Schiffres, if you have a "tool" you want to contribute to Android, the best way to do so would be to write an app and release it for free on the Android Market. If you have a "feature" (or some other change to the actual Android OS), the best way to do so would be to modify and/ or add to the source code of the OS itself and commit it as a change (http://source.android.com/submit-patches).
Also, JP, if developers found a way to port Asterisk to the G1, included it in the source code of the Android OS, and somehow forced T- Mobile to provide this functionality on every G1 they shipped (and Aunt Jeanie & Uncle Harold somehow figure out how to set up and use the Asterisk feature)... this would undoubtedly siphon a significant amount of revenue from T-Mobile through the rates they charge for their plans. Yes, you could argue that carriers charge too much for their voice plans, but T-Mobile is competetive with most other major carriers. So what would be the incentive for T-Mobile (or any other carrier) to even offer the G1 in the first place if they couldn't make any money off of it? And if we don't have carrier support for Android, all we have are handheld devices that play games & apps, without any network connection or phone call capabilities (except through WiFi, but nothing cellular network-based). Just because a mobile operating system is open source doesn't mean all the things we CAN do with it will be free. If a group of philanthropic Android developers wants to get together and start building & maintaining cell phone towers throughout the world, and then offering free or very cheap access to the voice/data network they produce, then that might be a good start. ;-) On Mar 18, 7:38 pm, JP <[email protected]> wrote: > On Mar 18, 2:51 pm, Schiffres <[email protected]> wrote:> Also, a > > good point from Dianne Hackborn, you are all developers or interested > > parties, and theAndroidplatform is an open source project. > > This argument does not hold much water in my view. Here's why (chime > in guys please if I don't quite get it...): > Suppose you go ahead to implement a feature that runs counter to > carrier interest, say a SIP client perhaps or taking it a step > further, deep into carrier territory, and port plain old Asterisk to > give access to dynamic least cost call routing on a wholesale basis > (yes, Asterisk DOES run and perform on ARM/Linux straight). Who would > have thought carriers wouldn't like that, so they strip it off > theirAndroidbuilds and that's that. The platform as a whole is the builds > that the carriers put on the devices that aunt Jeanie and uncle Harold > use out of the box. There's a reason why Al S. and others test on > plain vanilla G1's, as opposed to souped up devices. Certainly there's > going to be a handful of enthusiast that put their own builds on the > device to get back the gold, but again, see aunt and uncle argument. > Only the big G, not even the device makers, has the weight to make > carriers perhaps reconsider. It's totally out of your or the open > source contributor's control whether Google feel like leveraging their > weight to see if carriers are willing to include your pet project > feature. And even if so, in the end, they might lose the battle > anyhow. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Discuss" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-discuss?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
