Open Android Alliance
by George P on Sep 30 2009 at 19:26 
2
A few days after Google’s actions against the CyanogenMod project a group of Android developers formed the Open Android Alliance. Their goal is to replace all closed source and proprietary applications found in the bas Android install with open source applications that can be freely distributed. As they state:
We don’t have anything against the existing closed applications, however, we believe in open platforms and want all users to be able to modify their systems as they see fit.
Above all, remember, we are NOT “Anti-Google”. We are “Pro-Android”. Please act accordingly when posting on this project.
Code license is currently under GPL v3 due to familiarity and because GPL ensures that code based on project’s code will remain open source for ever. Although this is not a final decition yet.
If developers would like a different license, I’m open to suggestions.
Tickets for replacing Android Market, IM Client, Mail client and other application are already open.
tags: android, mobile, open android alliance, open sourceshort url: http://bit.ly/vnYNW
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About 2 years ago (22 months or so) Open Handset Alliance announced Android, the world’s first truly open and complete mobile platform. It’s hard to believe that two years later, we re-consider how “truly open” mobile platform Android is. Although Google explained that Android is free for anyone but they kept some applications (like Gmail, Maps, etc.) closed to be able to make a profit licensing them to their partners, it is quite interesting to see how the open-source community finds ways to deal with these “problems”.
I guess it’s hard for an open source project not to be completely open source. This is the next step towards the advance of Android, as more will contribute and probably cost will fall, since no royalties will have to be paid (if they are payed!).