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A comment on Neither Microsoft, Nokia, nor anyone else should fork Android. It’s unforkable.. Parent comment

Re:Neither Microsoft, Nokia, nor anyone else should fork And... by mwcampbell on Saturday February 08, 2014 @02:35PM (#7202252)
Then maybe it's better to discuss whether Android, as ultimately delivered to end-users, is free software.

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-even-more-import...

Regardless of whether most users know what to do with the source code, are they free to ask or hire a developer of their choice to study and modify it on their behalf? drdaeman's point, which seems inarguable to me, is that with most Android devices, the answer is no, because Sony/Samsung/Motorola are free to use AOSP code under the Apache license, but they don't pass that freedom on to the user.

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Re:Neither Microsoft, Nokia, nor anyone else should fork And... by notatoad on Saturday February 08, 2014 @02:46PM (#7202324)
I believe that's called "moving the goalposts". Android is free. that's what the original discussion was. No, most of the time products based on android as delivered to customers are not free software. But that doesn't mean android isn't free.
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Re:Neither Microsoft, Nokia, nor anyone else should fork And... by rquirk on Saturday February 08, 2014 @03:31PM (#7202551)
As usual, RMS had this sussed out years before everyone else realised what was going on http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/sep/19/android-fr...
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Re:Neither Microsoft, Nokia, nor anyone else should fork And... by sixbrx on Monday February 10, 2014 @09:58AM (#7211367)
Well it also implies that Android isn't popular with consumers so isn't much worth talking about, as consumers.
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Re:Neither Microsoft, Nokia, nor anyone else should fork And... by ZeroGravitas on Sunday February 09, 2014 @03:41AM (#7204887)
Relevant to this discussion is that Google's nefarious plans (more people using the internet) would have been met even with a fully free software stack. They had to expend more effort building an Apache codebase to appease their partners, who wanted to have their own (minor) proprietary forks.

This actually makes Android more attractive to Microsoft and generally increases the chance of a divergent, proprietary fork, which I believe Kindle already is.

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