Android mailing list?

Sean McNeil sean at mcneil.com
Mon Jan 19 12:01:40 CET 2009


Please take the highly opinionated statements below with a grain of 
salt. Paul (IMHO) needs to extend/increase his knowledge about Android, 
opensource projects as a whole, and the concept of internal reviewing 
before release. For those interested in Android, you can start by reading:

    http://source.android.com/

Of course there are a number of people that have built Android for your 
convenience. Just as you can find many Linux distros or OM software 
stacks pre-built for you, the Android binaries are there yet you can 
build from sources if you so desire.

I personally think that the Apache license that most of Android is based 
on is superior to the GPL. That is a flamebait topic, however, and I 
hope we can avoid discussing that point.

Getting back to the original issue, I agree that unless it is related to 
the kernel in some way then it should be moved to a more appropriate 
mailing list.

Cheers,
Sean

Paul Fertser wrote:
> Sean McNeil <sean at mcneil.com> writes:
>   
>> thomasg wrote:
>>     
>>> audience. So I read kernel and devel to not have to bother with closed
>>> source android binaries, user reports about distro bugs and so on.
>>>   
>>>       
>> I'd also like to request people stop spreading FUD. Android is not a
>> closed source project. There is a very small portion of code that is
>> waiting the release process, but everything you need to build Android
>> is now (or will be soon) provided in source form.
>>     
>
> As a matter of fact, people were exchanging links to the closed source
> binaries, you can't deny that.
>
> Moreover, Android definetely was a closed source project (anybody
> remember heroic efforts to run armv5 code on armv4?). And your remark
> "(or will be soon)" basically suggests that Android is not fully
> open-source at the moment.
>
> Furthermore, there's a fine line between "Open Source" and "Free
> software". Official android website positions Android like "a software
> stack for mobile devices", without a word about freedom. Section "Open
> Source Licensing" doesn't say anything about freedom either. Verdict:
> the wording of official website suggests that by adopting the term
> "open source" instead of "free software" you want to concentrate on
> business gains, not on Freedom and Free Software.
>
> Even more, the page at Google Code starts with "Android Market"
> description! Is it about software or about marketplace at all? Only
> the kernel code can be accessed from there in a sane way (git repo), i
> can't see neither links to SDK source, nor links to bugtracker.
>
> "Android Market"? Heh, i'd better go somewhere else! Not because i
> am in fear or uncertain, quite the opposite!
>
>   




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