Businessweek Dreams of Macho Androids

Have you heard the latest news, that Android is becoming less “open” and will soon be just as bad/wonderful as iOS, either because Google has realized how ugly and crappy “openness” is, or because Google is evil? Oh no!

Fortunately this is ignorant nonsense, or gleeful speculation, or pessimism–depending on who is spreading it. What happened is, Bloomberg Businessweek (Did you know it was called this now? Why do branding consultants hate capital letters, spaces, and life itself?) decided to publish the kind of alarmingly dull story that is of interest to their readership, about corporations using leverage to make other corporations do things. In Do Not Anger the Alpha Android, we are told: “No more partnerships formed outside of Google’s purview.” Google is so mad and alpha-male that they are not even speaking in complete sentences. GRRRR.

Okay, so some people are into corporate drama. Coderspiel would rather watch old episodes of My So-Called Life on Hulu, or have some tooth fillings replaced, than be breathlessly told gossip picked up from bitter non-alpha golfers. And gossip it is:

This is the new reality described by about a dozen executives working at key companies in the Android ecosystem…

Over the past few months, according to several people familiar with the matter…

… say two people who weren’t comfortable being named talking about the business.

People who care about Journalism are pretty cheezed that everything published by mainstream old respectable outlets these days is full of anonymous quotes. It is bad because it allows self-serving lies to be spread with no accountability. Maybe that’s what happened here–who knows? There’s no way to check it, that’s the whole problem!

But reporters are getting really squeezed from both sides because not only are all their valuable sources in the “rolodex” refusing to go on the record, but real stories are being broken on blogs by people that have better access and actually know what they are writing about. And a lot of reporters don’t really. For example:

When Android hit the scene in 2008, Google had a tantalizing pitch: Android was “open source.” That is, Google would do the hard work of developing the code, and hardware and software makers were free to use the system at no charge.

Do you trust the reporters, fact checkers, and entire news organization who cranked out this insanely wrong description of what it is to be “open source”? Do you trust them, specifically, to paint a slurry of rumors from ornery unnamed sources into an accurate picture of a software platform’s present and future? Are you, yourself, insane?

So, blah blah, Bing Maps, strong-arming, two-timing, whatever. Some telecom dudes, did something. Set stupid defaults on their phones, which was annoying and made Gizmodo very upset. And now Google is being a Tough Guy to try to stop them from doing that stupid thing again, so everyone is now upset at Google. People like to be upset, it turns out.

If you skim through all the irrelevant drama about default settings, there is one paragraph that would concern the thinking programmer:

Google has also started delaying the release of Android code to the public, putting smaller device makers and developers at a disadvantage. On Mar. 24, Bloomberg Businessweek reported Google won’t widely release Honeycomb’s source code for the foreseeable future.

Ha, there’s that “Bloomberg Businessweek” again. Isn’t it a bit unwieldy? Anyway, it’s fun to cite your own publication as a source. Any guesses who wrote that other story? Here’s a hint: Ashlee Vance and Peter Burrows wrote this one. Okay, if you guess them for the other story, you are only half right because Ashlee Vance also likes to work with Brad Stone on his or her Daring Fireball bait.

And no, “foreseeable” is not a direct quote from anyone working on Android. They just said, like any programmer with any sense, that they did not have a completion date for their code. But here is something scary-ish:

Rubin says that if Google were to open-source the Honeycomb code now, as it has with other versions of Android at similar periods in their development…

Pretty sneaky working in the “as it has with other versions of Android” assertion! But this whole situation seems… oddly familiar. Isn’t there usually a delay in Google releasing fresh Android source, causing people who depend on that code to be legitimately grieved? The GPL exists to prevent stuff like this from happening, but Google isn’t doing Free Software, they are just “open source”, which Ashlee Vance and Peter Burrows already defined for us, except totally wrong.

So, what was it like with Android 2.0, was the source released quickly, before products using it hit the market? Nah:

Though the Android 2.0 ‘Eclair’ SDK has been available for quite some time and the Motorola DROID runs Android 2.0 perfectly, the Android 2.0 source code has been kept under wraps for some particular reason (underhand deal with Motorola & Verizon?). This meant that all phone manufacturers outside of Motorola could only tinker with Android 1.6. Luckily, that has all changed.

– Nov 14, 2009

Underhanded deals, way back in 2009! But we were informed that this was new a new and troubling phenomenon, a veritable affront to “open source” programmers, with their codes, or whatever! Oh well. Maybe someone will produce a nice timeline of the different Android releases, when the SDKs, devices using them, and sources were first available. Then we can see exactly how false or nuanced is the recent article’s claim that “Google has also started delaying the release of Android code”.

Regardless, no one seems to be brave or dumb enough to predict that Android 3’s source will never be released. A future post will make the case that being open source, even with a delay, works to keep Android open in other significant ways. (It was going to be the topic of this post, but in reviewing the latest Bloomberg Businessweek articles there was too much stuff to make fun of, sorry!)

The here point is, please don’t rely on the business press to tell you what to think about software platform news. They know as much about writing software as they know about writing software.