That sounds just like this Youtube bit. Protesting for the sake of protesting, pretty much.

No. I have seen the number of Android phones increasing around my workplace, especially among women. Never once have I heard a complaint about ads in their Angry Birds or whatever. Just like banners on web sites, you just get used to ignoring that area.

It really is a moot point among 99.99% of ordinary users. Those of us who get in a tizzy about ads are smart enough to know how to get around them.

The SDK is still Mac only? So, on top of the $99 per year, you'll need to shell out for a Mac computer if you aren't hip enough to already have one.

I figured after all these years, there'd be more options. I guess I misunderestimated Apple.

Perpetually strapped into a car seat?
No, even leaving a baby in a car seat isn't safe...

Applers buy 3-4 apps a month? I play plenty of games, use a bunch of apps on my Android phone, but I just don't have the urge to go to the Market that often to look for new things to buy. How many hours per week are these average IOS users spending on their phone? Am I not using it enough to tire of the apps I already have so soon?

I guess I just don't have the appropriate Apple mentality.

But Steve had said it's more polished, intuitive, and users love it when they hold it the right way. Therefore it is.

Ok, every time someone uses the word "polish," you have to take a drink of something containing alcohol.

The conversation here will get interesting soon enough.

The attitude I described isn't limited to big-name publishers, either. I peruse Gamasutra often, and there are a good number of smaller/indie developers that find charging $5 instead of $15 an insult to all the work they put into their game. I really don't understand it. If I could make 36,000% more total sales, I'd let my ego take the hit...

This pricing system is nothing new. All the modern Call of Duty games stay at $60 on Steam. The latest version rarely goes on sale, if so it's only like $10 off. Publishers of any sort only want to be paid what they think customers should pay.

Then, some indie mucky-muck makes something like Minecraft, Angry Birds, etc, charges so little, and sells millions. It's not fair!

In the Android world, there are plenty of bigger fish that could have been challenging Microsoft. I find it curious that a fairly minor player in the ebook/tablet area is the one doing it not HTC, Samsung, Motorola or even Amazon.

Well, my point to bonch, was just saying "Android is open source" carries no specific instructions with it. That is what the various licenses are for. "X is open source because it uses Y license" is a more appropriate statement. Then we can carry on and make sure the project and any other project that forks from that carry out the terms of said license.

"Android" is not one item released under one license. It is made up of a number of components under different licenses with varying openness. Google released source code for what it had to (ie GPL based), and kept back what it could (ie Apache license-based).

Who stood up when Android 1.0 was released and said, "This cannot be released under these other licenses, it must be all GPL!!" Hell, this site used to go on and on and on arguing the minutia of every license, what ones can be called "open source," etc. Today, it's just "Android is open source, release source to everything!"

No. There is no forgiveness for past deemed transgressions against the Open Source here! KDE is still kursed for using the unfree Qt! Loki porting games to Linux was shit because we don't need that binary-only crap! Wine is stupid because then developers won't need to make Linux-only ports.

Welcome to Slashdot.

Well, now that you have the source code to everything, you'll be able to pinpoint the exact lines that Google copied from another GPL software project and failed to release the source code before. You could make millions! Or have Larry/Sergey/Eric arrested, if it is "required by law" like you say.

Handset. You keep using that word, but I don't think you know what it means.

Define "open source." Good luck.

Answer... It is all dependent on the license one chooses for their project. Some licenses might say, "release source for everything always," some say, "it's ok to keep some changes private."

Your homework is to figure out what license Google uses for the different parts of Android. Android is fairly modular, using apps for many user-facing functions. Must every binary executable that works on Linux be forced to be completely open source?