<div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Jan 13, 2012 at 10:48 AM, <a href="mailto:mike@trausch.us">mike@trausch.us</a> <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:mike@trausch.us">mike@trausch.us</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div id=":1w5">I'm actually surprised that Android hit things off as well as it did.<br>
More and more companies are agreeing to the terms of the GPL when<br>
creating and distributing their own devices, which makes me happy, but<br>
I'm surprised that something else built on BSD didn't manage to be<br>
introduced and become as-or-more successful, simply because then<br>
companies could go "WE KEEP OUR STUFFS PRIVATE!!!!".</div></blockquote></div><br><div>For the kernel stuff they are using GPL (obviously because they have to), for the userland they use the Apache license [0] which I think is similar to BSD but with added patent indemnification (IANAL). This allows the handset manufacturers to come out with their own UI flavor, something they think differentiates them from other Android phones but in all actuality no one seems to want, and not open source it.</div>
<div><br></div><div>[0] <a href="http://source.android.com/source/licenses.html">http://source.android.com/source/licenses.html</a></div><div> </div><div>-Steve Brown</div>