Dana Blankenhorn

If You Don't Like Google Android, Dell, Fork It

The whinging just won't stop over Google's ongoing efforts to control Android and make it less chaotic.

Personally, I've already seen some benefits. A recent update to my Samsung Galaxy's software delivers a much cleaner, faster, more Android-like experience. Nothing like the horror show of crapware I had when I first got the device last year.

And I'm not just saying this because it's something I called for back in October, when no one was listening.

In today’s marketplace the word “Android” is becoming meaningless.

An AT&T “Android” phone is not an Android phone, but an AT&T one. A Samsung “Android” phone is not an Android phone but a Samsung one. If you get a Samsung phone from AT&T you get one thing, if you get the same phone from Verizon you get something else.

In the end, the question for Google is whether it wants to protect its brand, or let its brand be hijacked on behalf of the status quo.

About the only people who seemed to be listening to me last were were at Harvard. Now it seems someone in Mountain View was listening, too.

Why Android Won't Be Stopped

My friend Florian Mueller at FOSSPatents has been writing furiously about Android of late, becoming a one-man Groklaw on the subject.

His main thesis?Android has so many patent and copyright suits being filed against it that it can't survive, and that it could drag Google down with it.

My initial response on this was that the effort was self-defeating, that it was attempt to end competition through the force of law, and competition doesn't work that way. I even trotted out my picture of Samuel Slater, whose mill (a mile from where my mom grew up) in Pawtucket R.I.  was a deliberate copy of a protected British design. Slater had to smuggle himself into the country in order to steal that intellectual property.

The simpler answer to Florian's point is not a look back at our own history but a single word – China.

It's an important point which a friend reminded me of recently. Android let Chinese OEMs create their own software ecosystem. They're not going to give it up.

After the Carrier Death Spiral, Google

A “carrier death spiral” is what some are calling AT&T's acquisition of T-Mobile. (Others disagree.)

The merger raises the spectre of a renewed monopoly (as though the former SBC hadn't moved decisively in that direction years ago). The deal will take a year to clear although AT&T officials insist they have the stroke with the bureaucracy to get it done.

And they do. That's the problem.

I can't tell you how many trillions of dollars American consumers have paid over the last decades, over and above their real value, for wired and wireless bits, thanks to monopolistic practices we foresaw in the mid-1990s, tried to deal with, and then saw politics unravel.

The whole idea of the government, from the beginning, was to separate the infrastructure from the service. Thanks to a compliant Bush Administration, and Clinton appointees who were outmaneuvered, the Bell operating companies overthrew that deal. This led to the merger mania which now sees us with only three “choices” – AT&T, Verizon and Comcast – for most people just two of the three, and for others just one.

Building Out the Android Ecosystem

Both reporters and customers make a common mistake in analyzing operating systems, from Linux to Windows, from iOS to Android.

They focus on the "great game," on specific leaders, and don't look underneath. Windows is Bill Gates. Apple is Steve Jobs. Linux is Linus Torvalds.

Wrong on all three counts.

Windows was Microsoft, and to focus solely on Gates' role is to ignore the work of thousands, starting with current CEO Steve Ballmer, who when not portrayed as a buffoon is seen as stupid. (Wrong on both counts.) Same is true for Apple, starting with Tim Cook. And as for Linus, he has never pretended to be more than a developer. Linux is a vast collective of enterprises, each with its own culture, aims, and back story.

It's the creation of this "ecosystem" that is most crucial to an operating environment's success. The company at the center of the ecosystem has the primary responsibility here, but a leader without followers isn't a parade.

Lesson of Google Android Kill Switch

Someone has to take responsibility and, when someone can, people can be protected.

The bloggers are blogging madlyabout Google's recent decision to "kill" some Android applications, by using a facility it has had for years to remotely disable apps.

The move wasn't 100%  effective. Third party Android app markets, not run by Google, may still have some Android malware that Google can't yet kill.

Google has been busy ever since, explaining the issue (it doesn't impact older versions of the Android system) and describing how it will try to keep this sort of thing from happening again, working with its partners.

