These threads make me feel like Al Pacino: "Every time I try to get out, they keep pulling me back in"...

Shane Isbell wrote:

A drop of much of the source code is available in a repository and in tarballs. It runs on Linux. It has a free (pre-alpha) SDK. People have been able to take it and get it running on a variety of unsupported hardware, such as the Nokia N800/N810.

On the open spectrum, today, it is more open than Apple, Microsoft, Blackberry, or even Symbian. It is less open today than LiMo and OpenMoko. If -- *if* -- they keep their promises, it'll be as open as LiMo and OpenMoko by year's end. With luck, Symbian will wind up this open as well.

It is definitely more closed -- today -- than it was a few months ago. That is definitely worthy of angst and anger, but only to a point.

Android is following lots of people: Apple on the sizzle side, LiMo/OpenMoko on the free side.

Depending on your belief in the latter two platforms, Android *might* be the longer-term leader in free, if it can use the energy from the sizzle to be a "playa" bigger than LiMo or OpenMoko. It's even conceivable they could wind up the leader in sizzle too -- just because *we* don't see progress doesn't mean progress isn't happening.

That barn door's been open for years. If you're looking for a monoculture, try the desktop PC marketplace on for size.

If you mean Linux, Android isn't the first or only Linux-based mobile phone OS, and it probably won't be the last.

Considering that Microsoft doesn't like CDC/CLDC, and Apple doesn't like CDC/CLDC, and Android's given no indication of liking CDC/CLDC, and I don't see any CDC/CLDC activity with LiMo or OpenMoko, I'm not too bullish on CDC/CLDC. But, hey, I've definitely been wrong before.

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Android is making a series of related mis-steps here, from the private SDK releases to the lack of communication. Somebody, somewhere, needs to be fired, or worse, needs to let me rip them a new one. If Android fizzles, which is entirely possible, this whole mess will be one of the bullet points as to why.

And, if Android is able to carve out a significant chunk of the market, few will remember this fiasco in four years' time, other than a general sense of unease whenever symptoms like we're seeing now happen to pop up.

In this respect, Android is going through some of the same stumbles that Netscape did when they "released" Mozilla (big code dump, diddly-squat for support), or when Sun released OpenOffice.org (big code dump, license soup, mixed messages from management), or IBM did when it released Eclipse (big code dump, general sense of "uh, now what?"). Those projects went on to be successes, by most measures.

Of course, the same stumbles befell Real Networks with the release of Helix (big code dump, godawful license I have the shame of being involved with), SAP with the release of SAP DB (big code dump, little community building), and so on. There is no way to determine, here and now, how this will play out for Android.

The only thing I know for certain is that rehashing the same complaints again and again and again won't exactly help Android's cause any. Given the press coverage to date, I feel fairly certain that the "we're <bleep>ing unhappy" message has made it up the Mountain (View). Maybe they'll respond now, maybe they'll stay the course until the ADC wraps in three weeks, or until the product ships in a few months.

Zero days, three weeks, three months -- none of it really makes much difference. Any, perhaps all, open source communities are marathons, not sprints. As for me, I'm just staying limber.