4 ms·

What I hope is that another mobile OS eat Android on its left: even more open, even less linked to big corps. This OS would be to Android what Linux is to Unix.

• vibrunazo 15y ago
  Are you talking about Boot2Gecko? I personally like both and wouldn't mind either, or both, being top market share leaders. Tho Boot2Gecko is certainly years away from stability.
• AnthonyMouse 15y ago
  The problem isn't really the OS. It would be hard to find something significantly more open than stock Android sans the Google integration. The problem is that the OEMs (largely at the behest of AT&T et al) sell most of the devices with locked bootloaders. The tablet market has the potential to be the thin end of the wedge toward fixing that though. Suppose several of the existing PC makers like Dell get into the tablet market and start offering WiFi-only devices available with stock Android and unlocked boot loaders. I have to assume that those companies would be happy to see some real competition for Microsoft for once. The trouble is going to be that Microsoft may be back to its old tricks with regard to not allowing PC OEMs to preinstall "Linux" on their hardware. We've already heard ruminations about Win8-on-ARM requiring a locked boot loader. It remains to be seen whether the PC makers will be willing to throw their users under the bus in order to appease Microsoft.
  • keeperofdakeys 15y ago
    The open nature of Android, specifically being open source can be doubted at times. There is the whole incident with Honeycomb source code, and how it wasn't released until the Ice Cream Sandwich source code was released. Even worse is that this incident was in direct contradiction to comments from one of the android leads https://twitter.com/#!/Arubin/status/27808662429 https://twitter.com/#!/Arubin/status/27808662429. I do have large respect for how open Android is though, and how the GPL on the Linux kernel really shows how useful it is. In regard to secure boot and Windows 8, the restrictions are a part of the Windows 8 certification system. Personally I don't think many manufacturers will want to skip windows certification, even if they have to implement the restrictions. The more I think about it, the more I see this could bring up another anti-trust case. It would probably also bring the 'do you own your device' issue to the forefront.
• bgilroy26 15y ago
  Would you consider Cyanogenmod to be to stock Android OSes what Linux is to Unix?
  • gbog 15y ago
    I love and use Cyanogenmod, but I think it is still too linked to Android.