Android, although an open source operating system, but when competed with other open source operating systems in the market, was claimed to be the most closed one. Check out the whole detail about the research below, in which Android was ranked as the The Most “Closed” open source operating system.
This research, known as Open Governance Index or OGI,was conducted by VisionMobile, and reported it in a post on their blog, in which they discuss about the open source operating system, and the most open and most closed one in them.
They took a total 8 Open Source OSs, which were Android, Qt, Symbian, MeeGo, Mozilla, WebKit, Linux and Eclipse.
According to them, Eclipse ranked first in them all with 84% in terms of the most open, open source operating system platform with an Open Governance Index. While Google’s famous smartphone OS, Android scored the lowest with only 23%.
Here is what they report,
Android ranks as the most closed project, with an Open Governance Index of 23%, yet at the same time is one of the most successful projects in the history of open source.
Is Android proof that open governance is not needed to warrant success in an open source project? The firm goes on to suggest that Android’s success has less to do with open source licensing and more to do with Google’s financial muscle
Google has made Android available at ‘less than zero’ cost, since Google’s core business is not software or search, but driving eyeballs to ads. As is now well understood, Google’s strategy has been to subsidise Android such that it can deliver cheap handsets and low-cost wireless Internet access in order to drive more eyeballs to Google’s ad inventory.
The full report from VisionMobile comprises of a total of 45 pages. You can download it from this link and clicking the download link in the post to download the whole report in the form of an Adobe file.
The report focuses on these points.
- Open source cultural roots and working upstream vs downstream
- Open source licenses vs governance models
- Analysis and classification of governance models
- In-depth reviews of Android, Qt, Symbian, MeeGo, Mozilla, WebKit, Linux and Eclipse
- Best practices in creating an open source project
Well, we have to say that they are right. It doesn’t matter how many manufacturers use its famous Android or how many people buy Android based smartphones. The only thing that will matter to Google, is that all those people will bring more attention to Google, bringing in a lot of ads for Google. That is all the company wants, so it did made its OS open source, but it didn’t go too far in that to keep the Android users on Google. It just kept in the limits, so as to not allow people to switch from Google to some other thing.
You can check out the whole infographic below explaining about the open source rankings.
