Earlier this week the Android community learned what Google meant with Open Source. Clearly what Cyanogen, maker of CyanogenMod, had been doing something that violated their idea with their mobile operating system. The actions were a cease and desist order on Cyanogen making his popular mobile Operating System (OS). Many users are running this Operating System for many reasons, some of the main ones are stability, accessibility, and better resource usage. This is even more prevalent on the newly release Hero from HTC, which people have claimed to have been given last years hardware with next years ROM, I personally beg to differ, but that’s a whole other story.

The cease and desist order was not about his hacking of the ROM and alterations to it, but more what he was including installed into his OS package. Google had also implemented closed source things within their Open Source object, some of these being Gmail, Android Marketplace, YouTube, and Google Maps. These being what is known as Closed Source which means “Unavailable for public coders to utilize, change and build on” and is opposite of Open Source which is limited to the Android OS. I guess Google didn’t make it clear that they were going to create Android, distribute it to companies that were willing to adopt it, and then also throw in their applications like Gmail and Google maps, but not allow coders to keep them in their Operating Systems, which will defeat the purpose of it being a “Google Phone”. I think what Google is trying to do here is to state that their stuff inside the factory Android OS is meant to not go on other phones except those with Android installed. Now, Cyanogen does release this for Android phones that already have this stuff installed on the Android OS that is already in there, but I’m sure Google see’s this as a possibility of people installing this on things like iPhone’s and the like. Really, this seems to be more of a way for Google to lock down their applications to the Android OS alone, so people will stick to it and they can update it and control it, since Cyanogen takes the source of the most recent update and creates updates using that.

This story has 2 possible arguments, both of which I agree with to extents. Being an Open Source OS, Android and everything that functions in it can technically be called Open Source, because most open source operating systems do not use closed source applications, however they could, but if they’re built specifically for the operating system, then they technically took a closed source idea and made an open source app from it. All Cyanogen is doing is taking the base OS, giving it root, some minor tweaks, and then releasing. What I would do in google’s case, is actually hire Cyanogen, and release 2 forms of the android OS. If Linux was restricted to Red Hat kernel, then the Debian kernel wouldn’t have lasted long enough to form the most popular version of linux, especially among beginners. (Ubuntu) To break this down further, Cyanogen was making an altered version of the OS and letting people use it at will, but on the specific phones only. So really, the apps are staying but it’s like those who take windows and tweak it to work faster. Let’s face it, the HTC Android phones are a bit slow a times, but it’s fixable with either the right app, or with flashing the ROM for Cyanogen’s mod, which is just that, a Mod, short for Modification. A modification takes the base of everything and improves or alters for a specific user, or group of user’s needs, or to fix an issue.

Other end of this argument is that Google did make some of it closed source, however then they should say mostly open source. I think they should have let it go or hired Cyanogen.

I hope Cyanogen can cut a deal with google and improve the situation so he’s not left with a base os. I honestly think Google should feature a backup system for everyone’s android phones, somewhat like computers coming with os discs, some little flash drive that has the factory Android os and when you boot with it, you get an option to flash the ROM to bring it back to factory. A lot of people who have bricked phones are those who think that Cyanogen’s mod was perfectly legal and then to not have a way to restore the operating system. This is a touchy subject considering the Open Source statement, however Google is a big enough company that if anybody can make it happen in thir favor, they can.

What do you think?

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