Google's VP of Engineering Andy Rubin has taken to the Android blog in order to settle many observer's criticisms of Google over its recent delay in open-sourcing the Android Honeycomb code.
"We’ve remained committed to fostering the development of an open platform for the mobile industry and beyond" writes Rubin, talking of Google's commitment to keeping Android open source since it appeared in the market towards the end of 2008. The wide number of devices that Android is being used on has been used to claim that the OS is fragmented, however Rubin counters this: "Miraculously, we are seeing the platform take on new use cases, features and form factors as it’s being introduced in new categories and regions while still remaining consistent and compatible for third party applications."
"We continue to be an open source platform and will continue releasing source code when it is ready" he concludes, promising that the Honeycomb code will be release as soon as Google's developers have finished optimising its features for mobile phones (it was originally targeted at tablet form factor devices such as the Motorola Xoom).
Whether this will quieten the critics remains to be seen, although that Google is open-sourcing its code at all (compared to Apple, Microsoft, Palm and many other's closed-source nature) deserves some merit.
Incidentally, last time we wrote about everyone being up-in-arms about Android, the latest iOS had just been released, and we hoped that it would fix the issue with alarms and time changes causing many to not get up on time. It didn't.
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