Chris Dibona On Free Software and Google 107
dkd903 wrote in with an interview with Chris Dibona in Der Standard. Within, he declares Android as "... the dream come true. It's your Linux desktop, it's the ultimate success story of Linux that I've been working on personally since 1995." There's lots of other good stuff on Google's internal use of GNU/Linux: "If you'd look at laptops it's maybe 70 percent Mac OS X and most of the rest is Linux, we are a huge customer of Apple. Engineering Desktops are overwhelmingly running on Linux. We have our own Ubuntu derivative called 'Goobuntu' internally for that, integrating with our network — we run all our the home directories from a file server — and with some extra tools already built-in for developers."
Re:But.. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Android is not Linux (Score:5, Informative)
As far as I know, there is no reason why you can't have open source android applications. Example: the ADW Launcher for Android [google.com], of which I use a modified version called VTL.Launcher.
Furthermore, the app store is a convenience, not a necessity, on Android. I can download and install an apk from anywhere I like.
And, lastly, there are closed-source and non-free Linux applications.
"Linux" != "open source," does it? They generally coincide, but they are not equivalent.
Also, you can modify various kernels and build "distros" of Android. I'm running a "distro" on my viewsonic g tablet. I have tried two others, as well.
Re:Android is not Linux (Score:4, Informative)
Android source is here: http://source.android.com/ [android.com]
Go ahead and make your own distribution, dozens of people already do. Cyanogenmod is probably the largest.
Other utilities you want that aren't there, but available in GNU? Port 'em. Source is there. Nothing is keeping it from happening.