9 ms·

New Android OEM licensing terms leak; “Open” comes with a lot of restrictions

61 points by RougeFemme 13y ago

Zigurd 13y ago
Ars's headline is inaccurate. These are the licensing terms for Google's closed-source suite of ecosystem apps that turn a generic AOSP-based port into a Google-logo commercial product. The restrictions stem from a choice you have to make: If you use the Google ecosystem in your products, you have to use all of it, and you can't use parts of Android to compete with the Google ecosystem. You can make the other choice, but, in those cases, Google doesn't want you to have their closed, proprietary apps. That might be hard-nosed dealing, but it isn't more restrictive than Google's competitors are in similar circumstances. There are some seemingly nonsensical parts to the agreement, especially the prohibition against distributing an SDK derived from the Android SDK. I'm having a difficult time imagining what harm that might cause. Some OEMs, like Samsung, are shipping SDK extensions that Google apparently is fine with. The openness of AOSP is not compromised by this contract. Amazon is an example of a partly direct competitor using AOSP. Google has done nothing to thwart Amazon, not even a hint of FUD. If only Oracle were that straightforward about Java.
- pilif 13y ago
  > There are some seemingly nonsensical parts to the agreement, especially the prohibition against distributing an SDK derived from the Android SDK. I'm having a difficult time imagining what harm that might cause. as somebody who has had to deal with vendor proprietary SDKs for devices, I can assure you that only having to deal with one stock Android SDK that has not been tempered with by hardware-engineers under time pressure doing software is a very, very good thing. This way the really ugly crap is contained within vendor specific SDK extensions (which can be abstracted away) instead of the crap being sprinkled all over the basic OS SDK which would require one SDK per device you're targeting and would inflict all sorts of bugs on you even when not touching vendor-specific parts. In general, most of the terms mentioned in the article are, while being horrendous for the device maker, are very nice for both users and developers targeting these devices. Yes, it's nowhere near "open", but also, yes, this ensures some level of quality for both users and developers.
  - r00fus 13y ago
    > Yes, it's nowhere near "open", but also, yes, this ensures some level of quality for both users and developers. Sounds like the exact argument for iOS.
- randallu 13y ago
  I imagine not shipping a derivative SDK is to prevent one vendor from making an incompatible "Android+" (and the next vendor, etc) which would cause fragmentation. Instead they get to expose extra APIs through the updater app in the one true Google Android SDK (and you use the same mechanism to get the Google APIs).
- JohnTHaller 13y ago
  AOSP is getting smaller. Google's closed source Android (aka GMS) is getting bigger. On a standard Android phone, a ton of it is closed source and under a proprietary license. It's now at the point that the majority of the most popular Android apps are not Android apps any more. They're GMS apps and they won't run on AOSP. Any app that implements modern location services, in-app purchases, etc, simply won't work on AOSP or any Android variant that isn't Google's with all the GMS bits.
  - Zigurd 13y ago
    I don't think I would expect to do in-app purchases without my own e-commerce capability, or using some ecosystem's IAP support, and AOSP never had an open source IAP framework. There are other places where one can complain that Google has effectively abandoned open source components of AOSP. These are places where Google has made previously standalone apps part of their ecosystem. On the other hand, alternative distributions like CyanogenMod have become sustainable VC-fundable businesses based on the relative reliability that important new core OS features do go into AOSP on a timely basis. ART, for example. It's there to read and study and try long before any Google-label OEM benefits from it.
    - jsight 13y ago
      Two of the GMS moves do really bother me: 1) Location API changes - Moving these into GMS is a bad decision, and I think hurts the core platform 2) Hangouts - Moving messaging into a non-standards compliant and closed source solution hurts everyone (except Google, at least in the short-term) These to me indicate a move towards a more closed model within Google generally, and I think that is terribly unfortunate.
      - echeese 13y ago
        Both of those still exist in AOSP. I'm guessing the location API changes are to allow the API to access Google's proprietary WiFi location service.
      - ZeroGravitas 13y ago
- josephlord 13y ago
  > The restrictions stem from a choice you have to make: If you use the Google ecosystem in your products, you have to use all of it, and you can't use parts of Android to compete with the Google ecosystem. You can make the other choice, but, in those cases, Google doesn't want you to have their closed, proprietary apps. That might be hard-nosed dealing, but it isn't more restrictive than Google's competitors are in similar circumstances. Yes but that choice is not made on a per-product basis but on a global company wide basis. I could easily see this as being viewed as anti-competitive conduct (as I also saw MS deals penalising OEMs who shipped any products without Windows). > The openness of AOSP is not compromised by this contract. I disagree with that conclusion. As I read the article any company that accepts the agreement promises not to fork Android. Amazon does not sign this agreement and therefore can still use AOSP freely and openly but a large bulk of the world's consumer electronic companies cannot. This doesn't make AOSP closed but it does compromise its openness.
  - hrkristian 13y ago
    I'd agree but for one fact. OEMs have entered into these agreements freely. Amazon (and CyanogenMod&co) aren't the lucky outsiders, they're the ones proving the openness of Android. The inability to separate AOSP from Google's services irritates me. Google is leaving the door open for anyone to compete with them; use AOSP -a fully functional OS- and provide a better service than Google products offer, you won't owe Google a dime, and you'll be a serious competitor. As far as I know, there's nothing stopping an independent OEM from releasing unlocked devices. An end user is free to install gapps on his own, and it's laughably easy to do.
