Re:Google confirms Android 4.0 ICS is open source
by dman on Thursday October 20, 2011 @10:54AM
(#3135097)
If the code is unfit for others to read why is it being shipped in production devices?
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Re:Google confirms Android 4.0 ICS is open source
by dabeeeenster on Thursday October 20, 2011 @11:18AM
(#3135224)
Because the quality of the source code and the quality of the resultant binaries are two completely different things.
Re:Google confirms Android 4.0 ICS is open source
by sovande on Thursday October 20, 2011 @12:19PM
(#3135543)
The source code is used to produce the "resultant binaries" so unless you have a very strange definition of "quality" the OP has a very valid question.
Re:Google confirms Android 4.0 ICS is open source
by zmmmmm on Thursday October 20, 2011 @06:56PM
(#3137490)
> a very strange definition of "quality"
Is it strange that, say, comments are stripped out of a binary? Or that the file names of the source files are not in there? These things are examples of aspects of quality that have no impact on the binary but make a big difference to the quality of the source.
Re:Google confirms Android 4.0 ICS is open source
by notatoad on Thursday October 20, 2011 @11:14AM
(#3135200)
because Google felt they had to release something to stop manufacturers shoehorning 2.2 into tablets and making thelm look bad.
Re:Google confirms Android 4.0 ICS is open source
by Tobu on Thursday October 20, 2011 @02:03PM
(#3136007)
Because the industry norm for consumer gadgets is short product cycles, with the production of terrible quality code that doesn't see much maintenance after the release. Most users won't notice.
Even a "quality" product like the iPhone was shipped with everything running as root and a mess in the filesystem (and that's for a platform that has been maintained since).