Google's Android developers thinking about abandoning Android?

[Pat]

Google's strict code of secrecy may work fine for protecting its internal operations. But the company isn't ingratiating itself to software developers by keeping major updates to its Android mobile software platform locked away in a Mountain View dungeon. Now, even those developers once very committed to pushing Google's technology forward are thinking about abandoning Android – the most closed open platform to not yet exist.


Over at Google's official Android discussion group, independent coder Nicolas Gramlich recently posted an ad hoc online petition calling on Google to at least tell developers why they can't get a new and improved SDK for the fledgling mobile platform. Google hasn't publicly updated the Android software developer's kit in more than five months.


"In order not to lose many highly encouraged developers, I think it's time to release some news about the development process of the SDK. Maybe let us know why we have to live with these long cycles," reads his open letter to Google's Android overseers. "In my personal opinion it is not the right choice to keep developers in the dark. We, the developers, are the absolute base of success to the whole Android platform."


Read More: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07...eloper_unrest/

[x3060]

oh come on , just let it see the light , then if it fails they can always abandon the project..

[mavihs]

+1

[Pat]

Originally Posted by x3060

then if it fails they can always abandon the project..

This is precisely what should not happen. People are having very high expectations from Android already

[Pathik]

Especially me. And I dont think Google will let it go. They had planned to make it fully open by the end of 2008.

[amritpal2489]

N idont think google abandons any project....

[Pathik]

Not Google, the independent devs.

[praka123]

Nancy Gohring, IDG News Service
Wednesday, July 16, 2008 11:50 AM PDT


A Google employee working on the Android mobile phone operating system made a gaffe that has some developers saying they've had enough and plan to focus their efforts on the iPhone, instead of Android.
David McLaughlin, Android advocate at Google, apologized on an online forum for accidentally sending a note intended for winners of a developers' contest to a wider list of developers. The note implies that Google has been privately offering updates to the SDK (software development kit) only to a subset of developers, even while the broader developer community has been complaining about a lack of updates to the SDK.



"Ahhhh, now it makes sense," one developer wrote on the Android forum. "So they've been making private SDK releases while the rest of us suffer with the pile of bugs from the 4+ month old release."


The incident comes just a couple of weeks after one developer began circulating an online petition asking Google for updates or at least information about when updates to the SDK might become available.
Google risks losing developers just as competition for their attention is heating up. Developers can now build applications for Apple's popular iPhone. While Google's Android attracted considerable excitement when it was launched, it has more recently been criticized for a slow development process.



"Personally, I'm heading over to iPhone development," one person wrote on the Android forum.



Some of the developers say that Google required winners of the first round of the competition to sign a nondisclosure agreement in order to receive the latest revisions to the SDK. "The e-mail you all received was an accident, but is essentially an admission of this policy," Josh Guilfoyle, an Android developer wrote on the forum.
Google did not reply to a request for comment about the incident.

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscente...t_winners.html