Well, this is fascinating. ASUS hasn’t even released its Eee Pad Transformer yet, but it’s already put up for download the source code to the Linux kernel used in the Android Honeycomb operating system the machine runs. In other words, Google isn’t withholding anything it is not allowed to withhold. As said by many – storm, teacup, meet. Go here, select download, select Android.
In what way is the kernel used in Honeycomb interesting?
It’s all about making sure that AT THE VERY LEAST the licenses are not violated. That’s important.
But, as I’ve detailed quite clearly already, that’s not enough for most people – including myself.
License violation would never happen in a company as rich and knowledgeable as Google (they’ve got a lot to lose). That’s for small sweatshops mostly.
Surely the point of the storm-teacup bit is that Google did not have to make the kernel source available (to end users) as they were not distributing the binary (to end users). Asus are distributing the binaries and therefore need to comply with the licence terms as they are here.
I’m sure Google does comply with the license by distributing the source of the kernel to ASUS. 😉
ASUS could also have pointed to a download page on the site of ASUS or Google where you would need to login to download (the login is printed in the manual you got from ASUS).
I think this would still be complying the license, I’m glad they didn’t go to such extremes.
The license does not say you need to make it public to everyone, just the people that got (in this case probably: bought) the ‘product’.
They could also just include a CD with the manual.
And per GPL (and pretty much any other true OSS license), you as the end user are not restricted from then re-distributing that source again. Thus, there’s little-to-no incentive to make it difficult to obtain FOSS source code for users – they have every right to just post it publicly anyway.
Well, it may have Google patches either not submitted or rejected upstream, so it’s can be different from a vanilla Linux kernel so if you want to patch your (future) Eee Pad Transformer, this can be interesting..
Android’s kernel IS different from vanilla Linux. Very different in fact. We already know this and have already had lengthy debates about the implications of this (namely the worry that drivers may become OS dependant and not inter-compatible between Android and GNU/Linux)
But half the POINT of having Open Source software is getting all the extra eyes on the code and helping squash bugs, and add features. The code should be on Google Code for anyone to edit and improve.
But isn’t the Android 3.0 kernel source located on the Google Android git repository.
Edited 2011-04-08 20:03 UTC
pretty much:
http://android.git.kernel.org/
You can see plenty of recent checkins, including a “honeycomb” tag on the tegra tree:
http://android.git.kernel.org/?p=kernel/tegra.git;a=shortlog;h=refs…
So I’m guessing all the honeycomb kernel sources are there, but perhaps not well labeled.
Which is an interesting point, given the wording of the GPL with respect to “the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it”.
Assuming releases are clearly tagged, a git repository is certainly a more desirable form than a mere tarball release.