If the Honeycomb code release occurs soon, the impact of the delay will be minimal. But people who want to believe in the company should remember that Google is, first and foremost, going to protect itself. Google is still leagues ahead of other big tech companies in the openness arena. They need the code to experiment with all kinds of ideas, and they aren’t getting it in a timely way. It’s currently partnering with a relatively small number of manufacturers, such as Motorola, that are bringing out the first of what Google hopes will be many tablets in the next several years.īut the main reason to be excited Honeycomb, from my perspective, is that the OS will be widely in play in a number of form factors and devices by a wide variety of manufacturers. Google seems to be playing favorites in the rollout of Honeycomb tablets. The decision is disturbing for many reasons, but here’s the most important one: It erodes trust. Now comes the word, via BusinessWeek, that Google is delaying plans to open-source the OS - built on top of Android (itself a Linux variant) and called Honeycomb - that it wants tablet makers to use. Yes, anyone can download and use that software, but to get Google’s official stamp of approval for using it in a mobile device, you have to add in some distinctly proprietary applications that Google alone controls. Google’s “open source” promises regarding its Android mobile operating system have always been a bit exaggerated. Posted on Author Dan Gillmor Categories Privacy, Tools, Transparency Leave a comment on Wall Street Journal’s (Fail)SafeHouse: Keep Trying Google’s (Partial) Retreat from Open Systems But it’s going to take some time before we can call them successes in any respect. government before publishing a variety of things. Remember, the New York Times has frequently felt obliged to ask permission from the U.S. Which raises the larger question in any case: While I tend to believe that every news organization should have a drop-off point for documents from whistleblowers, there’s always going to be a question of how much a leaker should trust any private company on which a government can exert pressure, apart the issue of whether the company itself can always be trusted. That’s good news, even though I’d still advise any whistleblower to steer clear of this for the moment, not least because the notion of trusting a company controlled by Rupert Murdoch is, well, problematic even if one might trust (as I would) many of the Journal’s lower-level editors. Unlike the LA Times, the Journal isn’t abandoning the experiment and seems to be working to fix at least some of the site’s flaws. And the site’s Terms of Service contain what might be termed a “Get Into Jail Free Card” - reserving “the right to disclose any information about you to law enforcement authorities or to a requesting third party, without notice, in order to comply with any applicable laws and/or requests under legal process, to operate our systems properly, to protect the property or rights of Dow Jones or any affiliated companies, and to safeguard the interests of others.” Security experts immediately poked holes in the site security. Uh, not really, at least on the second and third points. Keep your identity anonymous or confidential, if needed.Send documents to us using a special system built to be secure. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |