In very Orwellian logic, a couple readers have told me that the lack of gesture support in the Android OS's UI and stock apps was a good thing, because it would let the open source community innovate in individual apps for the Google mobile platform. By leaving such basic functionality as gestures nonstandardized, they argued, the platform would be fertile ground for the open source community to develop untold wonders that would render the controlled platforms such as the iPhone as dinosaurs.
This is precisely why I fear for Android's future. The open source community is much more likely, based on its history, to screw around with umpteen hundred variations that are piled willy-nilly on top of umpteen OS variants, creating a mess that only a few nerds will want to play with. In other words, we'll end up with a replay of desktop Linux, which in 10 years is still a mess of precious versions and precious innovations, yet lacks basics such as common drivers and interface standards that would let regular people use it and let developers who need to earn a living get enough of a market to bother.
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Google would be stupid to let the open source community turn Android into yet another series of technologist-oriented fantasy fiefdoms sparring like medieval kingdoms. The open source community should either leave Android alone or coalesce into a de facto manager, as has happened with successful open source efforts such as server Linux and MySQL. Of course, that means not being a free-for-all, but a virtual or real "company," as those successful open source efforts actually are.
If the rumors are to be believed, Google gets the problem, which is why it supposedly is planning its own gPhone for early 2010 to set a standard, deeply functional version of the platform that might actually take root.
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I don't want to waste time and energy in putting comment on this post cause its written with the intention of gathering more and more eye-balls.
Time will tell. Fate of this column.