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Re:Android Market's most popular emulators disappear without... by cma on Sunday May 29, 2011 @03:11PM (#2597276)
So, from Honeycomb onwards, Android is no longer open source aside from the places where they are forced to be (through the GPL), and the market is more of an Apple app store.

(or were there some copyright claims involved here? e.g. making a TI-89 emulator should be ok for the market, but you can't include TI's ROM)

Re:Android Market's most popular emulators disappear without... by commandar on Sunday May 29, 2011 @03:59PM (#2597419)
>So, from Honeycomb onwards, Android is no longer open source aside from the places where they are forced to be (through the GPL)

As others have pointed out, that's only for Honeycomb. Google has said all along that the code would be going public again once it's been cleaned up and the phone and tablet versions have been remerged for the next major release.

>(or were there some copyright claims involved here? e.g. making a TI-89 emulator should be ok for the market, but you can't include TI's ROM)

The comments over on reddit are suggesting that these emulators were based on GPL'd emulators and the developer wasn't complying with the GPL. If that's the case, Google was absolutely right in pulling them from the market. The market is minimally moderated, but blatant copyright infringement is still a no-no for obvious reasons.

Re:Android Market's most popular emulators disappear without... by Kylekramer on Sunday May 29, 2011 @03:20PM (#2597305)
The boilerplate response: Android's open (except for Honeycomb), Android Market is not and has never been open and is nearly completely at Google's discretion, and you can normally install these apps outside of the market in cases like these.

That said, it is a frustrating move. The problem is similar to the one I foresee happening soon with the Mac App Store. Sure, it is great to have the convenience of the one true app store alongside the freedom to install what you please, but the power of the first tends to undermine the second until the freedom is mostly theoretical as the platform still is nearly entirely in one company's hands (e.g., the current state of Android).

Re:Android Market's most popular emulators disappear without... by starnix17 on Sunday May 29, 2011 @03:19PM (#2597302)
"e.g. making a TI-89 emulator should be ok for the market, but you can't include TI's ROM"

I don't think so. For example, I know the PSX emulator didn't include any of the required BIOS files and they are all still removed.

It seems that if someone big enough complains, Google will remove any emulator.

Re:Android Market's most popular emulators disappear without... by burgerbrain on Sunday May 29, 2011 @03:49PM (#2597389)
Well, despite acting pretty similar in the past in a few key cases (I crack my self up :P), TI has usually acted more or less sane when dealing with their hacker community. They have no issue with the numerous emulators out there for their calculators so long as you don't distribute one of their roms.

EDIT: occurs to me people might not have gotten that pun: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Texas_Instrum...

Re:Android Market's most popular emulators disappear without... by theBobMcCormick on Sunday May 29, 2011 @03:26PM (#2597321)
The big difference is that with Android, you only need to change 1 checkbox in your settings and you can download apps from outside the Android Market (That's how you install the Amazon Market for example). With the iPhone, there's no way to download apps from outside the App Store.
Re:Android Market's most popular emulators disappear without... by cma on Sunday May 29, 2011 @03:28PM (#2597323)
That's not true of all Android branded phones.
Re:Android Market's most popular emulators disappear without... by andrewpi on Sunday May 29, 2011 @03:46PM (#2597384)
Actually, I believe only AT&T blocked non-Market installs, and they are removing that restriction going forward.
Re:Android Market's most popular emulators disappear without... by drivebyacct2 on Sunday May 29, 2011 @03:39PM (#2597354)
Branded? AT&T is no longer locking down future devices, has enabled it on some of their older devices and it's easy to do via ADB.
Re:Android Market's most popular emulators disappear without... by cma on Sunday May 29, 2011 @06:10PM (#2597743)
re: branded

There are certain requirements to use the Android trademark. For instance, Barnes and Noble don't get to use the Android brand for the Nook.

Allowing unapproved apps isn't one of those requirements, and in practice some Android branded devices have indeed disallowed such apps.

Re:Android Market's most popular emulators disappear without... by foob on Sunday May 29, 2011 @03:50PM (#2597396)
So, from Honeycomb onwards, Android is no longer open source aside from the places where they are forced to be

That's factually incorrect and sounds like flamebait. They've stated that they're going to begin releasing the code again with Ice Cream Sandwich and not wanting to release bad code that was forced by a deadline isn't totally unreasonable.

the market is more of an Apple app store.

It's always been moderated. As has already been mentioned in another response the big difference is that on Android you can install apps from a different app store.

Re:Android Market's most popular emulators disappear without... by qjz on Sunday May 29, 2011 @03:58PM (#2597413)
What's factually incorrect? It's not open source if they don't release the code (no matter how bad it might be).
Re:Android Market's most popular emulators disappear without... by cookiecaper on Sunday May 29, 2011 @04:41PM (#2597541)
It's incorrect because he said "From Honeycomb onwards...". It is not an ongoing change in policy, but a one-time exception that was made specifically in the case of Honeycomb because Honeycomb was not really ready for distribution. Ice Cream Sandwich (i.e., Honeycomb+1) will be open like Froyo and its predecessors.
Re:Android Market's most popular emulators disappear without... by Daniel14 on Sunday May 29, 2011 @03:29PM (#2597326)
Android as an OS is open source, the Android Market isn't. The market is completely controlled by Google, and since you can still install .apk files without using the Market I don't think this is such a great deal as Engadget paints it to be.
Re:Android Market's most popular emulators disappear without... by Xuzz on Sunday May 29, 2011 @03:37PM (#2597348)
Well, except Honeycomb. From what I've been able to tell, that will only be open sourced when Ice Cream Sandwich is released, which appears to near at the end of the year.
Re:Android Market's most popular emulators disappear without... by Someone on Sunday May 29, 2011 @03:56PM (#2597411)
Totally unrelated: interesting phrase, that "The market is completely controlled by Google". Especially given the (accidentally, I assume) missing capital M, it made me think of the "is App Store a generic term?" discussion. I think your post shows that generic words can, at the least, come very close to being specific terms.
Re:Android Market's most popular emulators disappear without... by yanw on Sunday May 29, 2011 @04:04PM (#2597439)
Can we please stop the 'is it really open?!' silliness that gets triggered after every such incident.

They specifically said that there will be a code drop, as for the app removal it's probably due to copyright owner request and they had to comply.

Re:Android Market's most popular emulators disappear without... by potatolicious on Sunday May 29, 2011 @04:35PM (#2597526)
Your definition of open source must be different than mine - "we will drop the source if and when we feel like it" doesn't smell like an open source project to me.
Re:Android Market's most popular emulators disappear without... by cookiecaper on Sunday May 29, 2011 @04:48PM (#2597562)
The GPL and LGPL components have been released. The Apache License is approved by OSI, making it an "open-source license" by that organization's definition. Copyleft is not a mandatory component of open-source. Do you want to argue that *BSD is not really open-source because of its non-copyleft license? It may not match Stallman's definition of Free Software, but it does match OSI's definition of "open-source".

Google has a right to withhold the non-copyleft components if they don't feel they're ready for distribution. Open-source doesn't mean that you can force someone's hand if they're not ready to share. Can you call Theo de Raat and compel him to release an unpublished branch of modifications to OpenBSD and then accuse him of not really developing open-source programs because he only releases source "if and when he feels like it".

Google's hand was forced on Honeycomb and it wasn't really ready for distribution. If you're upset about this, you shouldn't buy a Honeycomb product because it doesn't come with a full stack of source. That's a great idea. Honeycomb+1 will have source like its predecessors.