In a move to be more open with developers, Google is taking steps to provide once closed contributed source code to the public. Before the policy change any publicly contributed source code went into the private tree for only Google engineers’ eyes. Now with the new change publicly contributed source code goes into the public tree for all developers and manufacturers to see when using the NDK (Native Development Kit). Now this does not mean that everything is available as Google needs to contain the secrets to their success from other competitors.
The reason for this change is they want to prevent disasters from happening by having botched released software from manufacturers. It will bridge the gap and allow application developers to stay on top of things making sure their software will work for their intended audiences on the Android platform. Google made a statement on the issue by saying “this has nearly happened before when one unnamed OEM wanted to start shipping pre-release the Android 1.5 – codenamed Cupcake – on its phones.”
This makes good news for us because we depend on the applications we use on our phones to work when needed. We don’t want them broken with every major update. As a developer or end user what do you think of these new changes? Do you think it is a good step in the right direction for Google?
[via The Register]
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