir -p ~/bin && export PATH=$PATH:~/bin \ && wget http://android.git.kernel.org/repo && chmod a+x ./repo \ && mv ./repo ~/bin && mkdir android && cd android \ && repo init -u git://android.git.kernel.org/platform/manifest.git \ ; repo sync ; make I ran this on an Ubuntu 9.04 installation inside of VirtualBox. Total dollars spent between the VM, OS, GNU toolkit, package manager, external programs, build environment, and the Android source code: $0.00. I never stop being surprised that giving software away for free is a viable business model for so many different companies.

jscore 16y ago

Touché

lpgauth 16y ago

Oh common. Openness != Open Source "Don't worry dad, you can remove those pre-installed apps from your carrier by re-building the OS." Right.

sahaj 16y ago

it's obvious what jobs is doing here. he's throwing an opinion to build public consensus/sides-line on (doesn't matter if it's wrong or right). this is exactly what news stations like FOX and such do.