"If we give it away, how can we benefit from it?"

A great find from FOSS. Android is open, right kids?

This sort of thing is damaging to Google not so much because of the sentiments expressed, but because they’re so much at odds with the public rhetoric. Google has an unfortunate habit of claiming to be more ideologically correct than everyone else, and then being found to be just the same. That doesn’t build goodwill. If you’re chanting ‘open’ as though you suffer from a sort of tech Tourette’s (© Fraser Speirs), you need actually to be open. 

The more interesting question to me is how much OEMs really care about getting Android 2.X.X early or late. After all, they’re not bothered about the niceties of open source organisational governance - they care about selling devices.

So OEMs only care if consumers care, and right now I don’t get the sense that consumers do know or care about the difference between 2.2 and 2.3 or 2.3.2 on a $200 phone. As Android pushes into the lower end this might become even less important. 

Indeed, this sort of thing is counter-productive for Google. As far as I can estimate, OEMs shipped 45m Android 2.2 devices AFTER Android 2.3 was released. That’s a much bigger problem for Google than it is for the individual OEMS - so long as the devices are selling they don’t care about fragmentation. So Google is going to delay access to the newest version in order to pressure them to, um, ship the newest version?