Interesting discussion or dare I say different perspectives ;) On 3/29/08, Stone Mirror <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Sat, Mar 29, 2008 at 3:04 AM, Dan Morrill <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > > 2008/3/29 Stone Mirror <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > > > > > The open source community at large, historically speaking, *hates *"code > > > dumps" (aka "toss-it-over-the-wall-ware") *especially *extremely huge > > > ones. > > > > > > > Yeah, that's definitely on our minds. We feel pretty bad that we've got > > such a huge pile of changes that we haven't been able to send upstream. We > > understand how open source projects operate, and we'll work with the > > specific upstream teams to send them our code in whatever way works best for > > them. > > > > Well, good luck with that. Which "upstream teams" do you think will be > taking on Surface Manager, Binder, Dalvik and the remainder of the > never-before-seen portions of the platform (i.e. almost all of it), I > wonder... > > > > > Implicit in your observation is that large dumps are a lot of work. It > > would be pointless and rude to dump a huge pile of changes on a project all > > at once. Waiting until we can do a good job of releasing the source also > > means waiting until we can dedicate the attention to the upstream projects > > that they deserve. > > > > Sounds like these "upstream projects", whoever you imagine them to be, may > be waiting a while. I'm not sure how something like Surface Manager or > Dalvik can be released, other than to effectively "dump a huge pile of > changes" into some entirely *new *project... They certainly seem to have > no relation to any existing "upstream project". > > > > > > > > > > > > Evidently the existing work in the open source community wasn't good > > > enough for Google. It seems to be good enough for Moblin, for Ubuntu > > > Mobile, > > > for the LiMo Foundation and numerous others. > > > > > > > You seem to be saying that open-source is a zero sum game, and that > > effort we spend on Android somehow detracts from those other projects. By > > your argument, Linus Torvalds was wrong in creating Linux; he should have > > bit the bullet and contributed to Minix, instead. > > > > No, that's not what I'm saying. Remember, Linus started Linux for his own > edification and amusement, "just for fun", as he put it. There was not > nearly the mature open source community in 1992 that there is today. If > there were, and if Minix had a significant community around it, then yes, > I'd think it might well make more sense for Linus to have worked with that > community rather than start a whole new effort from scratch. You're > comparing apples and oranges here. > > What I'm saying it that--to take Surface Manager as an example--the folks > most qualified (outside of Google) to do continuing work on such a project > are *already *working on GTK+ or Qt or compiz or something similar. I > don't see that they're going to be interested in dropping those efforts to > help Android's Surface Manager out. They may be interested in taking *pieces > *of it to improve specific aspects of GTK or Qt, and thanks to the > "developer friendly" Apache license, you won't really be able to keep them > from doing so. None of that's likely to help Surface Manager for Android. > > There's a finite number of folks working on open source platform > development today, that's a simple fact. In order to get those developers to > work on Surface Manager, they'd presumably have to free up some time from > their current efforts. I'm saying that I believe they're unlikely to do so. > So, in a sense, it *is *a "zero-sum game", but not in the way that you're > suggesting. > > > > > > We believe that the more open source code is out there, the better. > > > > Well, I don't think it's a simple numbers game. I'd suggest that quality, > and consonance with existing efforts is at least as important as the sheer > number of lines of code out there. There's no shortage of moribund projects. > Functionally, Android is in large part duplicative of existing efforts. > > Of course, until it's released, the quality of Android's underlying code > is unknown and unknowable. As far as consonance with existing projects, > there isn't any, and deliberately so--as I said, that was a completely > conscious decision that Google made. This is what I mean about Google's > unwillingness to work with the existing development communities preferring > instead to go the "massive code dump" route. > > > > > We'll just keep plugging along on the stuff that actually available > > > now, I guess... > > > > > > > Please do! The last thing we want is to force developers to pick a > > single platform. > > > > Well, not that you *could, *even if you wanted to. But if you don't want > to "force developers to pick a single platform", why have you created a > platform to (or from) which it's effectively impossible to port existing > code, and on which one can't use existing languages, frameworks and APIs...? > > Let's be very clear here. Rich Miner > said<http://www.macworld.com/article/60916/2007/11/androidantifrag.html> > : > > When we looked at the other [mobile] Linux activities out there, > oftentimes they're initiatives that are based on Linux but their resulting > platforms aren't completely open. Or they're completely open and they're > Linux, but they're missing most of the things that [Android has]. They > probably don't have video codecs, Midi sequencer, speech recognition. So > they're not a complete phone stack. The goal with Android was to build into > it everything you needed to release a phone: an entire stack to build a > competitive smartphone or high-end feature phone. > > > So, why couldn't Google provide just the missing, un-free pieces, for the > benefit of existing projects, and work with the community to make > improvements where Google felt they were needed, *with *the community. Why > the necessity to come out with a whole new platform to go along with them? > > Also, does this suggest that, for instance, Nuance (for instance) is going > to be somehow giving away their speech recognition software for free to the > world at large, turning what's now proprietary into an open source project? > Does it mean that Google is going to somehow pay the patent and licensing > fees on behalf of the rest of the world to be able to provide "free" video > codecs...? (If the latter is true, I'm sure the Open Media Now! Foundation, > for starts, would be happy to hear about it...) > > I'm a little skeptical of either of those things happening, actually. > Please correct me if I'm mistaken here. > > > -- > 鏡石 > > >
-- take care, Muthu Ramadoss. Founder, IntelliBitz Technologies. http://www.intellibitz.com - Android development. http://groups.google.com/group/EtoE --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Internals" 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-internals?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
