2 ms·

>How "open" is a device whose OS has been configured so that you cannot remove certain applications from it? Is linux not open because the PS3 exists? It seems

>How "open" is a device whose OS has been configured so that you cannot remove certain applications from it? Is linux not open because the PS3 exists? It seems like all of your arguments apply equally well there.

Herring 16y ago
Yeah, its really a pleasure seeing all these people (Jobs especially) argue for the GPLv3 and against tivoization. Where were they in 2007..
- wtallis 16y ago
  Well, in 2007, Jobs was just barely able to get one carrier to surrender some control to the handset manufacturer. The iPhone would have been a non-starter if Jobs had been asking for all control over the software to be surrendered to the consumer.
msbarnett 16y ago
The difference is that Sony isn't running around marketing the PS3 as being superior to the XBox because of its "openness". Nor is Kaz Hirai tweeting about cloning Sony's Linux kernel repo as if it were some notional benefit over the XBox for consumers.
- davidw 16y ago
  There's another difference: most of the PS3 software is very much closed, whereas most of Android's is open source. You don't just get the kernel, you get pretty much everything else you need to make a phone work. That's pretty impressive.
- moultano 16y ago
  Those actually _are_ benefits for many android devices, but not some.
- storm 16y ago
  So you're now taking the position that how open Android is can depend upon how they have marketed their openness, and how misleadingly they may have done so? That's nonsense. At the end of the day, "fork it, mod it, build it, deploy it to any device that will run it" still applies. That's unavoidably and factually open. Radically so, given where this particular market was just 3-4 years ago. I'm astonished at how muddled and downright bizarre the argumentation on these threads gets. Yes, they don't develop future platform versions in the open, they just make delayed code dumps. Annoying. But hardly "open"-negating. The process may not be open - the deliverables are. And all of the usual advantages of that open are in full effect with Android and its many, many active mods. Yes, carriers are free to add unremovable shovelware, to try and prevent flashing with the aid of the hardware manufacturers - all that nasty stuff they are free to do with any apache/bsd-licensed codebase. It's very hard to understand how this is Google's fault, or why it somehow renders the underlying platform "not open". Should they have stridently disallowed such behavior from day 1? I'm guessing that would have left them with a lot fewer partners, and a go-nowhere platform, but hey, at least they would have been pure as the driven snow ideologically. Saying with a straight face that Android is "not open", "not meaningfully more open than iOS", "nothing like what we would traditionally call open-source", and so on is ridiculous hyperbole. The only interest I take out of these instant train wreck threads is in playing a game: guess at what horses individual commenters have in the mobile race, that their perceptions can become so severely distorted.
  - msbarnett 16y ago
    My consistent position is nothing more than that Android is not open in a way that is consistent with any of the claimed benefits Google or other Android promotors have asserted it provides. It's certainly open from a perspective of "you get the occasionally tarball of source". Nobody is debating that. This isn't about whether Android is open or not; it's about whether the way it is open is at all consistent with the way it's openness is marketed to end consumers. For the vast majority of users that openness, from any practical standpoint, might as well not exist. The popular, high selling handsets are simply too locked down for them to benefit from anything anyone does with those tarball drops. Which is fine, but it's certainly not the way people paint the platform when they talk about how much better Android is for the user thanks to its openness, because the openness is primarily for the benefit of handset makers and carriers who can use those tarballs. For what it's worth, I think this whole game of treating a thriving market like its some kind of horse-race is ridiculous. 90% market share was an aberration in the PC market; there's going to be room for multiple competitors for decades to come. There are no sides. Nobody is going to win anything.

Herring 16y ago

Yeah, its really a pleasure seeing all these people (Jobs especially) argue for the GPLv3 and against tivoization. Where were they in 2007..

wtallis 16y ago
Well, in 2007, Jobs was just barely able to get one carrier to surrender some control to the handset manufacturer. The iPhone would have been a non-starter if Jobs had been asking for all control over the software to be surrendered to the consumer.

msbarnett 16y ago

The difference is that Sony isn't running around marketing the PS3 as being superior to the XBox because of its "openness". Nor is Kaz Hirai tweeting about cloning Sony's Linux kernel repo as if it were some notional benefit over the XBox for consumers.

davidw 16y ago
There's another difference: most of the PS3 software is very much closed, whereas most of Android's is open source. You don't just get the kernel, you get pretty much everything else you need to make a phone work. That's pretty impressive.
moultano 16y ago
Those actually _are_ benefits for many android devices, but not some.
storm 16y ago
So you're now taking the position that how open Android is can depend upon how they have marketed their openness, and how misleadingly they may have done so? That's nonsense. At the end of the day, "fork it, mod it, build it, deploy it to any device that will run it" still applies. That's unavoidably and factually open. Radically so, given where this particular market was just 3-4 years ago. I'm astonished at how muddled and downright bizarre the argumentation on these threads gets. Yes, they don't develop future platform versions in the open, they just make delayed code dumps. Annoying. But hardly "open"-negating. The process may not be open - the deliverables are. And all of the usual advantages of that open are in full effect with Android and its many, many active mods. Yes, carriers are free to add unremovable shovelware, to try and prevent flashing with the aid of the hardware manufacturers - all that nasty stuff they are free to do with any apache/bsd-licensed codebase. It's very hard to understand how this is Google's fault, or why it somehow renders the underlying platform "not open". Should they have stridently disallowed such behavior from day 1? I'm guessing that would have left them with a lot fewer partners, and a go-nowhere platform, but hey, at least they would have been pure as the driven snow ideologically. Saying with a straight face that Android is "not open", "not meaningfully more open than iOS", "nothing like what we would traditionally call open-source", and so on is ridiculous hyperbole. The only interest I take out of these instant train wreck threads is in playing a game: guess at what horses individual commenters have in the mobile race, that their perceptions can become so severely distorted.
- msbarnett 16y ago
  My consistent position is nothing more than that Android is not open in a way that is consistent with any of the claimed benefits Google or other Android promotors have asserted it provides. It's certainly open from a perspective of "you get the occasionally tarball of source". Nobody is debating that. This isn't about whether Android is open or not; it's about whether the way it is open is at all consistent with the way it's openness is marketed to end consumers. For the vast majority of users that openness, from any practical standpoint, might as well not exist. The popular, high selling handsets are simply too locked down for them to benefit from anything anyone does with those tarball drops. Which is fine, but it's certainly not the way people paint the platform when they talk about how much better Android is for the user thanks to its openness, because the openness is primarily for the benefit of handset makers and carriers who can use those tarballs. For what it's worth, I think this whole game of treating a thriving market like its some kind of horse-race is ridiculous. 90% market share was an aberration in the PC market; there's going to be room for multiple competitors for decades to come. There are no sides. Nobody is going to win anything.