Category Archives: mobile

Android – The new open source cathedral

In a new blog post by Andy Rubin, Google VP of Engineering, Andy defends Android’s open-source credentials, commenting that:

  • “As always, device makers are free to modify Android to customize any range of features for Android devices”
  • “Finally, we continue to be an open source platform and will continue releasing source code when it is ready”
  • “As soon as this work is completed, we’ll publish the code”

When Andy talks about this, he reconfirms that Google will continue to publish the Android source code under an open-source licence, but he also seems to confirm that Google don’t really believe in the open source development model for Android.

By withholding the “unfinished” code (is code ever finished?) from both the public and device manufacturers like HTC, who have said they will only be able to start work on Android 3.0 once it’s released, Google are limiting the outside input into Android.

This model of “closed open source” is heavily discussed in the “The Cathedral and the Bazaar“, published by ESR in 1996, that defined much of open source development of the period, and has continued to guide people on developing open source projects. It discusses the success of open source projects such as Linux which accepted code contributions from anyone, and the failure of other open source projects where the maintainer considers only their own code to be “good enough” for release, and instead chooses to work alone, only letting people work on the new code when the developer feels ready.

If you read the paper, I think you can only come to the conclusion that Google believe in the “cathedral” development model, occassional (perhaps rare) releases that noone outside the cathedral can contribute to.

Rather than encourage unity in the Android code base, this is more likely to decrease unity, and introduce new forks, as each manufacturer has to work separately to introduce new features, which they wait for the cathedral to perform the new ceremony.

What does this mean for Android in the long-term? I’m not sure, but I’m pretty sure that HTC, Samsung, and the other device manufacturers are well down the road of their own internal forks of Android 2.3, just in case Android 3.0 never quite makes it out of Google’s currently closed door…

Apple’s new levy on content is bad news for authors

Apple have announced new rules for all purchases made on an Apple iOS devices (iPad, iPod, iPhone), where all content purchased via an app will now be subject to a 30% processing fee, with rules forbidding any links to external purchasing methods and ensuring the Apple in-app price is as low as any external option.

Considering the cost of credit card processing is around 2.5%, this 30% levy is obviously hugely profitable for Apple, but it’s extremely damaging for small content producers like self-publishing authors and musicians.

To give you an example of the costs involved, a £10 e-book sold here in the UK via the Apple iPad by Amazon’s Kindle e-reader application will now have a price breakdown of:

  1. List Price: £10
  2. Value Added Tax at 15%: £-1.50
  3. 30% Amazon Publisher fee: £-2.55
  4. Amazon Delivery fee: £-0.10
  5. 30% Apple Levy: £-2.55
  6. Remaining profits for author: £3.30

Adding all these fees together leaves a self-publishing author with just £3.30 out of the original £10, with an amazing 67% removed by middlemen along the way.

While the Amazon fee is high, at least they’re doing some work to justify their margin – storing the content, providing the customer services department, the retail store, etc, Apple are simply skimming an extra 30% off for little or no work.

Similar situations will occur with all music sold, magazines, newspapers, in-game purchases, and pretty much any other digital content sold.

Do you think this is right? Personally, I think it’s unjustified, and definitely a step too far by Apple in attempting to become the gatekeeper for all content on their iOS devices.

A Kindle or a house extension?

There’s been lots of discussion only recently about ebooks and the new Kindle in particular, covering all the downsides of the Kindle and it’s competitors in the ebook market.

All the downsides of ebooks are real and valid:

  • You lose the look, smell and feel of the books we grew up with
  • You can’t resell or give away your books once you’re finished with them
  • Library borrowing is awkward at best, impossible on the Kindle
  • You own your own books, noone can take it away unlike Amazon did with George Orwell’s 1984
  • You can take a book in the bath or the rain, worst case, you damage one book
  • Regular paperback books are generally cheaper than ebooks – this is true, and very silly

And I’m sure there’s dozens of others that are equally valid, but they don’t outweigh one single huge upside of ebooks for me:

  • Space is expensive!

I’ve recently given boxes and boxes of books to charity, after I moved house and had nowhere to put my old books. At first, I kept them in the perfect storage space – my parents house, but that’s not really a long-term solution is it? A Kindle will store over 3000 books, and if you somehow fill it, then you can delete some of books from the device and re-download them in the future, Amazon retain your purchase list and let you retrieve the files whenever you want.

Of course there’s other nice things about the Kindle, the 3G web access in 100 countries is a fantastic feature for people who like to travel while keeping in touch with people, text searching of books to find a quote you’re hunting for, the flexibility of being able to access 500,000 or more books on demand, but fundamentally it’s the space.

So if someone else tells you the Kindle is too expensive and ebooks cost too much, ask them how much it would cost to build a library extension to my house so I can keep 3000 books in it 🙂