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Open source in a time of recession
How will open source fare when budgets are slashed to the bone, and competition becomes a shark tank, with your employer just a small fish in the school?... Continued »
October 13th, 2008
Value, value and values in an open source world
There is a distinct difference in the attitude of open source players, advocates and users.
It comes down to a five-letter word, value. Or its plural, values.
When folks like Matt Asay look at value, they are looking at the value of their employers and the value they can extract from customers. There is nothing wrong with this attitude. You wouldn’t be worth much in business without it.
Looking at the valuations placed on open source companies, and what they’re worth in hard times like these, it can be hard not to be discouraged.
Red Hat has fewer zeroes in its valuation from its market share than a proprietary company would. The same goes for Alfresco and all the other enterprise players.
That’s because of another definition of value, the one understood by users and thus customers. The value from eliminating distribution costs, cutting marketing to the bone, and reduced friction in markets is going to them.
Open source is an incredible deal for customers big and small. There is immense value to be derived from controlling your own code, and for getting programs free of charge.
This is value which, for the most part, we don’t have to share with vendors. Enterprises now have their own code bases. They have a choice between building, buying and (now) taking enhancements.
Trouble is of course this value goes to our bottom line. This value no longer belongs to the industry, but to the economy as a whole. User value does not give them vendors value. Hence they see open source as destroying value.
Which brings me to the third value, the word values as used by open source advocates like me.
This third definition of values tries to mediate between the other two. It is a moral imperative, asking that users share the value they gain in open source with other users, even (sometimes) with competitors.
This can be hard to grasp.
Cogswell Cogs is deriving enormous value from its open source use but must share that with Spacely Sprockets? Placing this in the fictional world of The Jetsons lets you see just how big a leap this is. (The show is a product of the mainframe era, the 1960s.)
Yet that is precisely what open source values call upon us to do. It is why articles like this, equating a nation’s adoption of open source to protectionism, strike advocates as so silly and vendors as so right.
From a vendor’s perspective this is exactly what countries are doing, closing their markets to alternative approaches by mandating open source.
But from the advocate’s point of view, that mandate will also require sharing not only within that market but between markets, not only between developing markets but with developed ones as well. Where is the loss, they ask?
We can see the loss right now. We have just gone through a period of enormous value destruction, $5 trillion in the U.S. alone.
Open source does not promise to bring even a tiny fraction of that back to the tech industry. As companies with open source code cut back they become less likely to share, interested only in maintenance and self-protection, not the general welfare.
Which brings me back to values.
The storm will ease in time. Growth, or the prospect of growth, will return. Companies did not lose their code bases during the storm, as they might have had they been forced to cut license payments.
The recovery from this current downturn could be quite sharp, thanks to the value, value, and the values of open source.
October 13th, 2008
Sun StarOffice 9 to launch Nov 19, OpenOffice 3 launch on Oct 13
Sun is expected to launch a major upgrade of StarOffice based on the new OpenOffice 3.0 on November 19, sources said.
OpenOffice 3.0 is set to be officially launched in Paris on October 13. Sun’s StarOffice 9 will be available in late November.
More to follow
October 10th, 2008
On the Linux laptop the bundle is all
Our review of the latest Linux laptop, the Asus EeePC 1000, has not begun auspiciously but with an important lesson.
In a Linux laptop, the bundle is all.
Let me explain. Yesterday my 17 year old son’s PC gave up the ghost. The motherboard crashed. It had to go away.
When John came home I offered him the Linux laptop.
Where’s the Internet, he asked. It took me about 20 minutes to set up the internal WiFi, and he could use the Firefox browser.
Try the word processor, I suggested, and he did. It worked. But (and this is important) it wasn’t the Open Office which came with the 900 Model we had in earlier. It was Star Office. An earlier program. It does not support the current ODT standard.
So when John finished entering his homework, he got mad. He first noticed that the word processor did not automatically recognize the thumb drive he had put in the USB port to move it over for printing.
Then he found my own copy of Open Office could not read it.
He was furious. “Why are you giving me a computer you don’t know how to use?” he demanded. I fussed and fumed but could not fix things right away.
So he grabbed my own PC and retyped the whole assignment, moving his eyes from screen-to-screen like a good secretary. (Hey, his typing speed has gotten good.) Then he printed it and huffed away, slamming the door behind him.
