My Mobile Platform Is More Open Than Yours: The Symbian/Google Catfight

Google (NSDQ: GOOG) and Symbian don’t think much of the other’s claim to openness. Symbian Foundation director Lee Williams said that: “Android is not open…It’s a marketing label. It’s controlled by Google…It’s a pretty label but I don’t think the use of Linux is synonymous with open and they may have made that mistake of assuming it is.” He thinks that an open platform requires a community to direct it. “If you were to ask me [the Symbian Foundation] roadmap for the next two years I’m going to tell you I don’t know – I can tell you… what the plans are but other than that it’s up to the community to take it where it wants to go,” reports Silicon.com.

Android co-founder and Google’s VP of mobile, Rich Miner, naturally has a different take on openness: “If you’re talking about a platform and the source code isn’t completely available for that platform, I would say it’s misleading to call that platform open because that platform can’t be adapted, changed and shaped by the people who are consuming that platform — the handset OEMs or the carriers. I’d say that if you need to join some sort of a club in order to get access to the source code, so membership in some consortium or some other group — then it really truly isn’t open.”

Meanwhile, VentureBeat has a post up warning that the danger of being open is having bad applications available through an app store. The example case is the $200 I Am Richer, a similar app to the $999 I Am Rich iPhone app: They both merely display an image of a gem on the handset screen. I don’t think this is going to be a big problem (not just because anyone who buys an application where the blurb begins “Prove your wealth to others by running this app” deserve what they get), because Android has a 24 hour return policy so there’s a lot less danger of getting ripped off.