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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' do

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".

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".