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+Is Android Open Source?
+
+Steve Jobs stirred up a hornets nest of angry Android developers and application creators when he suggested, during a rather lengthy diatribe against Android, that the operating system was not really "open."
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+Andy Rubin, Google's Senior Director of Mobile Platforms, who oversees the Android project responded by creating a Twitter account and posting the code necessary to download the Android source and compile it on your PC -- something Rubin calls "the definition of open."
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+Google is famous in programming circles for redefining words to suit its ideas -- take beta for example, which used to mean pre-lease software, but which Google says means "regular updates and constant feature refinement." Rubin's definition of "open" is a similar linguistic shuffling since compiling code alone does not make a piece of software "open."
+
+Bruce Perens, who coined the term "open source" and has been working on its behalf ever since, defines "open" around three core traits: a license that insures the code can be modified, reused and distributed; a community development approach and, most importantly, ensuring that the user has total freedom over the device and software
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+"The fact that you can check something out and compile it," says Perens, "doesn't mean you have the right to use it!"
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+The Android OS is, in strictly legal terms, open source. Android is released under the Apache 2.0 software license which allows anyone to use, modify and redistribute the code. But while it might meet the letter of the law, it falls somewhat short of what might be called the spirit of the open source.
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+It's the lack of community-based development that Android's critics say makes it no more "open" than Apple's locked down, decidedly not-open iOS model. As Perens says, "most Open Source projects [include] instant access to changes as they are made... and an open door for anyone to participate."
+
+Unlike major open source projects like Firefox or the Linux kernel, you can't see what's happening behind the scenes with Android, nor can small developers contribute to the project in any meaningful way. Google releases major updates to Android, typically at press conferences not unlike those Apple uses to show off new iPhone features. 
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+Once the code is release Android developers can download it and do what they want with it, but they have no way of seeing what's happening behind the scenes every day. If you want to know how Firefox changed last night -- however esoteric those changes may be -- you see the changes on the Mozilla site. The same is true of the Linux kernel, Open Office and virtually every other open source project with a website.
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+It's not true of Android. While Android may have the legal licensing to qualify as open source it utterly fails at the far more important transparency and community.
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+Facebook's Joe Hewitt, who is rumored to be working on a Facebook-branded OS based on Android, says that the lack of transparency in the Android development process makes it "no different than iOS to me." Hewitt goes on to add that "open source means sharing control with the community, not show and tell."
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+Android is basically an "accept what Google gives you" or fork the entire codebase proposition. Other than the ability to fork Android off and develop your own OS based on it, Android is really no different than iOS, which works on a similar "take what Apple gives you" model.
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+Unfortunately, even if Google were to develop Android in the open, as the Mozilla foundation does with Firefox, it probably wouldn't help Android be any more open. While Google's approach may be a disengious use of the word open -- as Hewitt says, Google is doing "bare minimum to meet the definition of open" -- there is another problem, the phone carriers.
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+Perens believes "the problem is the wireless carriers first, and Google second because Google enables the carriers to close the Android platform from the user's perspective." In other words, while you might be able to copy and paste the cod from Rubins' tweet and take a look at Android yourself, what arrives with actual phone is every bit as tightly controlled as iOS.
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+Just as there are Jailbreaking hacks for the iPhone, there are rooting hacks for Android that attempt to give the end user some control back. That Android is less controlled by its Google parent in other ways -- the Android Market for instance is not tightly regulated like Apple's App Store counterpart -- is a secondary benefit. Neither device is open in the sense that the end user can modify it as they see fit -- customize it perhaps, but adding a new theme and downloading whatever apps you like are not the goals of open software.
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+The real goal of open software, as Perens and others have help define it over the years, is to ensure that you can do whatever you want with it. As anyone with an iPhone or and Android phone can tell you that's not the current state of affairs nearly every phone is tightly locked to carrier specs.
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+The carriers argue that open phones would threaten the network (Steve Jobs argues that an open phone would threaten the user experience). AT&T used to argue both of the same things when it still maintained total control (what Jobs likes to call an "integrated" system) over land lines -- you rented phones from AT&T or you didn't have one . Several massive anti-trust lawsuits and the breakup of Ma Bell later we've ended up back in the exact same spot. So even if there were a truly open source OS for your phone it's unlikely it would ever truly be open by the time it arrived in your hand.
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