Yummy new CPU/GPU combo

thomasg thomas at gstaedtner.net
Tue Jun 3 22:08:52 CEST 2008


No, you got me wrong in some points. I was talking about Picasa, Google
Earth and the other Google software.
The android SDK is widely open source, so there's nothing wrong about it.
They don't have a chance to push a proprietary SDK out, because nobody would
ever use it as there is no product yet.
But the SDK is only an SDK - it does not and will not contain new drivers
that the vendors use for their hardware. It will not be used to deploy a
kind of distribution or images like Openmoko (OpenEmbedded) does. It is a
SDK to deploy your applications on the platform, be it closed (and you can
be sure there: it will be in a wide area) or not, in the terms google or the
vendor likes.
With the effort I meant, that android uses GPL only where it is absolutely
necessary (linux kernel and so) and use own commercial licenses (at least
for now, but the promised to release them under an OSS license, believe them
or not) and licenses with far less restrictions (MPL, BSD and so on) that
allows the vendors or deployers to keep their stuff based on it closed.

On the other hand google is really supporting FOSS-software. Best example is
of course GSoC what is a really good thing (even if it's clear that it also
has a purpose for google, but that doesn't matter in the end) and may not be
left out of this discussion.

All I want to say: Android is _not_ an alternative to Openmoko - at least
not for people that care about absolute openness and freedom.



On Tue, Jun 3, 2008 at 7:53 PM, Robert Taylor <robtaylor at tinsputnik.com>
wrote:

> Wow, I didn't know that.
>
> Google does contribute to various open source projects, but they sure as
> hell don't seem to drink the punch.
>
> Thanks for the info, that completely defines my view of Android.
>
> And they use WINE to run android dev stuff on linux?  My god - that
> beggars the imagination.
>
> - Rob
>
> Rahul Joshi wrote:
> > +1
> > Just the kind of thing I want to hear.
> >
> > On Tue, Jun 3, 2008 at 9:41 PM, Robert Schuster <theBohemian at gmx.net
> > <mailto:theBohemian at gmx.net>> wrote:
> >
> >     Hi.
> >
> >     thomasg schrieb:
> >     > And for those who think android will bring hardware support for new
> >     > devices to the FOSS-world: forget about it.
> >     > Google doesn't care about open source if it's not used to save
> >     costs.
> >     > They didn't even release their own from-scratch-software as
> >     opensource -
> >     > hell, they use _wine_ to run it under linux.
> >     > Android isn't about freedom. It's about saving license fees,
> nothing
> >     > else (and they did some effort to make it as easy as possible
> >     for closed
> >     > source and vendors).
> >     Thats it.
> >
> >     Regards
> >     Robert
> >
> >
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> >
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