Google Releases Android Source Code

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Google has officially open sourced its Android code base and is encouraging developers to try out the new platform.

“Today is a big day for Android, the Open Handset Alliance, and the open source community,” said Google software engineer Dave Bort.

According to a post on the official Android Open Source Project blog, the teams at Google and the Open Handset Alliance have finally released all the code for the mobile platform just ahead of the official retail availability of the first commercial product to use the system, the T-Mobile G1. Describing the project as “a complete, end-to-end software platform that can be adapted to work on any number of hardware configurations”, Android’s Dave Bort is hoping that the little platform that could will get a wider acceptance outside the smartphone market.

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The announcement has been made a day before US launch  of the first Android phone, the G1 from T-Mobile.

Motorola is already reportedly developing an Android phone and Kyocera has also said it is planning to use the platform, but Google is not focusing on the mobile sphere alone.

The bad news for fans of the popular GPL open source licence is that the Android project has opted to use the rather more commercially friendly Apache 2.0 licence. The source code is being issued under an Apache licence, which means it is free to use but developers do not have to make the source code of new products available to all. Although parts of the code are GPLv2 compliant – such as core Linux code taken in from other sources – any development work the teams have performed themselves is Apache 2.0 licensed. As a further legal CYA, Google is asking contributors to sign a legal contract granting the company irrevocable and world-wide rights to distribute and commercially exploit changes made to the Android source.

The move will mean that bugs and improvements can be found and fixed by the open source community rather than just Google developers and should mean that the platform has the opportunity to grow quickly against other operating systems from Microsoft and Apple.

But Google’s model for Android has some critics. The LiMo Foundation, which publishes specifications for middleware for mobile Linux devices, and of which Google is not a member, says that Google’s model might be too open.

“There’s a debate about whether Google’s approach to openness is sustainable and good for the industry,” said Andrew Shikiar, director of global marketing for the LiMo Foundation.

The 2.1GB code package is now available for download and developers will need 6GB to use the stack. Ubuntu is the recommended coding environment, but Mac software can also be used.

Android is now available as open source [Google]
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