The author mentions "you can have control or compatibility, but not both". That's basically another way or saying "you can fragment the platform all you want, or choose compatibility (i.e. let Google control the platform across OEMs)". Remember when people were yelling from the rooftops "Android is so fragmented, and why it's always behind iOS! Google, give us standardization already!!"?
Linux' biggest problem has been that Microsoft moved much faster to get Windows on as many PCs as possible through certain corporate deals, but in terms of gaining market share, the Linux ecosystem has also worked against itself, but allowing everyone to fork it into hundreds of different distributions, all doing different stuff, and with barely even a weak app store across several distributions.
Linux is "everywhere", because everyone can fork it, and Android has certainly benefited from this strategy in the early years, too, but that seems to be an antithesis to an "ecosystem". As we can observe, even though "Linux is everywhere" in all sorts of devices, there's no significant "ecosystem".
Google wants to keep and evolve the Android ecosystem, because that makes it much easier for users, and also developers to develop on top of a well standardized ecosystem of devices and OS images. I guess for an proper ecosystem to thrive, it needs to be controlled and standardized as much as possible, with restrictions for OEMs and carriers.
The only alternative for the others, if they really want to start from the Android base, will be to form their own ecosystem, but that's very hard, unless we get to the point where only the web matters on mobile devices, too.
> The author mentions "you can have control or compatibility, but not both".
Or you can be like Apple, controlling everything while still taking the liberty of shitting down developer's throats (who are delighted to be at the receiving end, for some reason).
Linux' biggest problem has been that Microsoft moved much faster to get Windows on as many PCs as possible through certain corporate deals, but in terms of gaining market share, the Linux ecosystem has also worked against itself, but allowing everyone to fork it into hundreds of different distributions, all doing different stuff, and with barely even a weak app store across several distributions.
Linux is "everywhere", because everyone can fork it, and Android has certainly benefited from this strategy in the early years, too, but that seems to be an antithesis to an "ecosystem". As we can observe, even though "Linux is everywhere" in all sorts of devices, there's no significant "ecosystem".
Google wants to keep and evolve the Android ecosystem, because that makes it much easier for users, and also developers to develop on top of a well standardized ecosystem of devices and OS images. I guess for an proper ecosystem to thrive, it needs to be controlled and standardized as much as possible, with restrictions for OEMs and carriers.
The only alternative for the others, if they really want to start from the Android base, will be to form their own ecosystem, but that's very hard, unless we get to the point where only the web matters on mobile devices, too.