>The "android isn't very open source" sentiment really bothers me and I see it a lot here. It is a complete and fully functional mobile OS under extremely permissive licensing. Pull it! Change it! Build it! Fork it! Whatever!
The fact that you could theoritically "fork it and change it" doesn't change the fact that Android, the thing that is actually shipped, is not open itself, in the sense that it's not a community project, where everybody's opinion has equal weight based on their work, community standing, etc.
Without an actual community behind it, like Gnome or KDE, or FreeBSD have, one cannot influence it much, one's vote doesn't count, and "fork it and change it" is not really feasible -- who'll be paying for that?
>The code is there in a series of open git repos and under Apache license. That is open source in my book.
Well, that's the least interesting part of being open source. The actual important attribute of being open source is being a community project (cathedral vs bazaar etc).
The fact that you could theoritically "fork it and change it" doesn't change the fact that Android, the thing that is actually shipped, is not open itself, in the sense that it's not a community project, where everybody's opinion has equal weight based on their work, community standing, etc.
Without an actual community behind it, like Gnome or KDE, or FreeBSD have, one cannot influence it much, one's vote doesn't count, and "fork it and change it" is not really feasible -- who'll be paying for that?
>The code is there in a series of open git repos and under Apache license. That is open source in my book.
Well, that's the least interesting part of being open source. The actual important attribute of being open source is being a community project (cathedral vs bazaar etc).