Richard Stallman: “Android Phones Do Not Respect Your Freedom”
This thread has some people attacking RMS as a person without taking on the (guardian) article on its merits. Please read the article <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/sep/19/android-free-software-stallman" rel="nofollow">http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/sep/19/android-fre...</a>, the man raises some interesting points and is <i>not</i> just about your inability to inspect the source.<p>The points that were specifically made (for those that want to rail against the article but that refuse to read it for some reason):<p>- "Google's Andy Rubin put up a proof that Android was open, then subsequent releases of android were put out in a way that this proof no longer held, so by googles own definition android is currently not an open platform"<p>- "Google has said it will never publish the source code of Android 3.0 (aside from Linux), even though executables have been released to the public. Android 3.1 source code is also being withheld. Thus, Android 3, apart from Linux, is non-free software, pure and simple."<p>- "Android is a major step towards an ethical, user-controlled, free-software portable phone, but there is a long way to go. Even though the Android phones of today are considerably less bad than Apple or Windows smartphones, they cannot be said to respect your freedom."<p>- "The phone network firmware comes pre-installed. If all it did was sit there and run, we could regard it as equivalent to a circuit. When we insist that the software in a computing device must be free, we can overlook pre-installed firmware that will never be upgraded, because it makes no difference to the user that it's a program rather than a circuit.<p>Unfortunately, in this case it would be a malicious circuit. Malicious features are unacceptable no matter how they are implemented.<p>On most Android phones, this firmware has so much control that it could turn the product into a listening device. On some, it controls the microphone. On some, it can take full control of the main computer, through shared memory, and can thus override or replace whatever free software you have installed. With some models it is possible to exercise remote control of this firmware, and thus of the phone's computer, through the phone radio network."<p>Take issue with what the man said, not with the man.<p>My personal take on all this is that if you base your offering on a huge amount of open source that you should keep the spirit of those whose code enables you to run your business alive and respond in kind.