The solution seemed straightforward. I went online and grabbed the Linux version of Open Office.
But installing Linux software is not like adding a PC program. I’ll get through it, in time, but it’s vital you look at any Linux laptop, at the software installed with the operating system, and know you can deal with it before signing the credit slip.
You don’t want to face the wrath of an angry teenager.
October 10th, 2008
Open source is about belief in code
You can read stories about doom and depression somewhere else today.
(This classic 1873 cartoon of Wall Street being swept clean by panic, drawn by Frank Bellows, is part of the American History Social Project.)
Instead I want you to look across the headlines to the other side of the chasm.
There is something there that does not exist in the proprietary wreckage, something important. Code.
Even if an open source enterprise should go belly-up its code should survive. That code can be enhanced, it can be forked, it can be turned into another business, perhaps with another business model, down the road.
The code will be there because those who forged both the FOSS and open source movements believed first in what they could do for code, and only second in what code could do for them.
While proprietary business models may be based on a belief in the market, and a hope it will reward them, open source is based on something deeper, a belief in people and the work good code can do when it is shared.
The code will make you free. It’s free code. Build something with it. Add to it and (if it’s GPL code) bring those enhancements back so can build the stack higher.
Opponents of the open source movement like to call this socialism, even communism, but this principle of sharing is at the heart of every major religion.
Open source companies may die but they always leave something important behind, something their successors can work on and use.
After every collapse, under the open source principle, we start from a higher level. What looks in the proprietary world like rubble is, in an open source world, gold ore.
This may sound like pollyanna to you now, but it’s important and, best of all, real. If your faith in Wall Street has been shaken, remember that in open source you’re not starting at ground zero but on a higher level of code.
Open source was made for times like this. You don’t have to believe in it. Just use it.
October 9th, 2008
Where open source will be sucked into the downdraft
No use denying it. Parts of the open source industry are going to be sucked into Wall Street’s downdraft.
Gordon Haff at The Pervasive DataCenter offers some good wisdom here, which our own Matt Asay may find dispiriting. The pure play open source company is going the way of the dot-bomb.
This doesn’t mean open source won’t survive. A lot of people are going to have to start over, especially those concerned with business models.
I described some working ones earlier today. But none is an easy dollar. For one thing, many take scale to work. Others take marketing, which proprietary companies always have more money for.
I disagree with Gordon on the desktop. The cheap, sturdy netbook is a great invention, and if we’re all getting foreclosed on we can use them in the street. Will code for food.
One thing that won’t die is the open source movement. Another thing that won’t die is the need for open source expertise. If you know Linux, or Java, or a 100 smaller niches you can probably find work, even if for a time you’re a freelance.
The best analogy for this recession is that we’re all at a poker table when someone scoops up most of the chips and walks out. The rest — proprietary, open source, public and private — have fewer chips to play with. A lot fewer.
This is where the values of open source really come into play. Finding a way to live simply, or simply live, on what you do will take cooperation. Open source has that as a central value.
Google will survive, albeit in a much smaller form. IBM will survive, and be ready to thrive when this is over. Everything else will consolidate. Bye-bye Sun. Red Hat, find a buyer.
What do you think the results will be?
October 9th, 2008
Making money on open source
The market will rise this morning, writes Erik Sherman over at BNET, because IBM is reporting strong earnings.
So much for our little talk about making money on open source.
IBM has used Linux to unify its product lines, it has used open source to deliver services, and it has continued to get top dollar for the time of its people despite their using open source tools.
Along the way it has helped Eclipse become a major force in the tools business, it has helped give Linux significant server share, and it has managed to avoid the media spotlight.
This is not the only model for making money with open source. As Matt Asay notes today, Cisco’s model is to embed open source software in its hardware and then sell the hardware.
Then there’s Google, which we discussed yesterday. It makes its money from targeted advertising, which allows it to monetize free content across the Web.
Another way to make money online was described by Tom Wolfe in his book Bonfire of the Vanities. Crumbs.
That’s what the Masters of the Universe on Wall Street called the commissions they collected trading securities. But it can refer to any service that is performed many times, perhaps by software, for a nominal fee.
There are many such services. I described one such service, the comparison of health plans, at ZDNet Healthcare yesterday. You can make money from buyers, sellers or both. The success of eBay is based on crumbs. Same with that of site registrars.
