Google Opens Up Android Codebase 204
rsk writes "It's official: Google has Open Sourced Android. The source code can be downloaded from Android's Git repository. Bugs are handled at the Google Code Android project page with documentation being handled by a collection of Google Site pages. One of the more interesting aspects of Android seems to be the seemingly Eclipse Foundation-like organization of the project, welcoming both Individual and Commercial developers into the Android development pot. One of the benefits of this arrangement is securing the existence of the project by involving commercial interests and their money in the process ... this is also one of the downsides; having commercial entities charter and lead features of a platform that their own commercial offerings provide 'enhanced' versions of, sometimes leaving the free offering always lacking in one obvious way or another. It's hard to say at this point how involved Google will be in this process, or the Open Handset Alliance in general, with managing the health of sub-projects under the Android umbrella as time goes on."
Hackability (Score:2, Insightful)
Looking at the misfeatures implemented by Motorola into their phones to inhibit hacking (signing the bootloader, kernel, filesystems) and the frequently missing drivers, it makes me wonder how far one could take the environment released here.
Could you, once built, take the resulting setup and shove it on a G1 and run it? Or are there similar vendor lockouts like those Motorola has implemented?
I'd like to see a tivo-dodge here, but I'm not optimistic.
Earth to Slashdot (Score:2, Insightful)
>having commercial entities charter and lead
>features of a platform that their own commercial
>offerings provide 'enhanced' versions of
Earth to Slashdot... this is how almost every major OSS project runs; people who pay for developers [such as me] will get the features they want.
2.1 GB?? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm no developer.
Can someone explain why the source code for a mobile phone's OS would be 2.1 GB?
Re:Allowing "Banned" Features (Score:5, Insightful)
They just ran out of time with Bluetooth. They also had to cut stereo bluetooth audio, why would t-mobile want to cut that?
Re:Allowing "Banned" Features (Score:2, Insightful)
You can install apps from the market, internet or the memory card. I've been able to install an iTunes remote through the memory card thats not yet available in the market. Too bad it didn't work with Rythmbox, but still I was able to install other apps with out going through T-mobile.
I'm very optimistic about how far hackers can take this. I mean look what they do with closed source propriety stuff. They might have a few road blocks purposely put there but have already given us a huge jump just by releasing the OS source.
Re:Earth to Slashdot (Score:2, Insightful)
Earth to Slashdot... this is how almost every major OSS project runs; people who pay for developers [such as me] will get the features they want.
Indeed. This is not new. Apache, Samba, the Linux kernel, OpenOffice.org, Mozilla's product line, Eclipse, etc., all have features that were bought and paid for by someone, whether by directly employing the individuals involved, or through donations to a supporting foundation, or a little of both.
I'm not saying that's good or bad -- it's just a part of the open source landscape today and will remain so for quite some time to come. It's good in that encourages development that benefits everyone. It's bad in that development effort may tend to get concentrated along pet projects that may or may not be useful to the greatest number of users.
But, like everything else in life, you take the good, the bad and the ugly and roll with it.
That's what hackers are for... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd be surprised if some of the code-signing stuff wasn't gone soon.
Yay Google! (Score:3, Insightful)
It's so ironic that the same day Google releases one of the largest and most impactful open source projects, Microsoft declares the day "Global Anti-Piracy Day". Horray for Google -- thanks for making our cell phones more powerful at as low a cost to the user as possible. Now if only there were more free and open carriers around....
Re:2.1 GB?? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's actually not all that unusual for the source code for an OS (or any project, for that matter) to be much, much larger than the resulting installable code.
Take a look, for example, at the Linux source. The kernel source is like -- what? -- 300MB?
The resultant compiled and compressed kernel on a 32-bit system is like 1.7MB.
So the source is like 300X the size of the resultant kernel.
And that's just the kernel.
