Developer Joe Hewitt Tears Into Android’s Definition Of “Open”

Re:Developer Joe Hewitt Tears Into Android’s Definition Of “... by davidw on Wednesday October 20, 2010 @05:07AM (#1810529)

> a kernel doesn't make an OS

You realize that Android is a lot more than just the Linux kernel, right? And that almost all of it is available under an open source license?

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Re:Developer Joe Hewitt Tears Into Android’s Definition Of “... by yardie on Wednesday October 20, 2010 @07:27AM (#1810756)

Except most of the drivers, the firmware, and some of the applications are not. I think most of developers would even be satisfied with a binary blob (ala nVidia or Broadcom) that would allow them to use the hardware, but not even that exists.

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Re:Developer Joe Hewitt Tears Into Android’s Definition Of “... by davidw on Wednesday October 20, 2010 @07:36AM (#1810767)

I know that some of the drivers are not open source. 'Most'? Let's talk concretely: does anyone know which ones?

Applications: sure, you don't get some of the Google stuff, but so what. You can run the system without that.

Android is not 100% free. But as far as I know, it's closer than anything else out there, and thus a good starting point for those wishing to work in that direction.

And the system itself is pretty open - it's easy to see how things work and interact.

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