    - josephlord 13y ago
      > I'd agree but for one fact. OEMs have entered into these agreements freely. The OEMs aren't the (only?) victims of the anticompetitive behaviour. It reduces the market for services competing with the Google services (as they can't sell to anyone who is also a Google customer) and it affects their customers (end users and telcos) and the choices available to them. By "independent OEM" do you mean one who doesn't sign the contract?
- scotu 13y ago
  Ars' headline is not just inaccurate. It's part of what now seem like a clear design of FUD against android. I don't know their rationale for that but I'm starting getting sick of it. Every. Damn. Article. They insinuate, more or less clearly, that you should be very careful with android, it's not open! The best thing being: they are always talking about Google play services instead of android. Even when they explicitly say AOSP, they make it sound like is a minor part, not enough to run an actual phone (which, for being any useful, requires google apps, is their thesis I guess)
  - forgottenpass 13y ago
    It's part of what now seem like a clear design of FUD against android. Basically it comes down to if you're being pedant or a layperson. A pedant is very careful to consider "Android" the AOSP and noting else. To almost anyone that hasn't tried to install non-stock firmware on a device "Android" includes the proprietary addons. As someone who knows the difference, I find it my responsibility to translate in my head as necessary and not get bogged down in the weeds and only bring it up when it's significant. With all that in mind, I see what Ars is saying, think the title is appropriate for the audience and that the content of the article is clear in what the restrictions cover. I'm not into being pedantic just for the sake of pedantics and fail to see why people think bringing up the distinction meaningfully changes the article.
  - droopybuns 13y ago
    >>when they explicitly say AOSP, they make it sound like is a minor part, not enough to run an actual phone (which, for being any useful, requires google apps, is their thesis I guess) It is 2014. Modern phones need to do more than just make phone calls. Mobile app developers want to build with the best APIs available. Location, in-app advertising & search features are best when they use the api's associated with google's custom services. The hair you're trying to split misses the point about modern mobile apps & modern smart phones. Google is clearly using API compatibility as a wedge against the OEMs. Samsung's Taizen project wouldn't exist if this pressure was not a real problem. Google is behaving like mid-90's microsoft. This deeper link paints a bleak picture of what's going on: http://www.benedelman.org/news/021314-1.html http://www.benedelman.org/news/021314-1.html
- DannyBee 13y ago
  "There are some seemingly nonsensical parts to the agreement, especially the prohibition against distributing an SDK derived from the Android SDK. I'm having a difficult time imagining what harm that might cause." If google does all the development work to build an SDK, and then, say, Amazon, comes along and reuses it for a completely separate incompatible ecosystem with essentially no changes, that kind of freeloading can cost Google a lot.
  - throwaway2048 13y ago
    If that is the mentality, then why is android even open source to begin with, after all people can come and "freeload" off AOSP. Google is attempting to gain the marketing benefits of being "open" while in actuality exerting the same kind of platform level control apple or Microsoft do. You can't have both and really be open. Its the same kind of stupid games Sun played with Java for years.
    - DannyBee 13y ago
      "If that is the mentality, then why is android even open source to begin with, after all people can come and "freeload" off AOSP. " I'm not sure I follow. Freeloading is a huge problem, even in the open source community. This is for example, one of the reasons the GPL exists.
      - saurik 13y ago
        Right... which makes the argument then pretty obvious: if freeloading is a serious concern, maybe Android should be released in a way that doesn't allow that (closed, GPL, whatever). You are just being needlessly pedantic if you insist the person you are responding to should have said "under a permissive license that leads to the freeloading problem".
        DannyBee 13y ago
        Except his complaint was about openness. So exerting control through GPL would be open, but exerting control outside of GPL is not, even if you exert less control and over less people?
- deelowe 13y ago
  I'm getting very tired of this. What's happened to ars and why do they seem so anti-android these days? Where's the FUD against windows phone or IOS? Here's some perspective: Every time Apple releases a new OSX version, ars does a 20 page spread covering every tiny detail. This is an OS that is developed using a model very similar to Android, yet, the reception is totally different. I don't get it. Does Ars now employ shills?
samworm 13y ago
New in the sense that they're newly available to the public. The agreement is dated Jan 2011.
fidotron 13y ago
Did Ars just conflate android with the Google play apps again? Why isn't this surprising? They swallow whatever any PR person is feeding them.
RyanZAG 13y ago
Anybody else a bit worried that this basically comes down to the good old "embrace extend extinguish" ? It's slightly different in that the "embrace" step was the purchase of Danger and open sourcing of the base AOSP - but the "extend" bit is pretty clearly in full effect here.
- Zigurd 13y ago
  No. Or not yet. Google is very consistent in their treatment of AOSP. That's not to say it's a bed of roses. AOSP was and maybe still is under-resourced. It hasn't always had stable hardware targets. That's not a good way to treat a resource that is instrumental to creating a community of developers that know how to keep Android updated on a wide range of SoC platforms. Google makes no attempt to create an independent AOSP governance and pool of maintainer resources. I can go on. How much time do you have? But the bottom line is AOSP has been remarkably free of shenanigans. Very unlike some other in-house but nominally open source projects I can think of.
