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I’m having a little trouble understanding Android; the business side I mean, not the technology.

Technology

It looks like decent
enough software, although there is some pretty sharp criticism in
Five problems with Google Android.
In particular, as a scarred
veteran of X Windows programming and one who’s welcoming the
introduction of resolution-independence in OS X, I too think it would be
wonderful to get past pixel-based imaging models. [Update: the “Five
Problems” guy
may
be wrong on this one.]

Still, if anything can match the iPhone, it’ll be a truly commons-based,
radically-open platform.

Licensing and Business

I think that the problem in the mobile space has always been
the business model, not the technology.
I’ve
argued
repeatedly that it will never get interesting
until the mobile network operators relax their death-grip on
the customer relationship, open the networks and devices, and focus on their
core competences: bandwidth and billing. The technology hasn’t been that
great, but it hasn’t been that bad. My perfectly decent little Samsung
phone, with a truly great screen, has Java and lots of other goodness, but I
can’t actually run any
programs unless I buy them from the network operator. Oddly, there are no
programs for sale that are interesting in the slightest.
That’s the problem.

Unless I’m missing something, the big deal with
the Java-language-on-another-VM setup seems to be about using the
Apache license, as opposed to the Sun version’s GPL.
Which means (and once again, I may be missing something) that any old
cellphone maker can take the Android software and build another locked-down
control-freak phone just like my Samsung.

So what’s the point?

As a Sun shareholder, sure, I’d like our technology on those mobile
devices. But as a Sun shareholder, I see another huge upside in the
mass of server infrastructure everyone will need when the network operators
unclench and we get an explosion of creativity and Mobile/Internet apps.
So if Android will do that, it’d be hard to be against it. Will Android do
that? Why?

Disclosure

Like it says on the front page of ongoing, I do
not speak for Sun except when I say I am. In this particular
matter, not only do I not speak for Sun, I have no idea what our official
position on Android is, I’m not in that loop, nor have I read the legal
Android fine print, nor have I downloaded the software.

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