No one has to know whether such services are based on proprietary or open source code. The fear that someone will copy your service is mitigated by the fact that you build your code in pieces, and don’t have to give away the whole.
All this, of course, is in addition to support contracts and paid SaaS, which is what most open source developers think about when they consider sources of cash flow.
My point today is that perhaps they should think more broadly.
October 8th, 2008
Google is at your service
If you want a friend get a dog. (Blacky has been one of my dogs since 1996.)
Google is not your friend.
On the other hand Google is not an evil neighbor , either.
Google really doesn’t know you from Adam’s Off Ox, as Bill Clinton once said.
We’re confusing love with credibility, emotions with business.
Google is a service, it is at your service, just as ZDNet is at your service. Google’s value is measured by the credibility you give that service, again just like ZDNet.
What has changed in this decade is that every business, not just every journalism enterprise, has a credibility account. It’s a measure of trust, of believability, of faith in a business sense.
I was taught this on my first day of journalism school, although I already knew it, because I had been a publisher, radio voice, and editor starting in ninth grade.
I have not always followed this lesson as well as I might. I have made mistakes, gotten things wrong, offered grand generalizations that were not precisely true.
Each mistake hit me in the credibility.
Without them I might be talking to Katie Couric right now instead of you lot (not that I mind you lot — I treasure the opportunity ZDNet has given me.) It’s just that the difference between the TV anchor chair and the one in my office is credibility.
It has become my favorite quote. Credibility is the coin of the realm.
What Google has proven is that this concept of credibility can be monetized to an extreme degree in the world of the Internet.
Most everything Google does is given away, yet it makes a ton of money. That’s the open source principle in action. The reason it makes money is that it gives great value for time, and that’s what credibility comes down to — value for time.
People like Chris Dawson trust the tools and resources Google offers his students, which was his point at ZDNet Education. People like Michael Krigsman are skeptical of what Google does with data about them, as he notes at IT Project Failures.
Both are measuring credibility, which is the key to success online and the key to success in open source. Dawson is touting it, Krigsman chipping away at it. Their views, your views, all our views add up to Google’s credibility, which its daily actions can add to or subtract from.
My point is it’s all the same thing. What we control as journalists, what you control as a businessperson, what Google has built into an empire, is all the same thing.
It is as George Shultz (left) said. Trust is the coin of the realm. Notice the change in that quote. It’s something I learned about while writing this post.
When I first quoted Schultz in 1999 I wrote “credibility is the coin of the realm,” which I just learned others have since quoted behind my own name, sometimes spelling it wrong in the process.
Fortunately Google has now corrected me. It’s a credible service.
October 8th, 2008
Changing open source terms bad move in a recession
In a time of recession people look closely at the fine print.
They want everything they are entitled to, and will not spend a penny more than they have to.
It’s a bad time to change your terms in search of support contracts, as SpringSource learned recently.
In a bid to raise enterprise contract revenues, SpringSource decided last month to limit updates for its community version. Now it has reversed course, CEO Rod Johnson explaining things in this blog post.
Some have stated concerns that Spring would cease to be open source. The phrase “license change” kept being bandied around—despite the fact that we were not changing the licenses of any Spring code. While such speculation was unfounded, it’s still concerning.
Both the action, and reaction, were born out of fear, which needs no reason.
It’s possible that in flush times these changes might have stuck. They were not license changes. They reflected only terms under which SpringSource would give away code. It’s a corporate-managed code base used mainly by enterprises.
But life is unfair, and now SpringSource has to live through stories telling people who never heard of it how it tried to grab code out of the hands of script kiddies. Or not give them updates.
All this hurts its position as it tries to dance the survival dance with other players in enterprise open source. A lot of open source companies will merge or combine or sink in the next several months, and this was no time to stick a fork in the liferaft.
Don’t make the same mistake.
October 8th, 2008
Open source in a time of recession
No one questions the fact of recession any more, although we have yet to confirm a single quarter without growth, let alone two.
(Picture from Freefrombroke.com.)
But consolidation is on the way. IDC has renamed its LinuxWorld show in San Francisco next year Open Source World, a clear shot across the bow at O’Reilly’s OSCON, which is moving to San Jose.
The two will now market heavily against one another, and it’s possible one will die before summer. IDC has experience and financial heft, O’Reilly has street cred. Hard choices will be made.