  - eterm 13y ago
    That's not the point that GP is making. The point is that AOSP has been extended through google play services in the same way MS used to extend open protocols. It has used that to bring up a lot of people who associate android more closely with the google play services ecosystem than the AOSP ecosystem. If google said "we're ditching AOSP but we're making a new closed source OS with google play services and a compatible API layer" then really would people move to AOSP or the new google OS? The potential for "extinguish" is there. Had this all happened the other way around or had AOSP been around and MS had embraced it and extended it in this manner then I think people would be acting differently.
    - fidotron 13y ago
      That new OS is Chrome OS. Notice that the Chrome OS device manufacturers don't get to rebrand it, modify it in any way, or control delivery of the updates. It is far more closed than Android ever was. Google are applying their lessons from Android to Chrome OS.
coldcode 13y ago
In the end Google wants what Apple has: control. In this case it's a slow strangulation.
higherpurpose 13y ago
It's like Ars is on a mission to discredit Google here. I've actually been waiting for Google to take a harder stance on OEMs and force them to provide better support to their users for a long time. It will also make things a lot easier for developers in the future, as this will have the effect of reducing fragmentation, and not having to use APIs that are 5 years old.
blinkingled 13y ago
With Android, for some, it's damned if Google does and damned if they don't! Kind of amusing to watch lately - bloggers, writers, whoever - going out and writing inflammatory stuff that is bound to get page views and comments. Hangouts - people were pissed that there wasn't a integrated, one stop messaging solution on Android in 2013. Google tries to do something like that - integrating Google Talk and SMS and now suddenly it's a move to take all your bases. There was lot of cry about the F word. Google does the only thing they could - put reasonable amount of control while keeping their business interests in mind - to reduce fragmentation and offer a more uniform experience. Now people are crying too much control. If on the other hand they would have said here's Android, and here are freely downloadable GApps that you can freely use to avail Google services, you can do whatever you want with them - I am sure there would be an article somewhere claiming the F word, "dumping", lack of uniform experience and few other things vaguely implying malaise. You also notice that this drivel is coming mostly from two sources - sites benefiting from page views and user interaction via comments and people who kind of feel threatened by Android's success - techies on the other mobile platform for example. Problem is none of these articles provide any practical solutions for Google to implement - I guess doing that would be too inconvenient for a future article they might need to write claiming what Google was doing then was bad! If one of these articles articulated the path Google should take to keep Android successful, have no fragmentation, have singular, uniform experience without violating any of their future whiney articles ( [2015]How Google screwed up - Android went from 78.1% market share to 1.5% by following what we said in 2014) - it would be worthwhile paying attention. But of course that is impossible to do - you can only have your cake OR you can eat it! Why solve that when you can just keep writing nonsense drivel and 'engage' you audience.
- doctorpangloss 13y ago
  >Problem is none of these articles provide any practical solutions for Google to implement Practically speaking, it would be pretty easy for Google to make many of its already standalone updated apps fully standalone. Anyone could distribute the Gmail package, Google just won't let them. It's very useful that Google Play is integrated in a way that reduces the friction of payments and protects the users and developers from various kinds of fraud. I don't know how to allow multiple stores to be installed where a high-stakes third party developer doesn't get ruined by fraud when they reach a sufficient scale.
macinjosh 13y ago
The overarching problem here for Google is that they set an expectation of openness from the outset which in reality was probably an unreasonably high expectation. As Google realized they need more control to provide a better user experience over time they have had to make moves that fall short of those expectations. Apple doesn't get this sort of flack because from the very beginning expectations were set that they would exert full control over iOS. So if they make a dick move no one is surprised. There is something to be said about how setting reasonable and even lower expectations is always a good route in all sorts of aspects of business. It leaves you options, room to improve, and it changes to those expectations are less jarring to fans and customers.
- ZeroGravitas 13y ago
  This has been part of the PR strategy against Android from the beginning. Remember when not releasing Honeycomb meant that Google was taking Android closed source? Or the list of AOSP apps that Ars claimed were abandoned but then got major updates in KitKat? So by the standard of the mud being thrown at them Google are actually exceeding expectations for openness. And it's just odd to see Apple and Microsoft boosters take positions that are more extreme than RMS just to minimize this advantage.
ZeroGravitas 13y ago
From a game theoretic point of view the OEMs are probably grateful for most of the restrictions because they apply to their competitors too. It's the same reason that GPL often make sense for shared projects, the restrictions on "freedom" prevent defection and so enable cooperation. The OEMs rejected the GPL, but they probably want some kind of protection from say Samsung freezing them out of the market, or just as bad, everyone trying but failing and ending up like Unix.
sjh 13y ago
As such, the software which makes up "Android" resembles OS X to me: open source in parts (even large parts), but the bit which most people (including developers) use is closed source and restricted to running only on sanctioned hardware.

