This is the link he meant to post.

If a developer decides to require Android 4.0 when all they really needed was 1.6, they're doing it wrong and it's their own fault that their market share suffers.

For apps where this would matter for performance, Android has an NDK for writing C\C++ that compiles to native code instead of Java (Dalvik) bytecode. It's usually used for games and heavy data processing but it's overkill for typical small apps that don't do much heavy lifting. You can mix and match Java and NDK code where needed, so a developer might code the processor intensive stuff in C\C++ while coding the rest in regular easy to use Java.

That all makes sense, but in this context platforms matter much more than the actual devices running them. That is because developers are writing apps for the platforms, not for the devices themselves. I'd agree your frame if apps had to be re-written for each and every Android device. But that's not the situation we're living with; developers are writing apps that run on Android devices that they might not have even heard of, and it typically "just works".

This is a myth. Android releases have always been backwards compatible. That is, Apps written for Android 1.0 will work just fine in Android 1.1 and any later release in the future. If you're writing an app that requires, say, Android 2.1, such as a Live Wallpaper, then any Android running version 2.1 and higher will work fine. Devices that don't meet the requirement simply won't see the app in the Market.

If appropriate, developers can mark that support as optional, so your app will include that feature if the device supports it, and if it doesn't the feature will be disabled and the rest of the app will work regardless.

I wouldn't recommend creating your own license unless absolutely positively necessary. To do so would add legal ambiguity to how it can be used and combined with other projects.

I see that the Microsoft Public License is grouped in with the other permissive ones like Apache and BSD. Honest question though, is the MS-PL actually a popular choice for non-Microsoft projects? I've never really seen it much, and my intuition says that a decent set of open source devs would be allergic to a Microsoft license.

There was an incident with the GPL app GNU Go. Here is the FSF's take on the matter.

I'm not trying to snark, but please clarify: How is just having a ref code counter FOSS in your opinion? Do you find something wrong with a FOSS project raising money?

I know there's a GPL issue with the Apple app store. I haven't heard about the other licenses but my gut tells me that the more permissive ones are probably okay.

Unhelpful comment, -1 Internets to you. You say he's wrong but don't go into why or how, then you go ad hominem.

Pretty much. App stores are effectively a repository, the difference is negligible for users. If you don't like the app store you're using, go and use a different one.

It's not about modifying the base system. Walled gardens are about centralized control of the software ecosystem.

That's right. Just to clarify, even Honeycomb's code has been released at this point, although it's not "tagged" so it isn't as easy to get to. Google did this on purpose to encourage developers to build using the Ice Cream Sandwich code instead, which is probably better for everyone involved.

To me using a third party controller is asking for trouble. The feel is never right, and I worry about the analog components being poorly calibrated. The only good one I owned was the AsciiPad for SNES, but that was pure digital.