If any of you know the old riddle, “when a door is not a door ?” -> when it’s ajar (a jar, ajar – wide open) knows the headline
But what I’m to talk about is the final release of the 2.2 code, well I’m a bit late with the post it’s been published about 3 weeks ago i believe.

It’s always fun to see Google release new API, new code and new inventions, however when they release the SDK, and it’s available for the cellular operators but not for the public Git repository i believe it’s not really open, well, it will be open eventually, but how long since they released 2.2 ? 3-4 month ? this time gives the operator quite a lot of time to release their new images and FW’s and if you want to release your own you’ll always be left behind, what bugs me is that when a new such SDK emerges and i don’t have the code i can’t step through, i can’t see why a certain function doesn’t work right and why the layout doesn’t do what i think i just told it to do. The whole concept for black box goes back on stage, and why ? it’s a big advantage and a great help to have the source code (even the machine one) next to me so i can always dig in!

Google knowingly releasing the code later then the SDK release and they clearly state of their code release policy here: Google source code policy let’s think of all the reasons that they may do so:

1. They want to give the hardware manufactures time to work on their port before anyone else
2. They want to stabilize their code before release to the public
3. They want you to work with the SDK in the darkness to feel how good it is to have open source
4. All the above are bullshit and there’s not apparent reason for them to do so except to piss us off…

kind of annoying i would have to say. Why giving man. time is bollocks ? that’s easy who is competing with them ? android-x86 port ? private users at home with their own images ? isn’t it the whole idea of open source ? the innovation of someone that is not necessarily get paid for it at some big-shot company ? who needs to get the Code before the users ?

Why stabilizing the code is bollocks ? simple, if the code is open source it might not compile but again Mr. dear Jhon and his friend Doe are both talented programmers that want to mess around with the code, might find bugs , might fix them and might even, god forbid, commit the changes to Git repository for everyone to enjoy them… they might even find security bugs that will be closed on time and are open to everyone, that’s the meaning of open source.

The only thing i could make sense of is that they might want to keep their special innovation for themselves, that i CAN understand. But once they release the new SDK the new API’s are out and about and everyone can copy, mimic or try to, and even if they wanted to keep the implementation to themselves, 4-5 month ? i think it’s not appropriate.

But since I’m just the blogger i think I’ll keep on sitting here in the dark

In any case you can Now enjoy the source code i packed for ya guys for 2.2, 2.1 and 1.6: in my old post(links updated):
browsing android source code in eclipse

Enjoy!

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