Google Android Engineer echos what I have been feeling for quite a while as he declares that Google itself is a major bottleneck when it comes to Android being an Open-Source project.
This has been evidenced as of late where Google bends to its relationship with T-Mobile by block tethering apps for US T-Mobile customers via the Android Market.
The Android Market itself was something that Google never wanted to maintain or oversee as they initially envisioned it to be self governing by users separating the good and bad apps by rating them with starred comments.
Following Android early on and knowing Google’s mentality I could see that they just wanted Android to be a catalyst for breaking open mobile Internet use where as after that people can use whatever resulting mobile setup so as long as it increases their Internet use which Google would monetize.
Its analogous to a parent holding a child as they learn how to ride a bike and then back away as the training wheels come off.
Google now sees itself having to continually push the bike as the child folds its arms and raises its legs saying the bike isn’t going fast enough.
This is echoed by the Android engineer that offers the greatest direct and honest insight to its development within Google, JBQ.
He stated on Sunday April 5th in the Android Discuss Google Group:
“At the moment, it’s clear to me (being in the middle of it) that Google is a major bottleneck when it comes to Android as an Open-Source project.
As such, you can expect that we’ll focus our energy primarily on things that only Google can do, and much less on things that can also be done by anyone in the community (assuming skills/time, of course), so that the desired end result can be reached as quickly as possible.
Putting together nightly builds, opening and maintaining a wiki (… and helping direct traffic on the mailing lists, which you’ve been doing) are aspects where the community as a whole can get involved right now without help from Google. We’re also looking for contributors to sanitize the behavior of the open-source tree on dream, or to decouple some unfortunate proprietary dependencies that still exist in the source tree. As time goes and more of the
Google-only tasks get completed, more such options will open.”
Do you think Android can survive without Google steering the ship now or is it still too early and once Google can ween off more and more to outside contributors will Android really flourish?
5 comments… read them below or add one
“Do you think Android can survive without Google steering the ship now or is it still too early and once Google can ween off more and more to outside contributors will Android really flourish?”
Holy convoluted metaphors, Batman!
;-)
My interpretation of JBQ’s comment is that the core Android team is focusing exclusively on firmware development and some degree of assistance via the discussion lists. Anything past that is up for grabs.
Some will look at that comment and think that Google is shirking its responsibilities, and there’s probably a little something to that. For example, I suspect the Symbian Foundation will have a much firmer hand in community leadership and coordination.
On the other hand, JBQ’s comment does better illuminate where the dividing line between Google/OHA and the community resides. For me at least, I was always hesitant to try doing too much in the way of community infrastructure, fearing/expecting such infrastructure to show up from Google and waste my effort. Knowing that such infrastructure is unlikely at least “clears the deck” for more community-led initiatives, or efforts from handset manufacturers or other OHA members.
I could understand your points if Google was the mobile carrier… but they’re not.
If it was their network (or they were the virtual network operator) they could do whatever they pleased – they could let us tether all they want.
However, most carriers frown upon tethering simply because it cuts into their revenue stream – why would AT&T allow you to use their EDGE/3G data while tethered, when they could sell you an air card and make a lot more money? They’re a business and are simply protecting their investment.
As far as Google being a bottleneck – I think they have every right to control what’s released for the time being. After all we’ve only had this platform for a short period of time and it’s not 100% mature. It’s got its shortcomings, yes, but just give it time. Android will be huge.
I think the bike needs a harder push.
Here are some things that can help (although Google may not be able to influence these things directly)
1) More user adoption (ie more handsets in peoples hands, resulting from more available models on more networks)
2) Multi-touch interface. Google had the lines of code in there, then edited them out at Apple’s request. You didn’t just take the training wheels of the bike, you took the handle bars too!
3) Porting tools for developers to make it easy to port apps from mobile.NET or iphone to Android. Without phones in user’s/developer’s hands, this is the next best way to encourage adoption of the platform to reach…
THE GOAL (which is nowhere defined in this post). I assume THE GOAL is for the “open source” OS to be updated and maintained by the OSS community? Well, follow the 3 points above and you’ll get there, but without continual pushing on Google’s part, the bike is going to fall over until then.
If google thinks that Open Source works by passing on nightly builds, wiki maintenance, and other scut work on to volunteers (aka suckers), they really need to study other OSS projects.
In the meantime I assume this frees up our godly Google engineers to brilliantly (and slowly) reinvent from scratch “official” APIs which replicate the 15 years of mature, stable, standardized, and well known components which already exist on the phone in the linux stack.
To emphasize my last point, JesusFreke, sauris, and only a handful of others have brought me WAY more functionality using the Linux stack than the entire million dollar Google team with their pseudo-Java.
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A good read:
http://www.techunits.com/content/list_all/100/android