Though Android is an open source platform, Google adds its proprietary applications when it is rolled out. This is where some of the open source contributors who wanted to provide modified distributions are facing hurdles. So a new alliance has been put together – Open Android Alliance – with an aim to replace all the proprietary applications with open source equivalents. The team is also collaborating with the Replicant Project to speed up the development.
It will be interesting how Google approaches this. The alliance maintains that it is not “anti-Google” but “pro-Android”, and hopefully they won’t mean the same for Google. I am sure Google knows open source is very efficient in creating functional equivalents and improvements. Having said that, its popularity will depend on whether the alliance is able to replace with complete equivalents. I sincerely hope this alliance picks up momentum and gives us a fully open sourced Android based mobile OS.
October 3rd, 2009 at 8:54 am
Nice article. I was not familier with the “Android” system, but I am going to look into it after reading this post. Thanks for the new information. Good Job!
January 23rd, 2010 at 8:47 pm
well , Google is really push hard on Android. IMHO they want to be the next microsoft.
open source is just a gimmick word to get the developers interested I believe because you need to ‘hack’ to access to the root.
Alternative such as Maemo(pure linux) allows you to access root directly.
January 23rd, 2010 at 8:53 pm
we also have Open Source Symbian Foundation. symbian.org
They seem have big plans for this year with the release of Symbian 3 and Symbian 4. It kind of look dated right now with S60 v5 (Symbian 1 and 2) but I’m pretty sure Symbian 4 will change the image.