Shockingly yes, if nothing else in the mobile world. Dr Andreas Constantinou’s research report on Mobile megatrends in 2009 points out that now open is the new closed.
Let’s quickly look at how OSI has defined Open Source
Open source is a development method for software that harnesses the power of distributed peer review and transparency of process. The promise of open source is better quality, higher reliability, more flexibility, lower cost, and an end to predatory vendor lock-in.
Hence, Open Source is basically an approach which let’s a vendor/developer benefit from the community effort and in-return makes sure the vendor contributes to the community in re-turn.
Android, Sybmian and Limo are Open source, great!! So why are they closed?
Look at theOpen Source Software definition, which includes:
- No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups – The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons.
- No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor – The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research.
Android, Symbian and Limo don’t quite adhere to this definition. All these Open source operating system’s are actually closed and controlled because of the Governance models.
License model let’s you to access the source code but Governance model gives the commercial entity funding the open source project to control the roadmap.
Though Android is licensed under open source, Google has never publicized Android’s governance models and these fact’s support the argument that Google has a tremendous control on the product if not as much as the source code
- Nobody outside the Open Handset Alliance can contribute to the Android product roadmap.
- Android market is closed and Google has complete control over it.
- An OEM needs more than a year of effort and google’s help to make a working Android mobile phone.
The situation is alike with the other two OS’es.Thus even if Limo, Symbian, Android are licensed under open source, the commercial entities funding the projects do have and will continue to have complete control on the products and App stores.
Though this is not necessarily a bad thing but these are just not like Linux-E, the ideal open source project one can really think of. It uses Peer-to-peer governance.
Although this is an issue to look more closely into, this is not to different from the way Open source projects work.
For example, if you want to submit a patch to Linux kernel, you have to send it to the community, then it is reviewed, then it reaches the maintainers who have the ultimate right to decide whether or not they will accept your patch. And AFTER they accept it and apply it on their trees, Linus decides whether to merge it or not to the main tree.
Similar stringent review process exists for Ubuntu and Fedora communities.
But for these processes, sub-standard code would seep into these large projects and time and resource would be wasted on QA and Bug triagings.
The true test of Open source software is when you can fork the complete project either for your own personal needs or as a completely independent new project and you can do both with the mentioned Open Source projects.
@ Raseel,
agreed, but the issue here is One cannot make a version of their own of any of the so called Open source mobile OS’es, like you can do it for linux.
Pradeep Kumar with android you are very wrong. You are free to make your own version of it. Ubuntu providing a android emulator is only possiable due to the provide code and the integration main line Linux kernel. Google is determined not to have a special kernel for android.
There are many open source projects with strict governance systems. Most of them are too new to be forked yet.
Governance threw out history of closed source to open source converion has always been the last to open up. Normally opened up based on trust.
Basically its too soon to call lets see what they are like in 5 years time.
Right pradeep we can’t build new OS using android as we do with redhat.