Android Code Apartheid Makes Devs Unhappy
It seems like every new development in the Google’s Android platform saga is more depressing than the last. The current state of affairs is massive unrest in the Android community over the Software Development Kit not being updated for over four months, leaving many coders creating apps for a platform which doesn’t yet exist, with software that is not fully formed.
Expecting people to be making compelling apps with this old kit is one thing, but the kicker was the fact that a spangly Android kit was available for a select group of guys. The 50 finalists in the Android Developer’s Challenge are competing for $10 million, and the fact that Google has given these few an unfair advantage whilst the other thousands of members are left out in the cold has annoyed many.
This move obviously drew the ire of a bunch of developers, but that wasn’t enough for Google. To send a message about this new SDK to every single competitor, including all the losers is just mean. So whilst the chosen ones toddled off to beaver away on their apps with new software, thousands of Android fans got nothing. No bone from Google, no update, no new version, only a message to the have-nots which seemed to say: “You want a new build? You want to help our platform? We don’t care. Get out of our face.”
For Google to alienate so many that are integral to success is a bad idea. To allow elite engineers into their inner sanctum is obviously great, but at the expense of all of the others slaving away on old versions, with no promise of success, or even compatibility? All of these people coding Android apps blind is testament to their commitment, and Google is definitely messing up their plans by cutting them out. It’s not as though they can’t switch and develop for Symbian or worse still, Apple…
To still insist that Android handsets and software for other manufacturers will be out by the end of the year, and yet have no solid specs for people to work with in mid-July is disappointing. Open Source software should be exactly that. OPEN. Give it away, let the guys who really matter make stuff. Then package it up real nice and sell it! Apple definitely had it right in this respect, devs are happy despite the short leash with regards to Digital Rights and profit sharing, but Google is underestimating the value of their most important commodity hugely.
Without them, Android could be nothing.
