Against some reports, everything that makes Android is Android, including all the major platform components and libraries necessary to port Android to new devices will be Open Source, licensed under the commonly used standard, Google said. What is open?
In Zdnet confirm that after talking with three of Google employees, it is clear that the core Android platform will be 100% open source. Even multimedia codecs, which are usually closed will be opened. The only exception seems to be the use of Apache software license (ASL v2). This is the same Open Source license used by many other projects, like the Apache HTTP server, Tomcat, Harmony, and many other projects of the Open Source community.
The software is already licensed will continue to use the free software license. In particular this includes Google's enhancements to the Linux kernel. Linux uses the GNU GPL v2 so that improvements in the core will continue to use the same license.
Any software that use Eclipse as Eclipse plugin Tools, will be licensed under the Eclipse Public License (EPL) as this is used by Eclipse.
Google chose the Apache license because it gives OEMs and application developers the freedom to use any license they want for their own software. While Google encourages everyone to use open source If possible, not required by the license. Even Google has among its plans to create some closed-form applications, such as your GMAIL. These programs are not part of the core Android system but may be included with Android phones.
We must remember that to date, all software included in our cell was closed and had been patented. Being able to choose to use free applications on our phones in the not too distant future is simply encouraging.
0 comments:
Post a Comment