“The idea that Google’s Android mobile software is both ‘free’ and open-source is so often repeated that it is virtually an article of faith online. There’s only one problem: neither is strictly true,” Charles Arthur and Samuel Gibbs report for The Guardian. “While the basic Android software is indeed available for free, and can be downloaded, compiled and changed by anyone, it doesn’t include the apps that make up Google’s mobile services – such as Maps, Gmail, and crucially Google Play, which allows people to connect to the online store where they can download apps. Without them, a device has only minimal functionality.”
“To get the key apps, a manufacturer needs a ‘Google Mobile Services’ (GMS) licence. GMS licences are issued on a per-model basis. While Google does not charge a fee for the licence, one of the integral steps in the licence-application process requires payment to authorised Android-testing factories,” Arthur and Gibbs report. “These factories, which include Foxconn and Archos, charge a fee for carrying out the testing required to obtain a GMS licence, which the Guardian understands is negotiated on a case-by-case, per-manufacturer basis.”
“The source said Google and its testing partners were being intentionally vague about the fact that a cost is associated with acquisition of a GMS licence, even if the licence itself is free. ‘It is a lot of money they make, but you can’t see it anywhere because that would tarnish their ‘Android open-source’ karma,’ the source said,” Arthur and Gibbs report. “The idea that Android is ‘open source’ is partially true: the source code for the software is available online, via Google’s servers, and anyone can download it and make changes – as Amazon, for example, has done to create its own version for its Kindle line of tablets. But unlike the vast majority of widely used open-source projects such as Linux, MySQL, PHP or Python, which welcome outside contributors, only people working inside Google can make changes that will become part of the future direction of the software. Device manufacturers who want to get the upcoming version of Android have to wait for it to become available from Google’s servers.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “David G.” for the heads up.]
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