Some of the tut-tutting talks about how Google needs to be more proactive, scanning for malware before approving applications. And that's fine. But what's being lost is the lesson that began this post.

Someone has to take responsibility for software after it's purchased. That costs money. But it also requires a top-down process through which orders, once given, can be carried out.

The Interface Game and the iPad 2

Some good comments to my last, flippant post deserve an in-depth response.

I write. I'm a writer. That's the kind of content I create. I've been a professional writer since 1970. My favorite interface is a typewriter. I have often been very disappointed by keyboards. I think they were better in the 1980s than they are now.

I consider writing to be at the heart of all creation, even movies. And the tools for writing I see on tablets sucks. I have no idea why this stuff seems to go backward more than it goes forward.

I had a therapist 10 years ago who was using a tablet, with a stylus, to take her notes. The keyboard folded behind the tablet. I liked that.

But enough about me. Let's talk about computers.

Why Microsoft Banned Open Source

Microsoft's on-again, off-again relationship with open source is off-again.

What brings this up is news that open source is being banned from the “app stores” which will support the Xbox and the new Nokia Windows phones. 

My old friend Rupert Goodwins at ZDNet UK put it best. It's Apple envy. 

Red Hat's Jon Wildeboer was the first to blog about this  and others have followed suit  including good ol' Simon Phipps, who noted that Microsoft has even, in theory, banned its own open source licenses through this action. 

What no one seems to have asked so far is why. Those who read this week's Clue have the answer at hand.

It's situational ethics.

Creating a Future for MeeGo

The decision by Nokia to abandon MeeGo in favor of Windows seemed to shock the Linux Foundation.

Jim Zemlin handled out a brief statement calling the decision "disappointing," although the handwriting should have been on the wall for months. MeeGo got a "lukewarm" (read cold) reception this week at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona -- buggy, slow, disappointing. "It doesn’t look like Meego will be a serious competitor anytime soon," wrote Slashgear.

But there's been no blog post yet about it, at either Linux.Com or Linuxfoundation.org. This is an important story. This may be as disappointing to me as the brief statement. If the site wants to be corporate that's fine. If they want to grow the community we need a little more.

It might help, for instance, to point out where Meego can and should go from here:

The Lessons of Nokia

The mainstream can't be ignored.

Nokia tried to do just that. It thought its Symbian Real Time Operating System (RTOS) could be tweaked and remain competitive indefinitely. That's not the way computing works. Computing always moves toward higher levels of complexity, on every platform, as the cost of complexity is constantly moving downward.

The question now is whether Nokia is still ignoring the mainstream by linking up with Microsoft. The move became inevitable as former Microsoft executive Stephen Elop was brought in as Nokia CEO and the company's market share remained in free fall.

What were his options?

• Become just another me-too Android play. Or, through Meego, an Android imitator.
• Die.
• Find an ally who could bring the company one last crack at relevance.

There was really no option, was there?

Those who say Microsoft actually got Nokia for nothing in this deal are probably right. But no other option was on the board.

There's another lesson from this, one that open source needs to remember.

Google Android and the Worst That Can Happen

The failure of the Roberts court to deliver clarity on patents in Bilski vs. Kappos has opened the floodgates for patent litigation, and the chief "victim" is Google.

Every rival with an axe to grind has sued the company over its Android system, claiming to have invented parts of it. They have also sued each other. Some of these suits were filed in the "rocket docket" of East Texas, which has been notoriously friendly to plaintiffs. Other suits were filed in the home towns of the plaintiffs.

The most serious of these suits is that of Oracle, because as Florian Mueller of FOSSPatents notes it's not just a patent claim. It's also a copyright suit.

Rather than distributing the GPL version of Java, which would have allowed companies wide latitude to tinker with "Android intellectual property", Google tried to maintain control of the code base by distributing Oracle's version without permission, Mueller writes. As in, "it's open but it's ours."

If that's the case Google could be liable for billions-and-billions of dollars in damages.

What critics like Ed Burnette really fear, however, is something more fundamental. They fear an end to the kind of innovation and competition Android represents.