Google, in an interesting but not entirely unexpected twist, will
not be open-sourcing Android 3.0 Honeycomb for the foreseeable future.
Historically, Android is usually open-sourced
via the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) a few days or weeks after the code is finalized. While this departure from the norm won't affect OEMs like HTC and Motorola that have access to internal builds of Android, small-time developers will likely have to wait months before rolling their own distributions.
As to
why Google is holding back Honeycomb, its reasons are actually rather rational.
Honeycomb, while originally
intended to run on all mobile form factors, is only ready for deployment on tablets. "To make our schedule to ship the tablet, we made some design tradeoffs," says Andy Rubin, the head of Google's Android group. "We didn't want to think about what it would take for the same software to run on phones. It would have required a lot of additional resources and extended our schedule beyond what we thought was reasonable. So we took a shortcut."
In other words, Google wants to prevent OEMs and homebrew developers like
Cyanogen from rolling their own smartphone versions of Honeycomb -- it doesn't want to see the same bitter-tasting tabletified bastardization that occurred with Android 2.1 and 2.2 last year.
Continue reading Google holds back on open-sourcing Honeycomb, heralds massive shift for Android
Google holds back on open-sourcing Honeycomb, heralds massive shift for Android originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 25 Mar 2011 07:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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We knew that the Dailybooth team, creators of photo sharing app Batch, moved on to greener pastures at Airbnb. The acquisition was to bolster the mobile apps and presence for Airbnb. What we didn't know is what the fate of its products would be, but now we do. Today, the "Batch team" sent out an email to its users informing them that they should download their photos, because the service will be shutting down:
