Quote:
Originally Posted by jgaiser
Android is open.
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Google Inc's marketing works wonders on people.
All Androids are proprietary. What Google supplies to the vendors is open. What the buyers get from the vendors is a binary blob. Not only is the source code withheld by the vendor, but the buyer does not even get root access (by design) or even visibility to parts of the storage, binary and otherwise.
For more detail, RMS is the leading authority on this, see what
he has to say.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jgaiser
Yes, there are proprietary versions,
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All of them are. Only two vendors even
attempted to produce a non-proprietary Android device. One is very obsolete and in the end still had closed blobs (Geeksphone), and the other has not made it to market (Fairphone).
Quote:
Originally Posted by jgaiser
but I run Cygenomod on my B&N HD+. No need to work through any *holes*". Running 4.2 now. When I'm ready to upgrade to 4.3, I can and will.
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When you flash the firmware, you have a very different product than what you bought. No vendor will sell you a Cyanogenmodded device, nor will any vendor allow users to install it, to the extend of their power.
As soon as you bring in hacks, well then you might as well claim everything in the world is open, because everything can be hacked, and have all binary blobs replaced with open replacements.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jgaiser
So where exactly are you going with this? Sounds just like "Linux Rules" rant to me.
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I can see that it would look that way, but I had two objectives:
* Find out if there is anything particularly appealing about Android e-readers that I'm unaware of.
* Find out which non-Android linux e-readers are proprietary, and which ones are open, if any. There are a lot of them and I've studied very few.
Among all the defensive replies, I expected someone to say: linux device XYZ is proprietary just as Android is... (so I can take it off my shortlist).