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I fundamentally disagree that Android did deep harm to open source. That's just absurd.

by cdibona 15y ago

ajross 15y ago
I said it hurt the community. Your code is open. And much of it is great. But it's not something that can be meaningfully shared. Again: compare the community work available at Launchpad or rpmfusion or build.opensuse.org (compatible, signed, versioned packages with automated dependency tracking) to "I cooked a ROM doodz!". The far and away best example of community work in the Android world (Cyanogen) is, what, five months behind the core team at even shipping the software that's already in the field? It's depressing. And what's absolutely infuriating to me (and the point of this rant) is that you started with all that good stuff and threw it out the window chasing some ridiculous notion of IP purity that -- surprise! -- was basically worthless as you're being sued over IP anyway.
- cdibona 14y ago
  Do you really think the legal picture would be any different if Android were under copyleft?
  - ajross 14y ago
    Of course not, that wasn't my point at all. I think the community picture would be very different if Android had inherited the infrastructure and community of desktop linux instead of charging ahead with needless and inferior reimplementations of glibc, udev, init/upstart/systemd, rpm/dpkg, etc... in a way that cut them off from the rest of the linux community. Ubuntu and Fedora users can package stuff for others in a robust way, including modifications to the system libraries. How nice would it be to fix the awful accelerometer polling on the Galaxy Nexus and point users to a RPM repo? Try out some new gesture tuning? See the point? That kind of work exists, sort of, in the Android world, but it sucks rocks. And the reason for all this breakage was, ostensibly, "IP purity" and the desire to avoid law suits and ambiguity about the software licensing. Which, as it happens, was a fools errand anyway as the platform is being sued regardless. Is it clear now what I'm saying?
- nknight 14y ago
  You clearly lack the experience necessary to understand the dynamics at play here. The phenomenon you bizarrely, insultingly refer to as "I cooked a ROM doodz!" is not arrested by copyleft. Small-scale non-commercial GPL violations by individuals are absolutely rampant in a number of communities. Android would not be any different -- nor is it, in fact, since the kernel is still under the GPL.

I fundamentally disagree that Android did deep harm to open source. That's just absurd.

by cdibona 15y ago

I fundamentally disagree that Android did deep harm to open source. That's just absurd.

I said it hurt the community. Your code is open. And much of it is great. But it's not something that can be meaningfully shared. Again: compare the community work available at Launchpad or rpmfusion or build.opensuse.org (compatible, signed, versioned packages with automated dependency tracking) to "I cooked a ROM doodz!". The far and away best example of community work in the Android world (Cyanogen) is, what, five months behind the core team at even shipping the software that's already in the field? It's depressing. And what's absolutely infuriating to me (and the point of this rant) is that you started with all that good stuff and threw it out the window chasing some ridiculous notion of IP purity that -- surprise! -- was basically worthless as you're being sued over IP anyway.

cdibona 14y ago
Do you really think the legal picture would be any different if Android were under copyleft?
- ajross 14y ago
  Of course not, that wasn't my point at all. I think the community picture would be very different if Android had inherited the infrastructure and community of desktop linux instead of charging ahead with needless and inferior reimplementations of glibc, udev, init/upstart/systemd, rpm/dpkg, etc... in a way that cut them off from the rest of the linux community. Ubuntu and Fedora users can package stuff for others in a robust way, including modifications to the system libraries. How nice would it be to fix the awful accelerometer polling on the Galaxy Nexus and point users to a RPM repo? Try out some new gesture tuning? See the point? That kind of work exists, sort of, in the Android world, but it sucks rocks. And the reason for all this breakage was, ostensibly, "IP purity" and the desire to avoid law suits and ambiguity about the software licensing. Which, as it happens, was a fools errand anyway as the platform is being sued regardless. Is it clear now what I'm saying?
nknight 14y ago
You clearly lack the experience necessary to understand the dynamics at play here. The phenomenon you bizarrely, insultingly refer to as "I cooked a ROM doodz!" is not arrested by copyleft. Small-scale non-commercial GPL violations by individuals are absolutely rampant in a number of communities. Android would not be any different -- nor is it, in fact, since the kernel is still under the GPL.