This has come up here in a number of other threads, and I wanted to consolidate the subject somewhere.

Open has become a term being thrown around a lot, without a solid meaning behind it. Without a solid definition, it's hard to narrow down what benefits come from it. In a way, it seems to have moved from having meaning in software development more into a marketing term. Almost similar to how "HD" moved from being specific definitions on resolution in regards to a TV, to a term marketing latched onto and slaps on things from "HD radio" to "Real Racing HD" for the iPad.

As discussed in the iPad 2 thread, open even has a different meaning for a kid when it comes to tech. Instead of meaning open source, he sees it as being an open and welcoming experience. Similar to how businesses welcome in new customers with a friendly "Yes, We're Open" sign.

One of the reason I bring this up is because of the usage of Open when it comes to Android. As I touched on in my Captivate review thread, it's not really well defined on what open means to the end user of an Android device. It's open to allow carriers to lock devices down farther then the closed devices from Apple, RIM or Microsoft. It's not open for me as an end user to be able to remove an app bundled with the phone unless I cross the hacker threshold and unlock the phone, allowing the firmware to be changed. Even this avenue of "open to hackers" is being hardened with newer iterations of phones, requiring more work to defeat efuses and other lockout methods. How is open a benefit here for end users when the phone is just as closed as an iPhone?

Making news recently is the story about the Honeycomb source. "Open" as defined by Andy Rubin, VP of Engineering at Google, is access to the source code. On February 24th, the Xoom shipped with Honeycomb loaded (Android 3.0), and as of March 25th, the source is not available. And reports indicate Google has no interest in releasing the source anytime soon.

The reason the "Open" tag applied to Android frustrates me is that it doesn't seem open to me when compared against other open projects. Mozilla is a great example here. Almost everything about their company is truly open. Right now I can go and see the source code being checked in for Firefox and other products, be it the current releases, or the next major one. I can also download the source for any of their web sites, including the server side code not revealed via view source in browsers. I've even just hopped into their publicly accessible developer chat channels and attended developer meetings about milestones on projects.

Similarly, the Linux kernel is just as open. Every dev version is there, accessible to anyone to do whatever they want with, bound by the license of course. (I'm intentionally avoiding the various licenses and the discussion that accompanies that subject for now).

Because of these different open approaches and my exposure to them, the "Open"ness that Google touts just rubs me the wrong way. I'm not specifically championing open all the time (obvious by my personal use of Apple products), but I do appreciate consistent and clear communication from a company about their intentions. Apple once used to proclaim open as a feature themselves, but have backed away from using the term publicly a while ago. They do still contribute to and create a lot of true open source projects, along with open standards and interfaces. But they don't use it as a marketing term. To me, the continued use of Open from Google in regards to Android simply dirties the meaning, and misleads people by promoting benefits that don't actually exist. If they want to control their source and close down platforms, that is their decision and I'm fine with it. But at least be honest about it.

In follow-up to Matt from the iPad 2 thread:

Matt, "open" has a lot of definitions and they're all in the dictionary. Open doesn't have to have anything in particular to do with software. No one outside of geeks know or care about the "open" discussion being marketed by iOS detractors.

You posted this while I was writing my post. Like I say in the following, I'm fine with that, but my basic response is the last line in this post.


Excellent post, Tom, and frankly, I completely agree with everything you said. I've been frustrated myself with the doublespeak we've heard from Google, and it frustrates me even more to see what the carriers have done to make things even less open than the already arguably open base of Android. So to make matters worse, in addition to there being different definitions of "open," companies are starting to try to pass of different degrees of the technical definition of the word.

Speaking to the first portion of your post (relating to the discussion in the iPad thread), I can agree that there are different definitions of "open." My problem starts when you start mixing those definitions just to fit an argument. I'm perfectly fine with "open" meaning "an open and welcoming experience." I think that's very true of Apple's products.

But to then say that this shows how Apple's products are actually more "open" than the competition, you're obviously referring to previous arguments about openness, which was always a technical argument. This drives me up the wall when people argue in this fashion.

Going back to the start of my post, if we're talking about the technical definition of "open," I don't see any way (and I think most unbiased tech pundits are agreeing on this), that iOS can be seen as "more open" than Android. The fact remains that at its core, Android can at least be freely loaded onto any company's devices. The fast that most of the companies who have taken advantage of this have produced the worst CE devices ever made ( ) is irrelevant. Yes, there are proprietary apps placed on top of Android.

I'm now willing to concede that for the average consumer, the promise of Android's "openness" might, sadly, be irrelevant as well. Google's fault in that is their trust that manufacturers and carriers wouldn't completely F*** with a good thing and screw over the consumer like they ALWAYS DO. For that, I'm pretty pissed off myself, and it's the reason I've stuck with stock Android phones.

To sum up: I'm fine with different definitions of the word "open" when talking about the tech world. I only ask that we not confuse the issue by mixing those definitions.

To my knowledge, the first use of "open" in relation to computing was as "open systems", which largely meant Unix, and VMS to a somewhat lesser extent, as opposed to various mainframe operating systems. The point there was that various Unix systems were intended to be interoperable and interchangeable, through the use of standardized APIs and such, at least to some extent. If you didn't like your vendor, you could move to another without too much heartache, while at the same time Amdahl was suing IBM to be allowed to produce IBM-compatible mainframes (or maybe the other way around). This quickly came to refer to POSIX and related standards.

