Google's Android OS is open by nature. The company puts the source code out there and allows third parties to use it in whatever devices tickle their fancy. However, despite the openness of Android, Google is holding off on sharing the source code for the latest iteration of Android, Android 3.0, because it feels Honeycomb is not yet ready to be altered and customized for different devices.
According to BusinessWeek, the delay in distribution is ‘for the forseeable future,’ and Android Chief Andy Rubin refused to give a time frame of when we can expect the source code to be made public. Rubin says the Android team is working hard to make Honeycomb work on devices other than tablets and explained that this was something that was sacrificed in the rush to get Honeycomb ready on time.
"To make our schedule to ship the tablet, we made some design tradeoffs," says Andy Rubin, "We didn't want to think about what it would take for the same software to run on phones. It would have required a lot of additional resources and extended our schedule beyond what we thought was reasonable. So we took a shortcut."
Rubin goes on to say that releasing the code now would mean developers would put it on phones and the end result would be a really bad user experience.” “We have no idea if it will even work on phones," BusinessWeek cites Rubin as saying.
Fingers crossed they release it soon. Google often makes the source code available to device manufacturers a little bit earlier, so HTC, Motorola, and a few others already have access to it, but we can't wait to see what wild world of Android developers will do with it. Fingers crossed Google releases it soon so smaller companies and developers can really take a crack at it.
