Android is open source, and still (nearly) everybody is locked into Google's version with licensing costs. Google open-sourced nearly everything, while managing to make their "apps" so entrenched that every customer expects them and even a lot of apps don't work without them.

> Google open-sourced nearly everything

Nearly everything about Android the operating system. Android the app platform is deeply tied to Google Play Services, which is not open source and is once more deeply tied to Google's online services.

And they've re-routed apps' access to basic phone data like GPS, camera and microphone through Google Play Services, so that if you want to use any app that uses those services you also have to let Google log those data.

It's almost as bad as tivoization from the FOSS perspective, while also invading your privacy. Yay.

NO no no... Alibaba has a clone that they claim their OS, YunOS, is not Android and even it is not written in java, but can run most of Android apps.The OS is written in some java like programming language and close sourced.

Open source doesn't mean free....

Actually it does mean free to redistribute, this is the essence of the BSD or even GPL licenses. And free to redistribute (for free) would be a huge loss for windows. Therefor, not happening.

Technically not, but look at CentOS. We'd have a knock-off Windows from Samsung or whatever in less than three months.

Edit: Every OEM would have their own spin, for differentiation. Lenovo too...

Be realistic, the next day 10 forks would appear distributing it for free.

Windows is always pirated distributed for free doesn't mean they don't violate copyright laws and other restrictions.

One can buy an oem or restricted region license for windows for 20$ but legally it's about the same as pirating it.

They can give access to the source code without necessarily using an Open Source licence for that.