Great article and report. A year ago I moved from the mobile industry to the sustainability consulting sector, where I now help global companies become resilient to the growing business risks imposed by climate change, resource depletion, energy security and explosive population growth.

In my new field, measurement of openness and governance are critical, and have been the subject of much debate for years, and it's striking to see the parallels in your new report: not just in terms of the language used, but also in terms of the underlying reasons why measurement is so important.

Software platforms have such a profound influence on how individuals engage – not just with the web but with brands, products and services, and ultimately each other – that I can see this becoming an area of much debate.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3VjJSQ29w8

Kevin Kelly has – since 1998 – had the best opinion on what's open enough

(Sorry for the video quality and the weird guy presenting!)

Great article. With some important projects refusing contributions, I wish governance would be advertised in the same way as the license.

Qt is a good example of project for which you can access the source but you have no way to contribute to the project. Nokia marketing talks a lot about "open governance" but the contributions are always rejected or ignored if they are not trivial.

Android go further and does not even pretend that one can contribute.

I wish this kind of projects would be separated from projects like Linux, WebKit and Mozilla. The governance factor is important when one wants to choose which technologies to use in a project.

This is a good article and a good attempt at making the boundaries of 'openness' clear. Unfortunately, the word open in the context of software has no single definition. Its exactly this obscurity that companies such as Google know well and take advantage of. By saying something is open, they are really saying nothing at all. For instance, Microsoft have just announced that they will be adopting an "open surface" cloud software model. This is Orwellian double speak if ever I heard it, don't you think? what is an open surface?

Also, the "success" of a project is not at all based on the popularity of the results, just as Einstein's theory of relativity did not require popularity to be a success.

The only thing that matters when it comes to free and open source projects is the free part – free as in freedom. Without this, it does not matter how "open" the source is, if you cannot change it, does it?

Nokia talks a lot about open governance as something they want to do – obviously they are not quite there yet (and with the current progress…). But at least there's hope that Qt will get real open governance. Android seems to have no interest.

While I appreciate that attempt to describe openness in a more useful manner for comparative purposes I just don't see the point of it here. The article reads like a hit piece – an attempt to discredit Android on the basis of accessibility and control of the source code and direction of the operating system, not an unbiased article on how a new measure might be applied to all projects. Perhaps this was not your intention, but in that case, focusing almost entirely on how Android stacks up to other mostly-non-operating-system projects does a disservice to your intent. This approach on the whole encourages people to dismiss preemptively the report itself devaluing the investment of time, money, and effort put into it.

I mean can you honestly tell me that you cannot see that the likes of Florian Mueller, and many mainstream publications are simply going to run with the headline, and not with the content and theme of the report as a way to continue their efforts of discrediting and casting fear, uncertainty, and doubt over Android as an anti-competitive tactic?

It would be interesting to see how these projects have fared over time. Was Eclipse as open in 2001 in its early days. Is there an argument that Google needs Android kept close to them as it is essential they want it to go in the direction they need as a business. Over time and once it is established things may look very different. A key dimension left out of this analysis is time. It would be good to see it repeated year on year.

I'm too lazy to read the thrice-belinked report, but, well, my experience with symbian was that the parts that were "opened up" were missing the important bits, such as a development environment (only available on windows, something I don't even have available, not to mention licensing) or, say, hardware support. The latter, in the case of symbian, means that the hundred million plus handsets already out there are not usable to try your hackery on. You're reduced to a not-even-alpha quality port to the beagle board. Nothing wrong with beagle boards, they make a fine platform, but given the choice I'd not waste effort with symbian on them.

It doesn't stop there, of course. After closing up all links to documentation went dead, as the entire developer site was replaced by a page pointing at nokia. Following the link promised all the documentation again, even wikis and stuff ("ain't we cool eh") except that all those links were still dead with a "real soon now" notice months after the switchback. And then there was the "we're not 'open source', we're only 'open' as in 'open for business'" statement from them. While outside the scope of your endeavour, it makes oh so painfully clear what their real attitude was. And yes, critique did get silenced. How's that for open?

The point is, of course, that it's very, very hard to measure objectively just how open is open without something like the GPL to enforce a specific definition of open, in its case full access to source code (and even then…).

Just because a project does not solicit/condone outside contributions, this has nothing to do with openness. This governance thing is a separate issue.

Android has been forked, primarily in an attempt to reduce the non-open aspects that are tied to most hardware. The project is called CyanogenMod. It's installed on my phone, it works very well.

On the other hand, Google is guilty of being less open than it should be. Android is largely based on GNU/Linux components whose licences (GPL/LGPL) require you to post source for improvements that you distribute. Google is less than diligent in this matter.

I think this is an important point. As I recall, early in the life of Eclipse when the core was progressing rapidly, very little of the work was done outside of IBM. As the tool matured and stabilized, more work shifted to plugins provided by many, many different people, and the core work shifted to be more focused around support for third-party work.

Android definitely supports lots of third-party apps, but I think the core system is still in that "rapid innovation" phase, where Google engineers are making extensive and deep changes and don't want to slow down in the ways that would be required to make it more inclusive. I suspect that as the platform matures this will change.

