Google confirms Android 4.0 ICS is open source

Re:Google confirms Android 4.0 ICS is open source by Tyrannosaurs on Thursday October 20, 2011 @12:31PM (#3135598)

I agree that they were happy claiming the kudos and moral high ground that comes with OSS without really delivering on it but the reality is that the versions you list are running on an estimated 4 million devices (tablet sales to date) of the 550,000 being activated every day. Somewhere in the region of 98% of Android devices (all the phones currently available) are running an OSS OS.

And if you don't mean to accuse someone of making shit up the easiest thing to do is to not use the phrase "making shit up".

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Re:Google confirms Android 4.0 ICS is open source by pingswept on Thursday October 20, 2011 @12:59PM (#3135711)

Your first sentence is basically what I think is happening, so I'll soften the language to be less abrasive. I don't think it's a fundamentally different claim-- they're saying it's open source while not releasing the source. It's dishonest.

Your stat about the 98% of Android devices is somewhat convincing. 3.0 and 4.0 aren't a fork for tablets though, are they? Future phones will use 3.0 and/or 4.0, right?

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Re:Google confirms Android 4.0 ICS is open source by km3k on Thursday October 20, 2011 @01:18PM (#3135795)

> 3.0 and 4.0 aren't a fork for tablets though, are they?

3.0 was essentially a fork for tablets. 4.0 is where they merged that fork back so it works on both phones and tablets, which is why they will be releasing the source of 4.0.

This says to me that Google felt that the user experience on phones is so important to them that they're ok with a closed source fork for tablets as a way to keep people from running Android 3.x code on phones and having a poorer user experience.

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