61 points by RougeFemme 13y ago

Ars's headline is inaccurate. These are the licensing terms for Google's closed-source suite of ecosystem apps that turn a generic AOSP-based port into a Google-logo commercial product. The restrictions stem from a choice you have to make: If you use the Google ecosystem in your products, you have to use all of it, and you can't use parts of Android to compete with the Google ecosystem. You can make the other choice, but, in those cases, Google doesn't want you to have their closed, proprietary apps. That might be hard-nosed dealing, but it isn't more restrictive than Google's competitors are in similar circumstances. There are some seemingly nonsensical parts to the agreement, especially the prohibition against distributing an SDK derived from the Android SDK. I'm having a difficult time imagining what harm that might cause. Some OEMs, like Samsung, are shipping SDK extensions that Google apparently is fine with. The openness of AOSP is not compromised by this contract. Amazon is an example of a partly direct competitor using AOSP. Google has done nothing to thwart Amazon, not even a hint of FUD. If only Oracle were that straightforward about Java.

pilif 13y ago
> There are some seemingly nonsensical parts to the agreement, especially the prohibition against distributing an SDK derived from the Android SDK. I'm having a difficult time imagining what harm that might cause. as somebody who has had to deal with vendor proprietary SDKs for devices, I can assure you that only having to deal with one stock Android SDK that has not been tempered with by hardware-engineers under time pressure doing software is a very, very good thing. This way the really ugly crap is contained within vendor specific SDK extensions (which can be abstracted away) instead of the crap being sprinkled all over the basic OS SDK which would require one SDK per device you're targeting and would inflict all sorts of bugs on you even when not touching vendor-specific parts. In general, most of the terms mentioned in the article are, while being horrendous for the device maker, are very nice for both users and developers targeting these devices. Yes, it's nowhere near "open", but also, yes, this ensures some level of quality for both users and developers.
- r00fus 13y ago
  > Yes, it's nowhere near "open", but also, yes, this ensures some level of quality for both users and developers. Sounds like the exact argument for iOS.
randallu 13y ago
I imagine not shipping a derivative SDK is to prevent one vendor from making an incompatible "Android+" (and the next vendor, etc) which would cause fragmentation. Instead they get to expose extra APIs through the updater app in the one true Google Android SDK (and you use the same mechanism to get the Google APIs).
JohnTHaller 13y ago
AOSP is getting smaller. Google's closed source Android (aka GMS) is getting bigger. On a standard Android phone, a ton of it is closed source and under a proprietary license. It's now at the point that the majority of the most popular Android apps are not Android apps any more. They're GMS apps and they won't run on AOSP. Any app that implements modern location services, in-app purchases, etc, simply won't work on AOSP or any Android variant that isn't Google's with all the GMS bits.
- Zigurd 13y ago
  I don't think I would expect to do in-app purchases without my own e-commerce capability, or using some ecosystem's IAP support, and AOSP never had an open source IAP framework. There are other places where one can complain that Google has effectively abandoned open source components of AOSP. These are places where Google has made previously standalone apps part of their ecosystem. On the other hand, alternative distributions like CyanogenMod have become sustainable VC-fundable businesses based on the relative reliability that important new core OS features do go into AOSP on a timely basis. ART, for example. It's there to read and study and try long before any Google-label OEM benefits from it.
  - jsight 13y ago
    Two of the GMS moves do really bother me: 1) Location API changes - Moving these into GMS is a bad decision, and I think hurts the core platform 2) Hangouts - Moving messaging into a non-standards compliant and closed source solution hurts everyone (except Google, at least in the short-term) These to me indicate a move towards a more closed model within Google generally, and I think that is terribly unfortunate.
    - echeese 13y ago
      Both of those still exist in AOSP. I'm guessing the location API changes are to allow the API to access Google's proprietary WiFi location service.
    - ZeroGravitas 13y ago
josephlord 13y ago
> The restrictions stem from a choice you have to make: If you use the Google ecosystem in your products, you have to use all of it, and you can't use parts of Android to compete with the Google ecosystem. You can make the other choice, but, in those cases, Google doesn't want you to have their closed, proprietary apps. That might be hard-nosed dealing, but it isn't more restrictive than Google's competitors are in similar circumstances. Yes but that choice is not made on a per-product basis but on a global company wide basis. I could easily see this as being viewed as anti-competitive conduct (as I also saw MS deals penalising OEMs who shipped any products without Windows). > The openness of AOSP is not compromised by this contract. I disagree with that conclusion. As I read the article any company that accepts the agreement promises not to fork Android. Amazon does not sign this agreement and therefore can still use AOSP freely and openly but a large bulk of the world's consumer electronic companies cannot. This doesn't make AOSP closed but it does compromise its openness.
