Hi! On 15:47 Sun 11 Oct , Niamathullah sharief wrote: > oh micheal. You are saying that Android is not an open source?I am > confussed. Forgive me if i am wrong.. Parts of Android are. Parts of it are not. The hardware is as locked down as traditional phones. It provides copy protection for applications. You cannot connect it to your PC to share the internet connection. You cannot flash it to install your own firmware unless you buy either a crack it like a game console or buy a "development edition", which costs a lot more. Even if you do that, you are not really free to do whatever you like - see http://androidandme.com/2009/09/hacks/cyanogenmod-in-trouble/ Note that Android does not use X11 or even glibc. It is all reimplemented in java. Normal applications do not run on android and android apps not run anywhere else. That is unless people do lot of pointless work to reimplement existing open source applications using the "proprietary" Android environment. The only reason why Android exists is because Google thinks it can bind people even more to their services. They put in lots of money and "open-source" is mostly half-true marketing. I think most people who take the "open-source" approach seriously are involved in the openmoko project. It is a basically a "normal" Linux, which can run "normal" Linux applications if they have an appropriate GUI. The shell is not something which you have to crack open, it is an important part of the system. However, it is still a bit experimental and needs more volunteers. -Michi -- programing a layer 3+4 network protocol for mesh networks see http://michaelblizek.twilightparadox.com -- To unsubscribe from this list: send an email with "unsubscribe kernelnewbies" to ecartis@xxxxxxxxxxxx Please read the FAQ at http://kernelnewbies.org/FAQ
