Google’s Android open source door is now closed

When you call some­thing open source, you’re sup­posed to fol­low the con­ven­tions. Google’s Android phone soft­ware, orig­i­nally released as open source, has updates being released to only selected devel­op­ers. Oth­ers not in the clique were out of luck. Inter­est­ingly, they were unaware of the dis­crep­ancy until a memo was sent to the wrong mail­ing list. Now a lot of Android devel­op­ers are up in arms. Although I don’t think much of Android as a major player in the mobile phone mar­ket, I can under­stand their anger. This is not the sort of thing you’d expect from Google.

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