Android ‘open source’ heritage will soon be but a memory…

The Android mobile operating system, now a major competitor to Apple’s IOS, was ‘given away’ by Google as a piece of open source software some years ago. Google, in this way, mobilized the open source developers community and Android prevailed against Apple iPhone operating system to a point where it now detains 80% of the market.

The ‘open source’ gambit has paid off for Google, Android has become a valuable asset. But is Android going to be an open source system in the future?

In a recent article on Ars Technica Ron Amadeo describes how Google is now maneuvering to get around having to honor its original give-away of the Android operating system to the world of open source.

Google’s iron grip on Android: Controlling open source by any means necessary

How does Google do this? By associating closed-source apps that take parts of the open operating system’s functionality like a calender, voice or messenging app, retire the ‘old’ one and replace it with a new, but proprietary piece of software. This tends to eat into the open source code base, leaving an empty shell, rather than a living piece of software.

By doing this, Google is making it more and more difficult for any company or person to exercise the option of forking (changing) the Android code and bringing out a new version of that operating system. Google wants no part of that, although that is what ‘open source’ – and Google’s original giveaway – is really all about.

The article is rather lengthy but it is a must for google observers…

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/…

4 Comments Android ‘open source’ heritage will soon be but a memory…

  1. AvatarPaul Hughes

    Sepp, won’t Google closing it up, simply represent a closed fork to the Android OS? What’s to keep the rest of the Android community from continuing to evolve it in their own open fork? I’m guessing there are a lot of cell phone manufacturer’s who do not want to pay licensing fees or risk getting closed off by Google using one means or another. It seems to me that the most logical move is for all the developers and manufacturers is to move on using the open source version, with all of it’s amazing features (after all it is that way precisely because of the open-source community), and let Google close itself off into a proprietary rabbit hole.

  2. AvatarSepp Hasslberger

    Yes Paul, ideally that is what should happen.

    Google keeps their closed version and everyone else moves on.

    But as the article also explains, there is a strategy to what Google does, which involves making it as difficult as possible to go back to the old version as they can. The old version is gradually being emptied of content by switching parts of it to proprietary (by using a proprietary plug-in instead of the equivalent contained in the original.

    As time passes, the open source version gets smaller and smaller and more and more outdated, to where it will be exceedingly expensive to revert as you’d have to update all that parts that have been abandoned for years…

  3. AvatarSepp Hasslberger

    Another one of Google’s tricks is

    Locking-in manufacturers

    While Google is out to devalue the open source codebase as much as possible, controlling the app side of the equation isn’t the company’s only power play.

    If a company does ever manage to fork AOSP, clone the Google apps, and create a viable competitor to Google’s Android, it’s going to have a hard time getting anyone to build a device for it. In an open market, it would be as easy as calling up an Android OEM and convincing them to switch, but Google is out to make life a little more difficult than that. Google’s real power in mobile comes from control of the Google apps—mainly Gmail, Maps, Google Now, Hangouts, YouTube, and the Play Store. These are Android’s killer apps, and the big (and small) manufacturers want these apps on their phones. Since these apps are not open source, they need to be licensed from Google. It is at this point that you start picturing a scene out of The Godfather, because these apps aren’t going to come without some requirements attached.

    While it might not be an official requirement, being granted a Google apps license will go a whole lot easier if you join the Open Handset Alliance. The OHA is a group of companies committed to Android—Google’s Android—and members are contractually prohibited from building non-Google approved devices. That’s right, joining the OHA requires a company to sign its life away and promise to not build a device that runs a competing Android fork.

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