Android the Free Software?

Richard Stallman, the GPL compiler script (which is widely used by open source software) to express an opinion about Android. Is it true that the software was free and independent?

According to Stallman, Android can not be called free software aka the free software. This is because a lot of code that are not released to the public.

He said, the core part of the Android uses the Linux kernel is licensed GNU Public License (GPL). In this case, Stallman acknowledges there is openness.

Yet another part of the Android wrapped with the Apache license. This license does not require modification of the code distributed to the public, so that the openness factor is limited.

From TheRegister, Thursday (09/22/2011), Stallman says that Google does not release most of the source code for Android. Especially starting from the Android version 3 (Honeycomb).

"Android 3, outside the (core) to Linux, is not free software," he said.

However, Stallman praised Android as a major step toward mobile devices in an ethical, user-controlled and independent. "The road is still long," he added.

Meanwhile, if compared with the smartphone operating system is locked - like its IOS iPhone or Windows 7 Phone - Android is much better.

"Although the Android phone today is much better than Apple or Windows smartphone, still can not be called to respect your independence," he said.

So, what operating system is truly free? Stallman called Replicant, an implementation of Android that most of the source code using the GPL 2.