- hrkristian 13y ago
  I'd agree but for one fact. OEMs have entered into these agreements freely. Amazon (and CyanogenMod&co) aren't the lucky outsiders, they're the ones proving the openness of Android. The inability to separate AOSP from Google's services irritates me. Google is leaving the door open for anyone to compete with them; use AOSP -a fully functional OS- and provide a better service than Google products offer, you won't owe Google a dime, and you'll be a serious competitor. As far as I know, there's nothing stopping an independent OEM from releasing unlocked devices. An end user is free to install gapps on his own, and it's laughably easy to do.
  - josephlord 13y ago
    > I'd agree but for one fact. OEMs have entered into these agreements freely. The OEMs aren't the (only?) victims of the anticompetitive behaviour. It reduces the market for services competing with the Google services (as they can't sell to anyone who is also a Google customer) and it affects their customers (end users and telcos) and the choices available to them. By "independent OEM" do you mean one who doesn't sign the contract?
scotu 13y ago
Ars' headline is not just inaccurate. It's part of what now seem like a clear design of FUD against android. I don't know their rationale for that but I'm starting getting sick of it. Every. Damn. Article. They insinuate, more or less clearly, that you should be very careful with android, it's not open! The best thing being: they are always talking about Google play services instead of android. Even when they explicitly say AOSP, they make it sound like is a minor part, not enough to run an actual phone (which, for being any useful, requires google apps, is their thesis I guess)
- forgottenpass 13y ago
  It's part of what now seem like a clear design of FUD against android. Basically it comes down to if you're being pedant or a layperson. A pedant is very careful to consider "Android" the AOSP and noting else. To almost anyone that hasn't tried to install non-stock firmware on a device "Android" includes the proprietary addons. As someone who knows the difference, I find it my responsibility to translate in my head as necessary and not get bogged down in the weeds and only bring it up when it's significant. With all that in mind, I see what Ars is saying, think the title is appropriate for the audience and that the content of the article is clear in what the restrictions cover. I'm not into being pedantic just for the sake of pedantics and fail to see why people think bringing up the distinction meaningfully changes the article.
- droopybuns 13y ago
  >>when they explicitly say AOSP, they make it sound like is a minor part, not enough to run an actual phone (which, for being any useful, requires google apps, is their thesis I guess) It is 2014. Modern phones need to do more than just make phone calls. Mobile app developers want to build with the best APIs available. Location, in-app advertising & search features are best when they use the api's associated with google's custom services. The hair you're trying to split misses the point about modern mobile apps & modern smart phones. Google is clearly using API compatibility as a wedge against the OEMs. Samsung's Taizen project wouldn't exist if this pressure was not a real problem. Google is behaving like mid-90's microsoft. This deeper link paints a bleak picture of what's going on: http://www.benedelman.org/news/021314-1.html http://www.benedelman.org/news/021314-1.html
DannyBee 13y ago
"There are some seemingly nonsensical parts to the agreement, especially the prohibition against distributing an SDK derived from the Android SDK. I'm having a difficult time imagining what harm that might cause." If google does all the development work to build an SDK, and then, say, Amazon, comes along and reuses it for a completely separate incompatible ecosystem with essentially no changes, that kind of freeloading can cost Google a lot.
- throwaway2048 13y ago
  If that is the mentality, then why is android even open source to begin with, after all people can come and "freeload" off AOSP. Google is attempting to gain the marketing benefits of being "open" while in actuality exerting the same kind of platform level control apple or Microsoft do. You can't have both and really be open. Its the same kind of stupid games Sun played with Java for years.
  - DannyBee 13y ago
    "If that is the mentality, then why is android even open source to begin with, after all people can come and "freeload" off AOSP. " I'm not sure I follow. Freeloading is a huge problem, even in the open source community. This is for example, one of the reasons the GPL exists.
    - saurik 13y ago
      Right... which makes the argument then pretty obvious: if freeloading is a serious concern, maybe Android should be released in a way that doesn't allow that (closed, GPL, whatever). You are just being needlessly pedantic if you insist the person you are responding to should have said "under a permissive license that leads to the freeloading problem".
      - DannyBee 13y ago
        Except his complaint was about openness. So exerting control through GPL would be open, but exerting control outside of GPL is not, even if you exert less control and over less people?
deelowe 13y ago
I'm getting very tired of this. What's happened to ars and why do they seem so anti-android these days? Where's the FUD against windows phone or IOS? Here's some perspective: Every time Apple releases a new OSX version, ars does a 20 page spread covering every tiny detail. This is an OS that is developed using a model very similar to Android, yet, the reception is totally different. I don't get it. Does Ars now employ shills?

