There's a difference between "making shit up" and pre-announcing.

It's not unreasonable for them to hold back the source code until the first phone implementing the phone (the Galaxy Nexus) is available next month.

It's not "unexpected" or "uncommon", maybe. I think it's entirely unreasonable for an entity calling itself an "open source project" to withhold code under development from the public. There's no project here. But it's still better than we got from Honeycomb (or Apple, or MS), so I guess beggars can't be choosers.

Two of the original open source projects, emacs and GCC, did this for many years. In fact, if you shared the source code of development versions, you were banned from the FTP server that contained it.

That may be true (not sure abuot the banning thing, I've never heard that story), but you're sort of missing the difference in spirit. Certainly the FSF in its early days was eager and active in recruiting new developers, and merging code from the community. Read all the early Gnus Bulletins for lots of examples.

If you wanted to see RMS's emacs source, all you had to do was ask and promise not to spread it around before he'd made a release. That policy may not have been a good idea in hindsight, but it certainly wasn't because of Stallman's desire to keep control over his "product".

Google, on the other hand, doesn't seem to be much in the habit of letting people see their code simply because they want to contribute.

I agree. I'm not wild about the "open" model they adopt - the code is (generally) open but the project certainly isn't and they do seem to play around with it to suit their commercial needs.

But given that Amazon have gone and lifted the Android code base and reused it without any endorsement or sanction from Google and largely not to Google's benefit, Google deserve some kudos for continuing to outsource Android at all.

Wait, what now?

If you release a project as open source having someone come along, repurpose it and use it is what you are hoping for. The entire idea is for people to use that source code that is now public to build new projects. You don't open source a project for the recognition. Why should it have to be sanctioned by Google? Why should it be endorsed by Google?

I can go out and download FreeBSD, strip all of the FreeBSD marks, and brand it bertBSD and I can do whatever the hell I want with it (following the license it is under). I don't need endorsement nor sanction from the FreeBSD foundation!

Well, to be fair: there are lots of reasons for releasing and using free software. Google's (as opposed to Android's) interests aren't necessarily served by someone else rebranding it. And a project generally is hurt by a fork. Having Amazon's even more walled-off fork of Android exist does nothing to help users of smartphones.

But your broad point is exactly right: we're all better served by working together on software instead of racing for parochial advantage by building on top of it without contributing to the whole. Open Source has lots of big advantages, but to do it "right", there are costs to be borne as well. The Linux community has on the whole found a pretty good balance between these concerns. The Android community has had some pretty bad missteps.

I agree there's a difference.

"Pre-announcing" suggests that the announcement will be followed by code release. In the case of 3.0, I think the first devices shipped back in May-- that's about 5 months ago. With that history, this seems more like "making shit up" to me.

75% of the versions of Android have been open and in all instances other than one when they've said so in advance and gave a reason.

The only instance where they've said that it would be open and wasn't (3.1) was a logical follow on from 3.0 not being opened - not ideal but hardly grounds to suggest that when they categorically state that they're opening it up and that someone has been working on doing that for six weeks they're "making shit up".

I should be clear: I don't mean to accuse Dan Morril of making shit up. The guy is probably speaking honestly.

But in the larger picture, Google has been calling Android open source from the beginning. They haven't released source for 3.0, 3.1, or 4.0. (Yes, the 4.0 devices haven't shipped yet, but if they're really shipping in a month, the code has been in QA for a while.) That's disingenuous, to me.

I agree that they were happy claiming the kudos and moral high ground that comes with OSS without really delivering on it but the reality is that the versions you list are running on an estimated 4 million devices (tablet sales to date) of the 550,000 being activated every day. Somewhere in the region of 98% of Android devices (all the phones currently available) are running an OSS OS.

And if you don't mean to accuse someone of making shit up the easiest thing to do is to not use the phrase "making shit up".

Your first sentence is basically what I think is happening, so I'll soften the language to be less abrasive. I don't think it's a fundamentally different claim-- they're saying it's open source while not releasing the source. It's dishonest.

Your stat about the 98% of Android devices is somewhat convincing. 3.0 and 4.0 aren't a fork for tablets though, are they? Future phones will use 3.0 and/or 4.0, right?

> 3.0 and 4.0 aren't a fork for tablets though, are they?

3.0 was essentially a fork for tablets. 4.0 is where they merged that fork back so it works on both phones and tablets, which is why they will be releasing the source of 4.0.

This says to me that Google felt that the user experience on phones is so important to them that they're ok with a closed source fork for tablets as a way to keep people from running Android 3.x code on phones and having a poorer user experience.

The headline is off. The linked announcement by Dan Morril said the source will be released after the devices are. So it should be future tense.

But neither is it closed source: there's been no release at all yet, so if you need a term, use "vaporware".

Given that they've demo-ed it at the launch of a handset and that there are videos of it running I think vaporware is both inaccurate and needlessly harsh.

It's an announcement of a future event. If we're calling this vaporware are you also referring to Windows 8 as vaporware?

There were videos of Duke Nukem Forever running before it was released, and until its release it was still considered vaporware.

To me it sounds like an accurate term to use. As for Windows 8, I am happily running the alpha they made available so no, Windows 8 is not vaporware.

I see your point about vaporware, but I think that term generally refers to software that will likely never ship. I don't think Google will fail to ship 4.0.

Right now, the source exists, and I can't get it. I think it's pretty straightforward to call that closed source.

> I think it's pretty straightforward to call that closed source

Straightforward and pedantic. Even the GPL allows a "reasonable" time for someone to yield the source upon request which as been widely interpreted as up to a month. If the source will be available in a reasonable time period then it's reasonable to call the general project itself an open source one.