Google Brushes Off "Outside" Android Devs...Again
August 18th, 2008 by Justin Ryan
The turmoil that began just over a month ago with a mis-addressed email has boiled over again for Google, after the company issued what was termed "verbal silence" in reply to a petition from more than 200 Android developers.
The original uproar began in mid-July when Google Developer Advocate David McLaughlin accidentally sent an email to the public Android developers list revealing that the company had been providing the contestants in the Android Developer Challenge with updated SDKs — under a non-disclosure agreement — while other developers were forced to work with badly outdated materials. In response to this revelation, an Android developer from Germany, Nicolas Gramlich, drafted a petition calling on Google to provide updates to the SDK as well as increased information about the platform's progress, and began circulating it among Android developers.
The current brouhaha erupted as a result of Google's response to that petition. After sending the petition, complete with 245 signatures, to Google's Android Advocate, Gramlich received an all-but-nonexistent reply. The two-sentence response, which Gramlich subsequently posted to the Android developers forum, reportedly reads:
Thanks for taking the time to send this. — David
Exactly who David is, or what his function within Google might be, was not indicated, though a reasonable guess would be David McLaughlin, the Developer Advocate who set the initial firestorm off with his overeager emailing. What doesn't require any guessing, however, is what the feeling is among the Android developers, who have now been brushed off a second time.
Update: Google has released an updated SDK along with a roadmap for future development.
__________________________
Justin Ryan is News Editor for LinuxJournal.com.
Submit a tip: Email IRC
Special Magazine Offer -- 2 Free Trial Issues!
Receive 2 free trial issues of Linux Journal as well as instant online access to current and past issues. There's NO RISK and NO OBLIGATION to buy. CLICK HERE for offer
Linux Journal: delivering readers the advice and inspiration they need to get the most out of their Linux systems since 1994.
Sorry, offer available in the US only. International orders, click here.
Subscribe now!
The Latest
Featured Videos
Linux Journal Live - eBook Readers and DRM
November 14th, 2008 by Shawn Powers in
The November 13, 2008 edition of Linux Journal Live! Shawn Powers and special guest, Linux Journal Author Daniel Bartholomew, talk e-book readers and Daniel's Kindle, DRM, and other goodness.
Run Your Windows Partition Without Rebooting
November 13th, 2008 by Elliot Isaacson in
Dual booting is a necessary evil and very inconvenient. What if you could run your windows partition in a virtual machine, so you wouldn't have to worry about rebooting anymore? With VMWare Workstation, you can.
Recently Popular
From the Magazine
December 2008, #176
The Oxford English Dictionary says the word "gadget" is a placeholder name for a technical item whose precise name one can't remember. Like that book-reader thingy from Amazon...what's it called? Spindle, Gindle...Kindle, that's it. Check it out in this month's gadget issue.
Other gadgets covered include the Nokia tablets, the BlackBerry, the Neo FreeRunner, the Dash Express, the Roku Netflix Player, the Kangaroo TV, The TomTom GO 930 and the MooBella Ice Cream System. On the larger hardware front, read the reviews of the Acer Aspire One and the YDL PowerStation. On the software front, check out the articles and columns on memcached, Samba security, Mutt, desktop gadgets, bash and Puppet. To wrap it all up, read Doc's thoughts on Google and the browser platform.
Delicious
Digg
Reddit
Newsvine
Technorati







Post new comment