Feel free to take up that discussion with Linus. I'm sure he's more qualified to answer that than I

I'll let Linus and a Google Engineer duke it out:

http://arstechnica.com/open-source/r...developers.ars

I would have to agree 100% . . . Although Android is Open Source it feels very similar to what Apple did with the Unix Core to make Mac OSX

Haha no need. It's an issue of connotation vs. denotation.

LOL! Indeed. Semantics et al play a large part; as does implementation.

Linux kernel, embedded systems... open source with closed portions. It's all becoming mutt technology at this rate. Point is though, Linus got the Nexus One. And likes it.

Here is the full break down of the Droid OS as outlined by Google themselves . . . Android isn't any more Linux than a TIVO ..... hahaha

Thats a Good one

It's funny, according to the slashdot, Android stopped merging its code to upstream kernel and caused lots of issues.

http://www.kroah.com/log/linux/andro...-problems.html

Didn't Linus himself care about it?

Getting stuff into the kernel is not Linus' problem. Making sure that what is coming in is good, and that it gets signed off on by the people whose subsystems it affects, is.

It is entirely an issue for Google.

All the code was in staging. Meaning no android code ever made it into the kernel. They were told to clean up their code; which meant google was the ones who needed to make the changes to their OS. Which were meaningless changes to their code; which wouldnt cause any compatibility problems. Google though just never got their devs to make the changes.

Which is very interesting because it moreso indicates their future intentions. While Maemo 5 and symbian have full embraced open source now.

Regardless; the end result is more work for the google devs and the 3rd party app devs having a fairly difficult porting from android to linux; somewhat.

Lets think about this from point of Linus the consumer considering N900 for a phone.

Its clear from the blog entry that Linus is pretty much "I-am-not-a-power-user" mobile device user and a reluctant one at that. He wants a somewhat pretty phone some cool functionality with a good map solution.

We all know that N900 is pretty good computer with linux functionality.
But its not everyone choice for a phone

Lets looks at N900 and Linus requirements for a phone.
* has keyboard ... which certain types of users do not want.
* Ovi Maps is not good right now ... no question about it
* Still not completely power consumption optimized (I bet he'd hate to recharge it often as we do).

Personally I think the next phone Linus will be getting will be a maemo device assuming:
* no keyboard
* ovi maps 3.0
* better battery life
* Linus will probably realize that are quite a few apps that he needs on linux that limited Android functionality won't address.