Unfortunately it looks like Google's "open source" solution isn't the panacea originally hoped for, and while they aren't being "evil" they don't mind being a little malevolent. Oh well, time to switch to a truly open AGPL/linked web based system.
@huh: it has more to do with setting a minimum standard for Android. Google is using their apps and the Market as leverage to force manufacturers to attain a certain standard.
@kidphat I see your point, but gmail &c are pretty basic parts of the experience. Gmail should work anywhere, this seems more like extortion and is certainly far away from many ideals.
@kidphat Minimum standards or not, if a large portion of what people think of as "android" is proprietary and only the base OS source code is freely available then there's really not much difference at the end of the day between a handset maker installing android plus the proprietary Google apps pretty much everyone has to ship with, versus just going with a proprietary alternative. It's not like you can really get away with shipping an Android handset that can't use Marketplace and without Gmail integration. What about the browser for that matter, is that proprietary as well? If half the things needed to make Android usable are proprietary then it's no different than any other proprietary OS.
The browser is based on Webkit and Apple made sure they released it as open source, Google can't lock it up in their walled garden like the things they have locked up here.
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Unfortunately it looks like Google's "open source" solution isn't the panacea originally hoped for, and while they aren't being "evil" they don't mind being a little malevolent. Oh well, time to switch to a truly open AGPL/linked web based system.
@huh: it has more to do with setting a minimum standard for Android. Google is using their apps and the Market as leverage to force manufacturers to attain a certain standard.
@kidphat I see your point, but gmail &c are pretty basic parts of the experience. Gmail should work anywhere, this seems more like extortion and is certainly far away from many ideals.
@kidphat Minimum standards or not, if a large portion of what people think of as "android" is proprietary and only the base OS source code is freely available then there's really not much difference at the end of the day between a handset maker installing android plus the proprietary Google apps pretty much everyone has to ship with, versus just going with a proprietary alternative. It's not like you can really get away with shipping an Android handset that can't use Marketplace and without Gmail integration. What about the browser for that matter, is that proprietary as well? If half the things needed to make Android usable are proprietary then it's no different than any other proprietary OS.
@tekdemon
The browser is based on Webkit and Apple made sure they released it as open source, Google can't lock it up in their walled garden like the things they have locked up here.
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@hill60 I hope you know Webkit was based on a KDE (basically a Linux GUI) effort, KHTML, which was inherently free/open source (LGPL).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KHTML
@huh
So why didn't Google use Konquerer instead of Apple's FORK, you do know what a fork is right?
Apple made WebKit by forking konquerer and adding in bucketloads of javascript support.
Open
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Open
Unlike Google's tyrannical clampdown on their closed stuff.
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@hill60 I think it's a good thing Google used Apple's fork. I don't think the "evil" thing is doing much good here.