Android Jailbroken, a sentence so stupid I can't believe I have to type it

Brandon West

#1 – 11:22 AM November 5, 2008

I think it's a stupid sentence because it's not really accurate. You download an app from the Android marketplace, and use it to launch telnet. Hardly hacking, and hardly comparable to jailbreaking an iPhone. So what's the real complaint here? The G1 didn't come with superuser access by default?

jrishel

#2 – 11:49 AM November 5, 2008

the scary part is that I can now telnet into my phone as root without a password.

Pork Musket (#1) totally nails it. this isn't JailBreaking. it's more like.. PushingOpenADoorThatWasn'tShutTheWholeWaying

Halloween Jack

#3 – 12:53 PM November 5, 2008

See also: Apple and Darwin.

Anonymous Anonymous

#4 – 6:34 PM November 5, 2008

OMG Joel! That's totally an unfair slander. This is kind of the equivalent of saying that Ubuntu isn't really open source because there's no root account by default.

The OS is completely open source now, however you want to slice it. What you really should be talking about here is the hardware. The G1 hardware has put the OS into a little sandbox and doesnt provide full access to all the phones features. A more open hardware platform would be better, yes, but don't cast aspersions at Google for the fault of the mfg/carrier.

Anonymous Anonymous

#5 – 12:17 AM November 6, 2008

Google doesn't produce the T-Mobile G1, they produce the software which is adapted by T-Mobile (and other manufacturers) for shipping on their hardware. They are the ones who make policy decisions like how much to try and lock it down.

Anonymous Anonymous

#6 – 1:37 AM November 6, 2008

Some of, if not most, the blame you are looking to place belongs not with Google but rather the carriers to whom Google must make concessions and appeasements.

Joel Johnson

#7 – 7:20 AM November 6, 2008

I know what I'm saying and I know who I'm blaming. Google had the clout to force T-Mobile to build a phone that wasn't so locked down. They chose not to, but continued to tout the benefits of an open source operating system — even though you can't actually get to or reinstall that operating system on your own hardware.

Chris S

#8 – 10:40 AM November 6, 2008

"Google had the clout to force T-Mobile to build a phone that wasn't so locked down."

This is the key sentence. If it is true, then blame Google. If it is not true, blame the carrier.

Some evidence that this is true?

Brandon West

#9 – 11:09 AM November 6, 2008

Without a robust open-source platform, it's hard to justify trying to put together an open-source phone from a hardware perspective. Openmoko is a good start but it's pretty much relegated to the realm of geeks; consumers don't want to apt-get to install new software, they want to fire up the app store and click a button and go.

I really have a hard time finding a reason to be mad at Google for Android. They've created publicity and a large developer base and a solid, competitive OS. The things they say about an open-source platform hold true. If you choose to use that platform on a device that is limiting, you lose some of those benefits. That's no fault of the open-source part of the equation, and certainly doesn't qualify as co-opting the definition of open-source in my opinion.

You can still go download the source code of the OS and tweak it however you see fit. And it seems like you can push those changes to the G1 with a minimal amount of work. Certainly people with enough geek cred to be downloading and modifying source code can figure out how to launch telnet from a command line.

So I ask again: what is the real issue here? Specifically, how is the G1 not "open" enough?

Anonymous Anonymous

#10 – 5:02 PM November 6, 2008

I came here to say the same thing as everyone else, but since they've beaten me to it I'll just say that I agree with the majority of other commenters.