>> The point of HC is that Google proved they can't be trusted about always releasing the source. um - they're not exactly the first company to develop a comme

>> The point of HC is that Google proved they can't be trusted about always releasing the source. um - they're not exactly the first company to develop a commercial offering on top of an earlier open-source offering. So I'm not sure what your point here is. As I understand it, an open source license allows you to get the code to software you are _already running_ not some commitment by the producer to release future versions of the software under an open license in perpetuity. >> Of course, since its not GPL licensed, they could always close the source forever - even if they had open sourced the OS every time in the past As I understand the GPL, even if current versions of Android were GPL'd, future versions would not necessarily be so, since the only person affected would be the copyright holder. IANAL but since Google holds the copyright for Android code, they'd be free to license it under some other license as well, and then derive from that. This seems to be very common in open source projects (dual licensing I mean). In short - an Open Source license gives you access to current, not future, code. And the copyright holder of the code can release derived versions which are not Open Source.