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Google commits to open source Android 4 and calendar API
SMARTPHONE DEVELOPER Google has said that it will open source its Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich operating system and make changes to some of the application programming interfaces (APIs).
Google's recent release of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich left some wondering if the company would continue to release the source code for the popular operating system. Google engineer Dan Morrill wrote in a Google Groups post, "We plan to release the source for the recently-announced Ice Cream Sandwich soon, once it's available on devices."
Google also revealed that it will finally document the Android Calendar API. The firm warned that calendar applications using low-level unsupported access methods are unlikely to work in the future. It also announced there will be a text-to-speech API in Ice Cream Sandwich, while it will no longer support the old, unofficial C++ API.
Google's Tim Bray also explained why some APIs were not documented and said it wasn't part of a plan by the firm to hide them from developers. Writing on the Android Developers blog, Bray said, "We're not claiming that they're 'Private' or 'Secret' - How could they be, when anyone in the world can discover them? We're also not claiming they're forbidden: If you use them, your code will compile and probably run. And in fact we know of quite a few apps out there whose developers have used undocumented APIs, often to good effect. It's hard to get too upset about this in cases where there's a useful API that we haven't gotten around to stabilising."
Google has very little to gain from taking Android closed source. One of its biggest selling points is the ability for handset makers and enthusiasts to tinker with the software without having to follow prescribed recipes from Google. µ
Tags: Google
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I thought anything based on Linux had to be open sourced.
I'll believe it when I see it. Right now we have a year of closed source behavior, which isn't exactly confidence inspiring.
Don't be evil, riiight.
Google's attitude towards open source seems very similar to their attitude towards net neutrality, that is that they say they are in favor but they only say that because it sounds cool, in reality they don't understand what they say and aren't really with it in their hearts and happily do the opposite when it suits a need.
Android is not a community effort. The last Google needs is a community slowing them down (see MeeGo for more information) and spend countless hours arguing which code should be rewritten from scratch while Microsoft‘s and Apple‘s breath can be felt in their necks. They ‘get‘ open source more than you fo, and that‘s why they don‘t go all in.
The community‘s contribution is overrated, especially in mobiles where there isn‘t much commodity hardware. Is Android not entirely open? Sure. But if Android didn‘t exist, there wouldn‘t be no Replicant OS (which is fully open source), just Windows Phone 7 and iOS. You know that Google could have just made NDA agreements with OEMs and not open source a thing, but they did the pro-bono act of open sourcing it. Google actually saved open source‘s bacon in mobiles. But asking for active community involvement in the development process is too much.
Seems google doesn't get open source, where the idea is that the community has people who can help stabilize things.
Or is there something else going on? I remind you that these are the same people who constantly claim they 'accidentally' are tracking people and gathering info on them, and what if one of those 'unstable' bits of codes 'accidentally' records your personal info and transmits them to their db?
Calendar for Henri years