Tech hates recessions, even though tech booms start at the bottom of them. The PC boom emerged from the bottom of a recession in the early 80s, and the Internet boom from another in the early 90s.
Just as open source itself emerged from the wreckage of the dot bomb during, what — the early aughts?
Something new will emerge from this recession but open source enters it on a fairly mature level. The legal framework and values of it are established. There are serious open source players.
I have detected fear of the drop in many of Matt Asay’s recent posts. And those of others. Recessions are frightening. That is their nature.
How will open source fare when budgets are slashed to the bone, and competition becomes a shark tank, with your employer just a small fish in the school?
Oh, and thanks to Katie Couric for her shout-out last night after the debate. Big employers are comforting to have at times like this.
My feeling is that open source, as a concept, will emerge from this recession dominant. My feeling is it will extend its reach beyond software, into many other areas, because open source is all about pooling resources.
We face what my late friend Russell Shaw called “a shrinking water hole.” Not every company will survive the drought. But open source as a business model will survive, because it’s an adaptation that is meant for days like these.
How do you think we got through the dot-bomb? All those nasty jibes about how we were kids coding in our parents’ basements had a ring of truth. My own income fell to zero for two years.
I got through it thanks to this medium, thanks to the collaboration and cooperation that this medium engenders. (Also thanks to my saintly wife, whose career stayed on course throughout.)
Open source emerged in the same way, and it will get through this next crisis just fine.
October 7th, 2008
Chicken, egg and mobile open source
There are growing worries that mobile open source is not moving ahead.
Name me a serious mobile open source outfit beyond Funambol. Exactly.
It’s a chicken and egg situation. (This chicken appeared today at my ZDNet Healthcare blog.) Carriers and handset makers want applications. Application makers want a market.
Mobile systems are not like server or client systems. The software needs cooperation to work. The handset maker must load it, or allow it to be loaded. The network must, in most cases, approve the application.
This makes even primitive mobile applications profitable. But it’s not the Internet, and the incumbent network operators don’t want it to become anything like the Internet.
T-Mobile has an Android phone coming out, and there’s demand for it. But the raw numbers, when compared with iPhone sales, are paltry. They’re paltry when compared to standard phones from Sprint and Verizon as well.
Sprint, Google and Clearwire are moving ahead with WiMax, but a network which only works in one city is not a competitor.
Don’t get me wrong. Mobile broadband is coming. The real Internet, the real broadband Internet, is coming. The success of the AT&T iPhone guarantees it.
But it will take time to create competition and change carrier attitudes. Until the chickens come home to roost, who is going to invest in eggs?
October 7th, 2008
Open source and Steve Jobs is fine
They really had us going there for a while on Friday.
Next time have Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Sergey Brin and Michael Dell shoot a picture of themselves walking through a crosswalk, only Jobs isn’t wearing shoes. (Can an iPod be made to run backward?)
My guess is that a rogue stock trader used CNN’s iReport to spread a Jobs health rumor because regulators look at stock bulletin boards for signs of fraud.
The phony report of a Jobs heart attack (quickly taken down) sent Apple shares down $7 per share in six hours.
Investigators might be wise to check Europe or the Emirates as a source. The false story went out near midnight on the East Coast, there was enormous trading volume from 4-8 AM (10 AM to 2 PM in Europe), and then things calmed down.
Ironically traders got the same kind of movement the next two trading days, based on economic fundamentals, and you could have gotten Apple shares mid-day Monday for under $90. (The bottom of the spike on the rumor was $97.45.)
So what happened? The same thing that happened to Usenet, and e-mail, and all those stock boards happened. An anonymous, credible medium is easy for spammers and scammers to wreck.
Unless, of course, you have registration up-front, trace the source of posts, and hold those who run scams responsible for their crimes.
There are bigger financial stories to cover, I know, but I do expect whoever did this will be caught.
On the Internet no one knows you’re a dog, until they traceroute the leash to your collar.
October 6th, 2008
October promises to be hot month for Drupal, Mono, OpenOffice, Ubuntu
October is promising to be a big month for open source releases.
As the page on the calendar turned, Acquia launched of its commercially supported version of the popular Drupal open source social publishing system.
