The Following 2 Users Say Thank You to gnuite For This Useful Post: | ||
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2009-10-20
, 05:28
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Posts: 5,478 |
Thanked: 5,222 times |
Joined on Jan 2006
@ St. Petersburg, FL
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#122
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Sure, there are Google-provided applications built on the Android platform that are not free, but Nokia provides the same kinds of apps on the Maemo platform, for probably the same reasons. And they don't affect the openness of either platform.
But I'll reiterate my main point: it doesn't matter which of Maemo and Android is better. It matters that they're both open. The source code is free. The application frameworks are built on free and open technologies. And application developers are free to build whatever cool inventions they can conjure - they don't have to deal with the tyranny of the iPhone App Store.
And those are wins for everyone.
The Following User Says Thank You to GeneralAntilles For This Useful Post: | ||
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2009-10-20
, 05:33
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Posts: 1,245 |
Thanked: 421 times |
Joined on Dec 2005
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#123
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Unfortunately they aren't, in practice it just means more fragmentation in mobile Linux, which is a sector that's suffered from that for far too long. Android does not provide a way forward beyond being a Google-oriented platform. Maemo does.
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2009-10-20
, 05:48
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Posts: 1,245 |
Thanked: 421 times |
Joined on Dec 2005
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#124
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The Following User Says Thank You to gnuite For This Useful Post: | ||
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2009-10-20
, 05:56
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Posts: 130 |
Thanked: 46 times |
Joined on Sep 2009
@ New York
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#125
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Maemo is mature in that respect, I will grant you that. But even Java went without governance for three years before the Java Community Process was formalized.
In many ways, the close guidance of a organized, funded company can make it easier for an infant software development platform to grow into something viable. Sun fostered Java; Nokia fostered Maemo; now Google is fostering Android.
And given the remarkable amount of progress that has been made on Android as an operating system and as a platform, after just a year of public availability, it looks like the process is working, just as it worked for Java and Maemo. In time, I have no doubt that Android will grow to a size that demands governance, just as Java and Maemo have.
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2009-10-20
, 07:15
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Posts: 4,384 |
Thanked: 5,524 times |
Joined on Jul 2007
@ ˙ǝɹǝɥʍou
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#126
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The Following User Says Thank You to ysss For This Useful Post: | ||
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2009-10-20
, 11:12
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Posts: 203 |
Thanked: 68 times |
Joined on Oct 2009
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#127
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Off course, it is easier and faster to develop a device when you are not building its OS fully on your own...
In a way, I think Android is going to become, in the mobile world, the equivalent of what Windows is in the PC world. The OS manufacturers slaps on to sell their hardware and use the "we are more open than Apple" card.
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2009-10-20
, 11:25
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Posts: 445 |
Thanked: 572 times |
Joined on Oct 2009
@ Oxford
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#128
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The Following 2 Users Say Thank You to ewan For This Useful Post: | ||
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2009-10-20
, 11:37
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Posts: 203 |
Thanked: 68 times |
Joined on Oct 2009
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#129
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There's more to a system being open than simple visibility of the source code. The Android platform is designed to lock down the devices it runs on and prevent the user exercising their freedom to control their own device. The mere existence of the ADP1 as distinct from the G1 tells you how open Android is. There is no developer edition of Maemo because they're all open to development, or to anything else the user wants.
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2009-10-20
, 12:03
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Posts: 4,556 |
Thanked: 1,624 times |
Joined on Dec 2007
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#130
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Tags |
comparison, competition, droid, fight, milestone, motorola droid, motorola milestone, n900, nokia n900 |
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The only thing Android "locks you into" is an application platform that happens to be different from GTK+ or Qt. But then again, so does Maemo, doesn't it? Sure, most of the framework is standard Linux libraries, but there's also a thin, Maemo-specific layer built on top of those libraries.
You can argue that Android's layer (on top of the standard Java libraries) is perhaps a bit thicker than Maemo's, but you can't argue that it's any less open. And when it comes to mobile development, it's good that those abstraction layers are there, because mobile hardware is complicated. Developing for them is different than developing for desktop applications, so it's nice for developers to not have to worry about that, or at least to deal as little as possible with the details of things like kinetic scrolling, finger-friendly controls, multitouch, cellular handoffs, etc.
Sure, there are Google-provided applications built on the Android platform that are not free, but Nokia provides the same kinds of apps on the Maemo platform, for probably the same reasons. And they don't affect the openness of either platform.
But I'll reiterate my main point: it doesn't matter which of Maemo and Android is better. It matters that they're both open. The source code is free. The application frameworks are built on free and open technologies. And application developers are free to build whatever cool inventions they can conjure - they don't have to deal with the tyranny of the iPhone App Store.
And those are wins for everyone.