Last summer, in a private email message, the open source and compatibility program manager for Google's Android mobile operating system told a colleague that Google uses Android compatibility as a "club" to make phone makers "do what we want".

In April 2010, Motorola and Samsung agreed to use Skyhook's location services, but in July, both companies dropped Skyhook in favor of Google's competing services. In its suit, Skyhook claims that Google Android boss Andy Rubin told Motorola co-CEO Sanjay Jha that if Motorola didn't drop Skyhook from its Android phones, Google would remove official Android support from the handsets. Without official support, Motorola could not use the Android trademark or proprietary Google services such as the Android Market or Google Maps,

Last week, a judge denied a Google effort to have Skyhook's case dismissed, and along with the judge's order, the court released various Google emails from the case. In one of these emails, from August 6, 2010, Dan Morrill – Google's open source and compatibility program manager – says in passing that phone makers are well-aware that "we are using compatibility as a club to make them do things we want"

Though it reminds me of Firefox on Debian being called IceWeasel...

I don't consider Android to be open. If Google accepted participation from the community I'd be more willing to say it was open. I think all of these stories show that Google just want to label it as open for the marketing factor.

+1
I still think Android is a good phone OS, even if it isn't open.

Indeed, much like iOS is still a good phone OS even if Apple do have their clasp around the App Store and different aspects.
It pisses me off when people go on about how Apple is so bad and Google is so good. At the end of the day they are as bad/good as each other when it comes to phones, maybe not on all points, but overall.

I don't consider Android to be open. If Google accepted participation from the community I'd be more willing to say it was open. I think all of these stories show that Google just want to label it as open for the marketing factor.

I get your point. I reckon around 7-8 out of 10 people I've spoken to would have rather had an iPhone but couldn't justify the extra costs.

I get your point. I reckon around 7-8 out of 10 people I've spoken to would have rather had an iPhone but couldn't justify the extra costs.

11 out of 10 people I've spoken to would have rather had rabies than iphone but couldn't justify the time off sick and foregone income

Community participation and Open-source are two completely separate things. Open-source means that as well as providing binaries you also allow customers to read, modify and redistribute the source code.

One can be open-source without being a community project.

Community participation and Open-source are two completely separate things. Open-source means that as well as providing binaries you also allow customers to read, modify and redistribute the source code.

One can be open-source without being a community project.

is the release of the 'honeycomb' source code considered open source ...
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/new ... ource-code

The Honeycomb download on the Asus website isn't the full Android 3.0 Honeycomb source code,

It's purely anecdotal, but there are three main reasons people I know have Android phones and not iPhones, in no particular order, they are:

- They hate Apple and its business model
- They prefer the open nature of Android
- They like the Google name/brand