samworm 13y ago

New in the sense that they're newly available to the public. The agreement is dated Jan 2011.

fidotron 13y ago

Did Ars just conflate android with the Google play apps again? Why isn't this surprising? They swallow whatever any PR person is feeding them.

RyanZAG 13y ago

Anybody else a bit worried that this basically comes down to the good old "embrace extend extinguish" ? It's slightly different in that the "embrace" step was the purchase of Danger and open sourcing of the base AOSP - but the "extend" bit is pretty clearly in full effect here.

Zigurd 13y ago
No. Or not yet. Google is very consistent in their treatment of AOSP. That's not to say it's a bed of roses. AOSP was and maybe still is under-resourced. It hasn't always had stable hardware targets. That's not a good way to treat a resource that is instrumental to creating a community of developers that know how to keep Android updated on a wide range of SoC platforms. Google makes no attempt to create an independent AOSP governance and pool of maintainer resources. I can go on. How much time do you have? But the bottom line is AOSP has been remarkably free of shenanigans. Very unlike some other in-house but nominally open source projects I can think of.
- eterm 13y ago
  That's not the point that GP is making. The point is that AOSP has been extended through google play services in the same way MS used to extend open protocols. It has used that to bring up a lot of people who associate android more closely with the google play services ecosystem than the AOSP ecosystem. If google said "we're ditching AOSP but we're making a new closed source OS with google play services and a compatible API layer" then really would people move to AOSP or the new google OS? The potential for "extinguish" is there. Had this all happened the other way around or had AOSP been around and MS had embraced it and extended it in this manner then I think people would be acting differently.
  - fidotron 13y ago
    That new OS is Chrome OS. Notice that the Chrome OS device manufacturers don't get to rebrand it, modify it in any way, or control delivery of the updates. It is far more closed than Android ever was. Google are applying their lessons from Android to Chrome OS.