I think I recognise that image on the opening slide

Hi Geoff, Thanks for your comments. Our intention with this Report is to start the discussion around openness and governance for the benefit of all engaged parties in this industry, but of course if our work can be translated and useful to other industries that is also a bonus. Liz

Hi Patrick, We agree that governance is a critical element when determining 'which' open source project to work with – not all open source projects are equal in terms of their acceptance of external contributions and this is an important factor for consideration. Hopefully our work will encourage projects to actually be more explicit about their governance terms, at least we have got the ball rolling in this regard. Liz

Hi freeweaver, we attempt to bring some clarity and structure to 'what' openness is or at least should be in our Report and whilst this is a first attempt at such definition, it is at least a start in the process. I'm not sure what your saying with regard to success and popularity of results? Whilst 'free as in freedom' matters a great deal in all open source projects, we believe that openness is also critical, if you cannot contribute or if your contributions are ignored then you cannot change the project either. Liz

Hi Alan, We understand that Nokia do have plans for more open governance of Qt so let's wait and see what happens there. I would agree with you regarding Android, thus far this is not a priority for them. Liz

Hi Anthony, The Article and the Report, which I'm not sure that you have read, goes into depth around the 13 criteria that we chose against which to measure open source projects. We also included Symbian which is an operating system. We explain in the Report why we picked the Projects that we did and as they are all open source projects we then identified criteria that could be used as a measure across all open source project. What became apparent to us very early on was how not-open Android is relative to these other Projects and that is what is highlighted in our Report and Article. What is also very apparent is how successful Android is and so we believe that we must address the fact of Android's success in the face of the non-openness of the Project. Liz

Hi John D, You raise a very interesting point. What we did notice was that projects have evolved over time. For example, WebKit. It wasn’t until 2005 that Apple launched the full WebKit open source project, but restricted reviewer and commit rights to Apple personnel only, which effectively sidelined the KDE developer community contribution to the project. Eventually, in late 2007, Apple responded by updating the WebKit committer and reviewer policy to allow non-Apple developers to have full commit access to the WebKit source code version control system. Therefore we do find that Projects become more open over time, as a result of developer community pressure and also the Project being more at ease with accepting external contributions. We will certainly be taking the time dimension into account for future releases of the OGI Report. Liz

Hi Shawn W, as per my reply to John D. I would also add that Android is of course a relatively new open source project and our findings indicate that mature successful projects are more open than Android is now so we could conclude that over time Android will also become more open. No doubt when we do the next version of the OGI we will be able to test this assumption more precisely. Liz

Hi Cellar, I appreciate your specific frustrations with Symbian in terms of its openness. The purpose of our Report, which I would recommend that you read, is to attempt to define some criteria against which 'openness' can be measured. We are trying to create a 'standard' for openness such that it is clear to the developer community and others how 'open' projects are. We agree with you that access to source code is of itself not sufficient for a project to be 'open' in terms of 'open for contributions' and 'open to influence'. Liz

Hi Rick, We believe that acceptance of external contributions is actually an important factor with regard to openness of open source projects in that how can it be open if it is 'closed' to contributions, especially if there is no explanation given as to the contributions acceptance process? We appreciate that there are many forks of Android and we measure this also in our criteria in terms of being able to create 'derivatives' of that project. I cannot comment specifically regarding Google's compliance with the obligations of the GPL/LGPL but I expect that if this is the case then this would be something that FOSS will take up with Google if necessary. Liz

where I can found 'free' and 'indepnden' symbain build for run it on my (or any other) mobile phone? no. I can not find this. but symbian have "58%" of 'free' instead 28% for android….

>> Our findings suggest that organisations will be more comfortable using permissive licenses which do not mandate copyleft requirements and we reflect this in our criteria and scoring. We are happy to continue debating these findings further with the community.

Let me contribute to this debate.

I don't believe it is accurate to consider the GPL to be less open.

The GPL offers an "attack" on trade secrets. Whether some firms like that or not, it remains true the GPL promotes greater openness than the other "liberal" licenses. If you view consumers, firms with open business models, and hobbyists as part of your intended audience, then the more accurate definition of openness should put the GPL out in front or on an equal footing.

I am looking to judging businesses (not just software) on openness, and a firm's willingness to open up trade secrets is part of how open they are or are not. Many businesses, for example, small businesses created by former laid off workers (ie, people not ordinary engaged in business and looking for any help possible), don't have the resources of giants, so an open approach is a great help to them. As concerns software, a license like the GPL offers a safety not offered by licenses that can be exploited more readily by large proprietary competitors.

Another reason to welcome openness would be when maximizing profits and control is not the main goal. Increasing collaboration and the safety net that is a large body of open information (eg, for running a business) are valuable and promote independence as well. Note that much of what we learn in school is effectively open (and firms are stronger for it). Much of our legal system is open. We live in largely open societies in many ways. Too much pulled away into proprietary subdomains (like closed firms) hurts the competitiveness and other areas of a society. Openness is valuable to many.

So, regardless of the number of corporations which might get nervous over the GPL, we should still label it properly. Accuracy should be valued by anyone thinking about the future. Many groups will in time be looking for open models and options (either to adopt them in their business or to patron them as consumers).

My opinions are reflected above, of course.

Lest the earlier comment be construed as a "scary" analysis of the GPL itself or of GPL platforms, the following may add some perspective http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20110815…

You couldn't be more wrong. Indeed, Android is becoming more closed. Android 3 is closed source, despite the continuing "open source" hype Google have gathered around it. Before you disagree – go try to find the source code and build it yourself.

Try backing up your apps from a non-rooted Android device! – It doesn't work!
Try getting those same APK files downloaded from the web – doesn't work, even for the "free" ones! So you are at the mercy of others if you ever need to restore your Android device. Google makes great efforts to keep our fingers off the executable apps files. You may look at everything, but it may be taken away from you at any time.

My take as an end user, looking at the applications:
- Linux = you control the source code
- Windows = you control the binaries (i.e. you can keep copies of the Installers or setup media)
- Android = you do not control any of the above; but Google controls your data.

BTW did you know that if sync is ON, Google even has your WIFI encryption keys?

Tom