Jean-Baptiste Queru, a Google Android Engineer, spoke out on Google Groups prefacing it with , “I’m going to get into trouble for this post… ,” concerning the accusations of a lack of openness as Google pushes to get an Android device on the shelves.
Public developers started an online petition on Android’s Google Groups as they are frustrated that Google has not provided an updated SDK (software development kit) since March 2008 – with complaints that it is buggy and some featues are not working - as well any true updates on Android since Google I/O.
Jean-Baptiste took it upon himself to speak on behalf of the Android engineers by posting today that, “we understand your pain, we communicate it back up to our management, we’re not happy about the situation either, we’d love more openness too. And, just like anybody else, we don’t like to read implications that we’re lazy, or that we’re liars, or that we don’t care about you.” He goes on to say “we’ve announced that ‘the entire platform will be made available under the very liberal, developer-friendly Apache v2 open-source license’ (sorry I had to quote that, I really have to be very careful about what I say here).”
What I found most interesting and revealing to what he posted is where he stated, “Ultimately, the market forces will prevail. This is a complex ecosystem, though, with consumers, network operators, and third-party developers playing a role (and I’m not even putting software providers and device manufacturers in the list).
The way I see it, if there are enough excellent third-party applications, consumers will be willing to pay more money for devices that can run those applications, and network operators will have an incentive to allow those applications to run.”
I applaud Jean for speaking up, even though he clarified that he is NOT the official spokesman for Android, perhaps he could fill the similar public communication role as fellow Google engineer Matt Cutts does for SEO.
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@Daniel
This is not simply a surreptitious PR move by Google just to get Android press.
I don’t see it as an example of Google purposely withholding Android just to salivate demand, but rather being sure its up to par before exposing it to a very advanced public developer community.
I sense the developer community is apprehensive toward any sign of Google not being fully open with Android after Apple’s tight guarding of the iPhone’s code.
I’ve started wondering, are all of these articles about the background hijynx of Google android vs developers just serruptitious marketing build up? If so, good job. As an end user, not a developer or even a tech of any kind, I’m just waiting for it to come out, hoping it works and doesn’t cost to much. The line “The way I see it, if there are enough excellent third-party applications, consumers will be willing to pay more money for devices that can run those applications” pretty much spells it out.