And over the weekend, Novell-sponsored Mono project announced the availability of Mono 2.0, an upgrade of the open source cross platform network that allows developers and customers to run .NET apps on Linux. The upgraded version is now compatible with both the desktop and server components of Microsoft’s .NET 2.0 framework.
Looking ahead: On October 13, OpenOffice.org will celebrate the launch of its much anticipated OpenOffice.org 3.0 upgrade. The third release candidate is available now. Version 2.4 was released in March.
Later this month, the popular Ubuntu project is expected to release an update of its Linux distribution, code named Intrepid Ibex. Ubuntu 8.10, slated to ship on october 30, will feature support for GNOME 2.24, the Linux kernel 2.6. 27 and feature an encrypted private directory, guest session, Samba 3.2 and a “last successful boot” recovery entry.
October 6th, 2008
IBM and social networking
Some time ago I had a long talk with an IBM’er about social networking.
He said the first key to bringing social networking to business was a simple directory.
We should all have our own page somewhere, whether as individuals, as members of a hierarchy, or as business entities. We need to be found, and have our expertise known. Then we need to use that directory to network with others.
That’s a key idea behind Bluehouse, the service IBM launched in beta today.
One of the keys to positioning any social networking effort is your analogy. IBM’s analogy is the business meeting.
A business meeting is a play in three acts. Act I happens before the meeting. Act II happens during the meeting. Act III happens after the meeting. Bluehouse is an attempt to link those three acts in a continuing business relationship.
It all takes place online, through a SaaS infrastructure, and whether the underlying software runs under Linux is not that important. But this is how, in an open source world, you get back to proprietary profit and lock-in.
Once you commit to using Bluehouse, and you can be committed through a business partner, you’re in with IBM Lotus Foundations and working in its cloud.
You can either try to create your own Bluehouse cloud and bring your business partners into it, or be brought into someone else’s cloud. Either way you’re quickly building pages in the directory about your company and your people.
All of which leads to something I have been saying for many years, but which the journalism profession has been studiously ignoring.
That is, any journalism enterprise exists to organize and advocate an industry, a community or lifestyle. Most get the advocacy part. None has yet figured out the directory bit.
Could you build a newspaper with Bluehouse?
October 6th, 2008
FSF issues WorldLabel challenge for regular hack-a-thons
Spurred by a $10,000 grant from WorldLabel, the Free Software Foundation has released a “high priority list” of code changes it needs.
The money, in turn, wants them dealt with through a new series of hack-a-thons.
The money’s name is Russell Ossendryver (right, one step ahead of the bill collectors) and, while $10,000 may be lunch money for Larry Ellison, it’s real cash to him.
“This is huge for us. Truthfully. One doesn’t sell a lot of labels on the Internet. But I have got assistance here from colleagues from Singapore. It’s not in one lump sum. It’s a commitment over the course of the next 6-7 months.”
The aim here is that some larger corporations, or perhaps individuals like you, might “step up to the plate.” Given the success of Internet-based political campaigns, maybe the people can be tapped, I replied.
But where will the money go?
“A developer spring hack-a-thon is where it is going to lead to,” Ossendryver replied.
“Bring in developers for a weekend to MIT or the FSF offices, get together for a weekend, work together. That strengthens the community, it forms a bond, they can crack out work that needs to be done.”
The work in this case includes Gnash, the free Flash player, Coreboot, a truly FOSS BIOS, and a FOSS version of Skype.
As the open source industry has grown, the list of undone priority projects for the Free Software Foundation has grown longer. Maybe this can be the silver lining in the growing economic cloud.
October 5th, 2008
Microsoft bad cop is up against the wall
Microsoft is back to its “bad cop” routine again.
(This League of Cliche Evil Super-Villains appeared at Geekologie in January. Also available as a t-shirt. By Joshua Kemble.)
This time they are offering Windows-only code on their “open source” CodePlex site. It’s not that this is technically impossible. It’s just prohibited by license.
What is at issue here is the so-called Microsoft Limited Permission License, a non-OSI approved license once thought replaced.
While most observers are busy dumping on Microsoft for violating open source principles, I prefer to point out where the bad cop is now as opposed to where it was a while ago.
Microsoft today is in retreat against open source. Think of them as a football team that keeps starting drives deeper in their own end, or an army conducting harrying raids to cover its loss of territory.
Ot think of them as a politician holding rallies in ballrooms rather than stadiums, a singer trying to fill theaters where they once packed hockey arenas.
