News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Google confirms Android 4.0 ICS is open source by MatthewPhillips on Thursday October 20, 2011 @12:01PM (#3135438)
That goes against the principle of open-source. The principle is that by releasing code to the public you will get contributions from others (an extra set of eyes) that will make the project overall better.

But to accept this principle to have to also accept that some people will take your code and use it in ways that you don't approve. The hope/belief is that the good will float to the top. If you don't accept this premise then you don't really have an open-source project.

I can't figure out why Android open sources its code, ever. They don't seem to care about contributions from the community, and they obviously don't want people using their code in ways they disapprove of. It seems that the major reason for open sourcing their code must be something else. What I keep coming back to is that it somehow protects them (in most cases) of patent violations.

I've asked this in the past: what is Andy Rubin's open-source credentials? What open-source projects has he been involved in during his long and successful career?

Re:Google confirms Android 4.0 ICS is open source by km3k on Thursday October 20, 2011 @01:08PM (#3135755)
> They don't seem to care about contributions from the community

Google accepts a lot of patches from the community. Many of the major custom ROMs regularly submit patches. Things aren't perfect at the moment since all this infrastructure was hosted at kernel.org and is still down, so I can't link you directly to examples of public patch submissions and code review, unfortunately. But I can tell you they used Gerrit for that code review.

Re:Google confirms Android 4.0 ICS is open source by telcodud on Thursday October 20, 2011 @06:13PM (#3137343)
Re:Google confirms Android 4.0 ICS is open source by km3k on Sunday October 23, 2011 @02:00PM (#3146770)
That's correct. I should have mentioned that. Do you know if the gerrit code review website is back? I haven't been able to find a working URL for it.
Re:Google confirms Android 4.0 ICS is open source by telcodud on Tuesday October 25, 2011 @09:10PM (#3156670)
FTA: There are a few limitations to be aware of: - Our priority has been getting the main source code mirrors back online, so for the moment gitweb source browsing and Gerrit Code Review are still unavailable.