Monday, August 17, 2009

Android -- Free but not Open



This is what my basketball coach used to say to me when I made a bad pass. "Michael, nice try the guy was free but not open." This is exactly how I feel about Android. Nice try but not completely open. As some of you know, work has been ongoing to get the full Android stack running on Ubuntu. There are some major roadblocks in doing so. If one looks at the source code for Android there are some major pieces missing in the git tree. 1. No Google Maps application 2. No Marketplace 3. No Google login service code. Number three is a big one. Without this code, you can not use most of the Google applications that require Google for its back end. So -- when trying to launch Google Calendar, you get the following stack trace.


W/dalvikvm( 9037): threadid=49: thread exiting with uncaught exception (group=0xf2708df8)
java.lang.RuntimeException: java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException
at android.os.Process.invokeStaticMain(Process.java:288)
at android.os.Process.access$000(Process.java:43)
at android.os.Process$1.run(Process.java:243)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:1058)
Caused by: java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException
at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:3948)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invokeNative(Native Method)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:521)
at android.os.Process.invokeStaticMain(Process.java:276)
... 3 moreW/ActivityManager( 9037): Unable to start service Intent { action=android.accounts.IAccountsService comp={com.google.android.googleapps/com.google.android.googleapps.GoogleLoginService} }: not found