SAN FRANCISCO--Android is open-source software, but it does not come with much of an open-source society, and the Google leader of the plan explain why yesterday.
Because people can study Android's resource code, adjust it, and construct it into their own hardware, the mobile working system qualify as open-source software. But Google workout tight control over what gets built into the official Android software, what gets unconstrained as Android, and when that source code appears--especially with the tablet-oriented Honeycomb edition.
The reason for Google's move toward is so the company can manage Android's interfaces, the underlying skin texture that Android apps use, Rubin told the media at the Google I/O conference here.
These request programming interfaces (APIs) are best industrial in private and released only when Google deems them done, a method that ensure app compatibility, he said.
"Open source is different than a community-driven assignment," Rubin said, in which a broad meeting of people collectively decide the software's future. "Android is light on the community-driven side and grave on open source."
That's on purpose: "When we add new APIs, typically, in my opinion, society processes don't work because it's really hard to tell when you're complete. It's solid to tell what's release and what's a beta. Developers have to have an hope those APIs are done at a sure date. With a community process, a worker could take an early version and start structure devices. The apps would be mismatched."
In some open-source projects, such as Mozilla's Firefox or the Linux kernel, growth happens in a very able to be seen way. The source code for forthcoming features can be viewed long before those features appear in the software people actually use, and public planning take place on open mailing lists.
With Android, it's all at the back closed doors, and new features are a shock. Even with Motorola's Xoom now shipping with Honeycomb, in its Android 3.0 and now 3.1 versions, Google has yet to discharge the software's source code.
And it won't, until the discharge of Ice Cream Sandwich, the account of Android that brings Honeycomb's new border to the full range of Android devices, counting mobile phones and Google TV devices. Ice Cream Sandwich--already creature called the more suitable ICS by Google engineers--is due to appear in the fourth quarter.
Google says Honeycomb's blocked nature was an incomparable circumstance bring about by the company's need to get a pill OS to market as rapidly as possible. As a result, Google split off a special bough of Android just for tablets.
The open-source topic was a controversial one at a fireplace chat with developers at the conference. One person asked of Honeycomb, "Is the source code ever going to be really open-source?"
Dan Morrill, who's in allege of open-source software and compatibility matters for Android, said officially it would be, because the group of patches that comprise Honeycomb, each stored independently in an online Git repository, will become open finally.
The problem is that nobody exterior Google will be able to tell which patches comprise Honeycomb, because Google isn't publicly releasing that information.
"Honeycomb is a set of patch. Ice Cream Sandwich is a larger set that includes Honeycomb patches. The source will get out there. The question is will we tag it to let somebody rebuild a Honeycomb build," Morrill said "We don't know yet. It depends on how things tremble out in the fourth quarter," when Ice Cream Sandwich ships.
But Dave Sparks, technical lead for Android's media framework, was blunter.
"We're not releasing Honeycomb source," Sparks said.
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