Re:Let the porting begin! (Score:3, Insightful)
We need to port this thing to all kinds of devices
An open source platform for mobile phones isn't any good at all if there isn't a open hardware platform to run it on. Good luck modifying android and running it on your shiny new phone, tmobile wouldn't let you.
No (Score:3, Insightful)
No, carriers want strict control over *your* and *my* devices. You know, the ones we either paid up front for, or the ones we paid out subsidized by our contract.
This bothers me quite a bit.
Re:Let the porting begin! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Allowing "Banned" Features (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's my take on the situation. Google realizes that carriers want strict control over their devices.
Of course they do. So what? Why should they get it? I want strict control over people being allowed to park in front of my house. That doesn't mean I have any right to it. AT&T wanted strict control over what could be plugged into their telephone jacks. That doesn't mean they got to have it, and I for one am grateful that it was decided that the network should be open to innovative new devices, because I like the fax machine, and I thought the MODEM was pretty handy for a while there. So what if network operators *want* more control? Are they using a public resource to provide the network? (Hint the spectrum is currently considered a public resource). Then we the public have every right to attach conditions on their use of it. If we attach reasonable conditions, they'll try to meet them while making a profit, and innovation will be served. If we attach excessive conditions that they cannot meet, the market will work, they'll go bankrupt, and we'll have to decide if we need to subsidize them, ease the conditions, or just do without the product. This is how markets are supposed to behave, and this is how regulation should interact with markets.
I don't believe that a profit seeking corporation should bow to the needs and wants of a minority intrinsically, I believe that it is the responsibility of government to step in and *make* them bow to the needs of the *whole* public, when they use public resources. When AT&T got right-of-ways to install phone wiring, they were forced to install it everywhere, profitable or not. They were still able to make a profit, and things kept going. I don't see why the cell network operators shouldn't have to face some of the same quid-pro-quo.
In slashdot terms,
Step 1: Obtain access to public resources.
Step 2: Use them to make a valuable product.
Step 3: Attempt to use the control of the resource/network to leverage monopolistic power.
Step 4: Get smacked down with regulation.
Step 5: Learn how to make money off it anyway.
Step 6: Profit.
We're between steps 3 and 4 with the cellphone industry. Frankly, considering how much we've all come to depend on their product, I think they'll be able to manage step 5.
Re:Let the porting begin! (Score:5, Insightful)
You might be able to port the framework to the iPhone, but you could never release it via the App Store.
Erm, the whole point of porting it is to NOT deal with App Store. We are taking replacing the whole iPhone OS with something else (BSD based OS/X with Linux)
Getting the OS onto iPhone is easy - thats how Jail-breaking process works, the real hard part will be writing the drivers.
Can't wait though - I was very disappointed since I found out G1 does not support AT&T's G3 frequency and that I am stuck with iPhone for a while. Android on iPhone would be a decent cancellation prize - at least until better hardware that works with AT&T and runs Android comes out. ....wonder if someone will port it to Treo too? There are number of linux drivers for some of those already.
-EM
Re:Let the porting begin! (Score:2, Insightful)
It won't be nearly that easy. The Android application environment makes no attempt to hide the underlying protected memory multiprocess kernel -- apps can create multiple processes for themselves, run services in the background, schedule events to be woken up in the background, connect to each other to communicate with IPC, etc. And of course there is the WebKit available through the WebView API that many rely on, etc.
Also the application model itself is very different than the iphone: in Android an app just stays running until the system decides to kill it, and the system maintains state about it while it is killed to help it restart in its same state. So you would need to have a lot of the persistent system services running (especially the activity manager) or app switching would be pretty broken.
And there is the global clipboard, too! ;)
But it boils down to: Android is not just a Java application framework, it is a complete floor to ceiling operating system, and the application API reflects that.
Re:Let the porting begin! (Score:2, Insightful)
Why not just support the efforts of companies supporting Linux? If we support the companies actually supporting Linux, it stands to reason that we'd see more Linux products on the market.