coldcode 13y ago

In the end Google wants what Apple has: control. In this case it's a slow strangulation.

higherpurpose 13y ago

It's like Ars is on a mission to discredit Google here. I've actually been waiting for Google to take a harder stance on OEMs and force them to provide better support to their users for a long time. It will also make things a lot easier for developers in the future, as this will have the effect of reducing fragmentation, and not having to use APIs that are 5 years old.

blinkingled 13y ago

With Android, for some, it's damned if Google does and damned if they don't! Kind of amusing to watch lately - bloggers, writers, whoever - going out and writing inflammatory stuff that is bound to get page views and comments. Hangouts - people were pissed that there wasn't a integrated, one stop messaging solution on Android in 2013. Google tries to do something like that - integrating Google Talk and SMS and now suddenly it's a move to take all your bases. There was lot of cry about the F word. Google does the only thing they could - put reasonable amount of control while keeping their business interests in mind - to reduce fragmentation and offer a more uniform experience. Now people are crying too much control. If on the other hand they would have said here's Android, and here are freely downloadable GApps that you can freely use to avail Google services, you can do whatever you want with them - I am sure there would be an article somewhere claiming the F word, "dumping", lack of uniform experience and few other things vaguely implying malaise. You also notice that this drivel is coming mostly from two sources - sites benefiting from page views and user interaction via comments and people who kind of feel threatened by Android's success - techies on the other mobile platform for example. Problem is none of these articles provide any practical solutions for Google to implement - I guess doing that would be too inconvenient for a future article they might need to write claiming what Google was doing then was bad! If one of these articles articulated the path Google should take to keep Android successful, have no fragmentation, have singular, uniform experience without violating any of their future whiney articles ( [2015]How Google screwed up - Android went from 78.1% market share to 1.5% by following what we said in 2014) - it would be worthwhile paying attention. But of course that is impossible to do - you can only have your cake OR you can eat it! Why solve that when you can just keep writing nonsense drivel and 'engage' you audience.

doctorpangloss 13y ago
>Problem is none of these articles provide any practical solutions for Google to implement Practically speaking, it would be pretty easy for Google to make many of its already standalone updated apps fully standalone. Anyone could distribute the Gmail package, Google just won't let them. It's very useful that Google Play is integrated in a way that reduces the friction of payments and protects the users and developers from various kinds of fraud. I don't know how to allow multiple stores to be installed where a high-stakes third party developer doesn't get ruined by fraud when they reach a sufficient scale.

macinjosh 13y ago

The overarching problem here for Google is that they set an expectation of openness from the outset which in reality was probably an unreasonably high expectation. As Google realized they need more control to provide a better user experience over time they have had to make moves that fall short of those expectations. Apple doesn't get this sort of flack because from the very beginning expectations were set that they would exert full control over iOS. So if they make a dick move no one is surprised. There is something to be said about how setting reasonable and even lower expectations is always a good route in all sorts of aspects of business. It leaves you options, room to improve, and it changes to those expectations are less jarring to fans and customers.

ZeroGravitas 13y ago
This has been part of the PR strategy against Android from the beginning. Remember when not releasing Honeycomb meant that Google was taking Android closed source? Or the list of AOSP apps that Ars claimed were abandoned but then got major updates in KitKat? So by the standard of the mud being thrown at them Google are actually exceeding expectations for openness. And it's just odd to see Apple and Microsoft boosters take positions that are more extreme than RMS just to minimize this advantage.

ZeroGravitas 13y ago

From a game theoretic point of view the OEMs are probably grateful for most of the restrictions because they apply to their competitors too. It's the same reason that GPL often make sense for shared projects, the restrictions on "freedom" prevent defection and so enable cooperation. The OEMs rejected the GPL, but they probably want some kind of protection from say Samsung freezing them out of the market, or just as bad, everyone trying but failing and ending up like Unix.

sjh 13y ago

As such, the software which makes up "Android" resembles OS X to me: open source in parts (even large parts), but the bit which most people (including developers) use is closed source and restricted to running only on sanctioned hardware.