What is all this proclaimed openness worth if it still boils down to exploiting security systems if you want to run that system you just modified?
Of all the android devices currently available, the N1 (which is around a year old and getting outpaced by newer devices) is the only one that even remotely allows you to play with it in a truly open way.
Open isn't "it's able to run mostly-google-certified apps". Open is: Let me modify this OS here and upload it to that device there.
Open isn't being unable to uninstall bloatware and trialware put in place by carriers to get a couple of extra bucks.
Open isn't not being able to use all the features of a handset/os just because a carrier decided they don't like the feature (with no official way of turning the functionality back on)
> What is all this proclaimed openness worth if it still boils down to exploiting security systems if you want to run that system you just modified?
Yes, because everybody can make an Android phone, even if it's too technically challenging: there will always be smaller companies that will compete on openness.
HTC, Motorolla, Samsung are competing on features, but just wait another 2 or 3 iterations.
At least Android (both the OS and the Marketplace) gives you this possibility.
but to really make a compelling Android phone, you'd also need the google apps (even if it's just for the Android Market, or now the c2d services and who knows what other features will require the google tools later on).
To get these, you have to agree to some licensing terms with Google. The terms are not publically disclosed and for what we know, it's Google forcing these security-features into these devices.
Android is completely open; it's Apache licensed and freely available and freely redistributable. The Google apps, the device drivers, and the phones themselves are not.
There is a difference. They are not all considered "Android". You can very easily live without any of those closed features if you so desire. Buy my Openmoko Freerunner from me, and you can run a 100% open Android system. You can even find or make replacement applications for all of the proprietary Google apps if you want to.
Without the Google Tools, the experience you would get on that device is subpar compared to what a device with the Google Tools would provide.
It's not the the (excellent) Gmail app we are talking about.
First and foremost, it's the Andorid Market.
I know that it's possible to install any .apk on a device, but you'd need to get them. As it stands now, most of the better-known Android applications are only available on the Android Marketplace.
So without the Google tools you don't just lose the few Google Apps (Google Talk, Gmail, Google Voice), but also most of the Android Apps currently available.
And it doesn't stop there. In Froyo, Google added the Cloud-to-Device API (that's the c2d I was referring to) which provides about the same functionality as Apples background notifications.
That, too, requires the Android Market, so a non-google-device loses that functionality as well.
This is just one feature, but it shows a trend of Google being willing to couple core API and system components to the availability of the Google tools, so you just plain don't know whether pure free Android will continue to be something you can put on a device you want to be competitive with (if any device without the Android Market can be called that nowadays even)
I think this is a very good point. While at some point in the future it will likely be possible to buy 'beige box' phone hardware and run a hand built version of Android on it, it will in actual usage be a very different beast to the devices being peddled by Motorola & HTC because of the missing access to the propriety Google apps and services.
So if the 'Google certified' version of Android wins, I'm not sure how that is good for anyone other than installing Google as the Microsoft of the mobile age. In that scenario, I'm not sure why I should be rooting for one dictator over another, other than that at least one has taste.
Of all the android devices currently available, the N1 (which is around a year old and getting outpaced by newer devices) is the only one that even remotely allows you to play with it in a truly open way.
Open isn't "it's able to run mostly-google-certified apps". Open is: Let me modify this OS here and upload it to that device there.
Open isn't being unable to uninstall bloatware and trialware put in place by carriers to get a couple of extra bucks.
Open isn't not being able to use all the features of a handset/os just because a carrier decided they don't like the feature (with no official way of turning the functionality back on)