Open source mobile developer: Android is not the answer

Will the Google-sponsored Android platform be the right alternative for today's proprietary mobile environments? The answer is an emphatic "no," according to open source developer David Schlesinger.

NEW YORK CITY (BetaNews) - Although Google has announced high profile wireless carriers and phone manufacturers as partners in the Open Handset Alliance (OHA), the search specialist has done "absolutely nothing" on the directly related Android Project, to date, Schlesinger said today at the AjaxWorld conference.

"Google can't just 'toss things over the wall' [to other open source developers] and expect things to happen. 'Tossing things over the wall' never works, anyway," stated Schlesinger, Director of Open Source Technologies for ACCESS. "Companies like Google think there is just one 'open source community.'"

But Google's impression of the community, as Schlesinger perceives it, is simply not accurate, he added, citing Java and the Linux kernel as just a few examples of the countless open source projects going on today. He also publicly questioned whether it was appropriate for Google, as a search engine firm, to lead an initiative around mobile development.

Speaking with Schlesinger after his talk, BetaNews asked whether he thinks Google should simply stay away from industry mobile development issues.

"Not at all," he replied. So what should Google do instead? "Google needs to be a much better citizen of the community," he told us.

More specifically, Schlesinger said that Google's Android, which has barely even gotten off the ground, represents a lot of overlap with other mobile development projects which are already thriving, including work by the Limo Foundation, Gnome Mobile, and GPE Phone Edition.

"We don't want Google to reinvent the wheel," he said. "We already have [mobile] Linux."