> davidw's statement that Android is the most free smartphone
davidw didn't say that. What I said is that overall, I think Android is our best bet for something that's free, but also "matters". OpenMoko is quite free, for instance, but doesn't really matter - no one will ever use it. I honestly don't have a good idea about what's in MeeGo, how free it is, how much it's possible to tweak the installation on the phone, and so on.
> I'm not going to play the semantics game, I'm relying on the reader to not be dense.
You are the one who brought the zoo into it. The rest of us were talking about mobile phone software.
Also, in terms of their DNA, a donkey is far closer to a horse than a manatee is, if you really want to get into comparisons of animals...
Both you and bad_user are completely missing the point. The idea is that "openness" is not a universal. The statement 'X is more open than Y' does not hold unless you define open. I agree that your definition of open does indeed categorize Android as more 'open' than some competitors.
However, the notion that you can simply say that Android is more open than the iPhone, universally, is simply untrue. I'm attempting to promote a semblance of formal statement here, wherein the parties actually state their axioms as opposed to making otherwise semantically meaningless statements like 'Android is more open than iPhone'.
Where can I download the source code for the iPhone's UI?
Does iPhone have anything like Android's intents that allows me to plug my own stuff in?
Can I install my own applications on my own damn phone without paying Apple?
There may be some metric where iPhone is more open than Android, but I can't think of it.
There are plenty of nice things to be said about the iPhone: it really changed the phone game, it's beautiful, well designed, and so on. But 'open' and 'free' aren't really words I'd associate with it.
davidw didn't say that. What I said is that overall, I think Android is our best bet for something that's free, but also "matters". OpenMoko is quite free, for instance, but doesn't really matter - no one will ever use it. I honestly don't have a good idea about what's in MeeGo, how free it is, how much it's possible to tweak the installation on the phone, and so on.
> I'm not going to play the semantics game, I'm relying on the reader to not be dense.
You are the one who brought the zoo into it. The rest of us were talking about mobile phone software.
Also, in terms of their DNA, a donkey is far closer to a horse than a manatee is, if you really want to get into comparisons of animals...