However you play the analogy, the fact is that each time Microsoft goes back-and-forth like this, it does so from a weaker position.
Last time they played this game they were pushing OOXML as an ISO standard. Before that they were promising to bury open source in patent suits.
Now they’re trying to sneak semi-proprietary code on their own site.
It’s like a crime boss getting arrested for pickpocketing. Lex Luthor gets a parking ticket, and pays it. Godzilla has become Reptar.
So instead of taking deep umbrage, I’m just sad. You want a super villain to be, well, super. Not silly.
October 3rd, 2008
Our second Linux laptop has a real keyboard
The Linux laptop series has been enormously popular. Today we got our second review unit.
It’s another EeePC, but this one has a slightly bigger screen (10 inches) and a much, much better keyboard. It’s one I can probably touchtype on.
It’s called the EeePC 1000 and was announced in May, just as the earlier model was hitting stores. I have seen what looks like an identical model selling for $580 at Buy.Com.
I plan on doing far more extensive tests with this unit. I hope to produce some of these posts on it. I intend to take it on vacation. I will put real data on it, and try to depend upon it.
As with the previous unit this runs a version of Xandros Linux along with a shell that gives point-and-click access to applications. (I would not be surprised if they eventually switch to the Linux Intel is doing through OpenedHand.)
Since this is a blog, and not a column, thus interactive, I am hoping that you can suggest tests I might make with this unit that will make the coming reviews more relevant to you.
I’m looking forward to trying them out. And if you’re a hardware vendor not named Asus who would like a Linux laptop reviewed in this series, I am at your service.
October 3rd, 2008
Blood in the water and open source on the tracks
This is a tough time to be an honest businessman, in any business. (Picture from OpenRemote.org.)
Our own Big Money Matt Asay is feeling the pressure, worrying that Red Hat might be bought out by Oracle Real Soon Now.
It’s true that Oracle’s stock has held up better than Red Hat’s in the last three months. The whole company’s now worth $2.9 billion, a pimple on Oracle’s market cap of $103.9 billion.
Despite this I remain unworried.
It is true that recessions bring consolidation, and fewer choices. In every sector. Two weeks ago my bank accounts were with Wachovia and WaMu. Now they’re with Wells Fargo and JP Morgan Chase.
But turn, turn, turn. There will be growth in the spring. There will be a spring.
And when that spring begins there will be literally thousands of entrepreneurs, and tens of thousands of coders, ready to deliver new open source solutions of all kinds to a waiting market. Everywhere in the world.
The innovators may not all be in the area of operating systems. They may be strongest in mobile applications, or storage, or security, or games. Even home automation.
Wherever competition has withered or opportunity exists, open source will get there quickly. More quickly than closed source could have.
The sun will come up tomorrow, Matt, even if Sun sets. With open source that sunrise will be faster and more brilliant than what we saw before. I guarantee it.
And if I’m wrong, Matt, you’re a good writer. Have you thought about writing a novel?
October 3rd, 2008
Android has power of a clean sheet
The Nokia 5800 does nothing so much as prove to me Android’s key advantage in the coming competition.
It’s something Apple has taken advantage of repeatedly in its history. A clean sheet of paper. (Picture by childrens’ book illustrator Jennifer Morris, from 2006.)
Microsoft has never grasped this. RIM does not now. Nokia’s whole idea in making Symbian open source is to keep that messy sheet alive.
It is becoming a basic law of technology that, at some point, backward compatibility becomes a house of cards. Moving on and starting over really is the best way to get the most from the latest components.
So what is on the new sheet of paper?
The Android team brought forward a design that, while based on Linux, is based even more on the Internet. It uses the same Webkit rendering engine as Google Chrome and Apple Safari.
Buyers have recognized its potential by selling out the first version of the hardware, from China’s HTC and T-Mobile, within a few weeks.
By contrast the new Nokia is all about the music. It’s all about what Apple did years ago, oh, and it’s a phone, too. Defining hardware in terms of the past is just as much a mistake as defining software in terms of the past.
Open source and open standards are also clean sheets of paper for the mobile business, which until now has been all about lock-in.
I don’t want to sound too much like an Android cheerleader here. But if you, or a handset maker, or a network operator, thinks there is a basic mistake here, you have a simple open source solution that was never available before.
Fork it.