After Unix became the norm for large-scale computing, "open" came to mean "open source", which meant that you could modify software without input from the vendor.

Now we're talking about "open platforms", which, ignoring the ramblings of a 14 year old, has tended to mean systems that allow modification to some extent. This may mean an OS that allows arbitrary programs to be loaded, a computer that allows modification of its operating system, or a number of other things. I'm perfectly willing to admit that this newer idea is not all that well defined.

However, the one thing that seems to unify all of these things is vendor independence. If I didn't like HP, I could dump them and move to DEC. If I didn't like the way sendmail worked, I could recompile it to do something else. If I didn't like the built-in software on my Nexus One, I could completely reinstall the OS.

I cannot see how any of this can possibly be related to anything that Apple is doing with its iOS. I'm not going to fault them for lack of interoperability. They were pretty much creating a new market where there wasn't really anything to be compatible with. (Well, J2ME, maybe.) However, they are definitely trying their best to tie you in. You are not allowed to modify the base OS on pain of losing your hardware warranty, you are not allowed to install anything that Apple hasn't manually approved, etc.

Unfortunately, some vendors of Android devices have subverted the idea of this type of openness by locking down their hardware. Android itself is still open (I'll ignore the Honeycomb issue for the moment), although it's being installed on hardware platforms that aren't. If Google is going to release the source code for anyone to use, there's not really a great way to prevent vendors from modifying it however they want and doing what they want with it. Yeah, okay, I'll admit that a license could be changed to prevent that sort of abuse, but mobile phone companies aren't likely to put their eggs in that basket, and I imagine that Google knew that going in.

As far as Honeycomb goes, I think that the issue has been overblown. I suspect that they simply don't want to release the source code as it appears right now. I expect that they worked closely with Samsung and maybe some other vendors and might have used some non-open software in order to hit a deadline. Or maybe they're just embarrassed of it right now. We may or may not ever see Honeycomb source code, but I expect we will see open source code that will run on those systems. (Assuming that the hardware vendors haven't closed their systems to prevent that. And if they have, having the source code isn't really going to do anyone any good anyway.)

Now, if you want to use the term "open" to mean "welcoming", you can certainly do that. It's a perfectly legitimate definition. However, it's not what "open" has ever meant in relation to computing. In addition, conflating the two definitions is either misinformed or disingenuous.

Android is certainly in an unfortunate predicament with its openness, on two fronts. There are legitimate arguments against its openness based on the closedness of many of the platforms it runs on, and the lack of release of the source for Honeycomb is troubling (though I personally expect that it will work out). Apple, however, has avoided this by simply not having iOS be open in the first place.

There's no way that Google would not have known or had an idea that the current situation was going to transpire. No one can argue that Android itself isn't open since you can freely obtain and modify the source code. The very definition of open pretty much.

I've always argued that most Android products are not themselves open. Yes, you can generally install unapproved apps, but you can't modify the OS or pre-installed apps.

The bottom line with regards to Android is that it's all working out well for Google. They haven't released it as a gift to the world out of any generosity. It's a business platform and a damn fine one at that. Their core business is advertising and Android is the best billboard ever made. In fact, it's billboard with a direct line to their bank account. Like a deposit ATM built in.

For all the work Google are doing, their platform is being adopted by industry thanks to its low entry fee (time is still money) and gaining a wide install base thanks to device and brand diversity. It's not as cohesive as iOS and it's not necessarily helping any single licensee to gain the leading position in the market, but they're still selling devices while eliminating a significant amount of development cost. And it's doing for Google what it was designed to do. Bring in a shitload of ad revenue. Everyone's happy.

I'll say it again... When it comes time for me to work on a consumer device that needs a small OS where I also need graphics capabilities and the ability to write smaller apps for launch or a later release, I'm definitely choosing Android. It's pretty much a no-brainer. Just look at the Nook from B&N as a perfect example - at least at launch time it was.

Back in 1985 or so, DC Comics decided to reboot their entire universe. It ended up being covered in some mainstream media because that meant that Superman was changing. Superman, before the reboot, had become really, really, powerful, to the point that nothing was a threat to him anymore. This limited the stories that DC wanted to tell using the character. So one of the things that they decided to do was to rein in Superman's powers. For example, he could no longer move planets, or hold his breath indefinitely, or absorb unlimited amounts of damage.

Some big publication (Time, maybe?) interviewed John Byrne, the man who was going to be the first to write the new Superman, and who was a significant contributor to the changes that were made. He told the journalist interviewing him, amongst other things, that Superman would no longer be able to survive anything that could possibly happen to him. However, what he said was that Superman was going to be "more vulnerable".

Of course, the journalist took this to mean that Superman was going to be more open with his emotions, and wear his heart on his sleeve. Byrne, of course, meant absolutely nothing of the sort, and that definition didn't even occur to him. However, it was picked up everywhere that there was going to be a new touchy-feely Superman.

Now, it's understandable the leap that the journalist made. It wasn't really a leap for him. And it's understandable that Byrne didn't consider that he could be misinterpreted. However, despite the understandability of those mistakes, that doesn't make them not mistakes, and it doesn't mean that someone who has less armor is more emotional, any more than it means that someone who is depressed is cyanotic, or a computer system that's easy to use has its source code available.