Here’s an interesting twist. After the argie-bargie surrounding Google and Cyanogen over the last few days, a group of Android developers has set themselves up to create open source versions of the closed applications that Google provides for mobile. Why? To make the Android OS completely open source.
What’s going on?
I’ll make this brief: Google recently slapped an Android developer with a Cease and Desist. Cyanogen was the creator of a modified version of the Android operating system called CyanogenMod. This was perfectly legal – except that he was also packaging closed-source mobile applications from Google (like Google Maps, Search, etc.) with his mod. Last Friday, Google hit him with the C&D. For our full report on the matter, click here.
What are the developers doing?
A lot of the Android developers were very angry about this whole thing. A group of them have set up the Open Android Alliance, specifically to create open source versions of the closed apps that Google provide.
Is this an anti-Google operation?
It would seem not. One of the developers in the OAA, Cody, posted that it isn’t anti-Google, it “is Pro-Android. Our goal is not to Frankenstein the current Android but to replace it with completely open apps/system/themes”
What we think?
It’s hard not to read a dig at Google in the very name of the organisation. The Open Android Alliance is very clearly modeled on the Open Handset Alliance – the organisation that Google founded to create Android in the first place.
But is this something that Google should be worried about? I would think not, purely in terms of revenue. But it’s “open” image has taken a battering. CyanogenMod had a total of 30,000 users – which is very good for an independent mod, but not a massive problem for Google considering the world-wide number of Google Experience users. I would say this will have two major effects:
1) Google’s careless handling of this issue has damaged it’s reputation among a group of people it was desperately courting – the developers
2) The developers will find a way around this. The OAA is working around it already.
Nice job, Google.
