[TriLUG] Android Phone vs iPhone vs other smartphones

[Kevin Hunter]

At 11:24am -0400 Wed, 17 Mar 2010, Matt Pusateri wrote:
> On Mar 17, 2010, at 11:06 AM, Christopher L Merrill wrote:
>> open-source nature of Android is worthless

> I think you misunderstood what I was saying.

As did I, and responded in a sister-thread.  Perhaps prematurely as I
made my way through the email thread ... read on

> If all your doing is downloading apps from a app store and not 
> developing apps yourself, then it's less of a factor for you that 
> you personally have access to the source code.

That may be, and is, in all likelihood, the way most people think, for
better or worse.  It's a good point that was lost on me earlier.

> I am not saying, nor did I think I say "that the open-source 
> nature of Android is worthless".

> I want it to work and be stable, my phone is not the place I want 
> to have to spend time tinkering, but that's just me.

I think most of us on the list want something that "just works".  It's
not just you.  I'm one of those people as well.  But I don't think open
source requires tinkering.  The difference between the iPhone and the
Android phone as I see it[1] is not that you have to tinker with the
Android (apps), it's that you *can't* tinker with the iPhone or it's
apps (for the most part).  That's what gets me when folks say that open
source is worthless for them.  No, it's not something they can directly
use, but it misses the point, especially with more "mission-critical"
applications, that it's impossible to have a direct effect if necessary
unless something's open source.

Again, I now understand what you were trying to say, that it's not
worthless, just useless to the individual who won't be messing with
it.  I think that's the wrong message to send about open source
in general.  The right message to send is perhaps that it's not
currently up to to par, or "finished" enough yet for prime time.  I will
concede that.  I won't concede, however, that open source *requires*
tinkering; I claim that it doesn't.

Kevin

[1] Again, I don't actually own either, just have messed with
friends'.