Hey all, First time poster. Love the group. I have to agree, In my experience the major source of phone lock down has more to do with the vendor selling the phone than the platform designer. I know AT&T locked them down fairly tightly. To cite an example the whole using your phone as a hotspot thing. Thats more to do with the telco's demands than what the platform can do. Even apple wanted to give Tethering capability to the iPhones but AT&T fought them on it for a while to my understanding.
On Sun, Feb 20, 2011 at 11:57 AM, Dan Trevino <[email protected]>wrote: > I must have missed the part where google was fighting the custom > firmwares. The only complaint I've seen was in the redistribution of > Google's non-free apps, but they worked that out amicably a long time > ago. > > I dont disagree that Google wants you to use their services. Clearly > that the whole reason for the platform. > > But I think you're wrongly attributing where the difficulty lies in > making changes. I also think you're overstating the difficulty. > Hell, they have how-to's on Lifehacker.... My Google Nexus One has a > hardware search button, which, by default, starts a google search. > But with my custom firmware, I can navigate to Settings, Cyanogenmod > Settings, Input, Search key app, and change the default app to Bing or > Yahoo or whatever. > > That Google Search integrates with Google's Browser by default is lock > in only in the mildest sense. You can easily install firefox4 or > dolphin or any number of browsers and make them the default for all > browers actions. Opera and Microsoft and Yahoo could all make their > own search apps integrate with their own browsers and their own map > application and you'd have all of that integrated on Android. And > Verizon or AT&T or T-Mo or **You** could choose which ever > search/map/browser vendor you wanted. > > Not having those options is not a lack of freedom of the Android > platform, but of the vendors of your phone/phone firmware. > > Samsung apparently takes it a step further and tries their best to > prevent custom firmware installs, but thats a completely separate > topic because that is hardware vendors trying to lock their phones > down, and has nothing to do with Google or Android. > > Dan > > On Sun, Feb 20, 2011 at 11:31 AM, William L. Thomson Jr. > <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Sun, 2011-02-20 at 11:20 -0500, Dan Trevino wrote: > >> Yahoo and Bing search are available in the Android market. Verizon > >> includes Bing as the default on some of their phones. > > > > Yes, but they are applications, not integrated into the phone the way > > the Google stuff is ;) > > > >> And there are dozens of custom firmwares based on Googles Android > >> code, so the "CentOS" of Android does exist, many times over. > > > > Yes and projects going to replace the Google stuff with FOSS versions. > > But its not been an easy past, Google fought stuff like Cynagenmod for a > > bit, before giving in and accepting the inevitable. > > > > I know there are others, and I could download and compile the source > > myself and start to strip things out etc. My point is that Google went > > out of their way to integrate and embed their stuff. So you have to go > > through considerable efforts to have an Android free of Google if thats > > possible. > > > > While CentOS goes through effort to remove RH branding, etc. The effort > > required for CentOS is nothing compared to what you have to do in > > Android to attempt to circumvent all Google stuff. RedHat would never do > > things that Google has, they have a better understanding of FOSS. RedHat > > knows anyone would just reverse engineer, or port. Something Google had > > to find out the hard way ;) > > > > Not sure what Googles plans are for if they lose control of the Android > > platform. Surely no one vendor has full control of Linux. Android being > > FOSS could end up going the same route, and I really hope it does. I am > > not anti-Google, just do not like having things forced upon me with no > > choice. > > > > Like I would love to ditch Googles browser which sucks for Opera. But > > trying to remove their browser and replacing that with Opera. I am sure > > others have done it, but not a trivial task. Surely not just installing > > opera and changing a default or two. Google really wants you to use > > their stuff, for good reason. > > > > -- > > William L. Thomson Jr. > > Obsidian-Studios, Inc. > > http://www.obsidian-studios.com > > > > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Archive http://marc.info/?l=jaxlug-list&r=1&w=2 > > RSS Feed http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.xml > > Unsubscribe [email protected] > > > > > > > > -- > --- > Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Open Standards! > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > Archive http://marc.info/?l=jaxlug-list&r=1&w=2 > RSS Feed http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.xml > Unsubscribe [email protected] > >
