People like (and some people even love) Android for different reasons. Some like the flexibility it offers in terms of swapping in and out your favorite keyboard, image gallery, movie play, what have you. Others like that they can build entirely new experiences on top of it, see Amazon Kindle and any number of Android ROMs out there. But there are some people, who I’ll never understand, who like Android because it’s an open source software project.
But is it really? Google doesn’t develop Android in the open. They word on Android internally, and then whenever a new version comes out, they throw the code over the security fence in Mountain View and let everyone have a go at playing with it. The funny thing is, most of that code sharing is actually required by law since Google takes so much source code from the open community and then spends countless of millions of dollars transforming those jumbled lines into polished products.
Jean-Baptiste Queru, who used to be the liaison between Google and the open source community, had a public meltdown a while back over some trivial driver issue. At least that’s what the rumors said. According to Android Police, yesterday was his first day with Yahoo!.
Congratulations, JBQ, on your new position as Senior Principal Engineer of Mobile Apps. Up until now, I didn’t actually know Yahoo! even made mobile apps. There’s that weather one, but what else?
Oh right, Flickr.
