Robert Pogson

SJVN writes that Google is making a blunder by withholding source code for Android Honeycomb. He has a point. Google is not making best use of the FLOSS idea by keeping the source closed. It is a trap that creative people fall into, assuming they “know best”. Google is no different. Google has gone far out of its way to choose ASL instead of GPL for the licence and now wants to withhold the code for commercial advantage… or something. Google is big and like M$ can take too much upon itself resulting in a product with artificial limitations and too many bugs.

Google, WAKE UP! What commercial advantage might be obtained by standardizing the product and tweaking it in-house will be lost if Google allows M$ to steam-roll “8″ all over the ARMed ecosystem. You will have all the commercial advantage you want by getting the product as is into the hands of a few hundred million people before M$ has a release. That takes a year, Google. Make good use of the time. Don’t risk it all by assuming you can beat M$ and all its partners in a standing start. Maybe you can. Maybe you cannot. If you expand into a vacuum and secure the high ground first, the chances of success are many times higher.