Is Android Really the 'Open' Platform?

Always nice to see someone posing the same questions as myself in different manners :)

It's all about control. If the 3rd party tethering applications remain, it becomes more difficult for the providers to control you when they change the rules.

Sorry Tracyanne, it's not about control, it's about money. They could care less about how, why or where you access, so long as they have a way to bill you for it, and a way to bill you for "extra" usage, whether it's really extra or not. Don't confuse simple greed with a desire for maniacal control.

With a third party tethering app, they know they can't meter the "extra" usage, beyond bits in & bits out. And one of the reasons the carriers love Android so much is they can rely on it to "phone home" often (eg: weather, Facebook apps, etc), racking up potential overcharges. Most tethering apps will allow user to meter their own usage, & maximise their bandwidth use, below the wire. They want the majority of users paying for an idle connection & the ability to overcharge people with high (or high-ish) utilisation. Most carriers over-sell their bandwidth capabilities. Most (third party) tethering apps don't play nice with their simple greed, and have the potential to expose their snake-oil salesmanship of their network capabilities.

You know what it takes to tether my N900? I plug it into my computer and push one button. No hacks, no 3rd party application I am required to buy, no extra "fee". Thats how it should be folks.

~Jeff

I don't use a data plan on my N900,... I use GSM phone & MiFi. But we all know how much support the Nokia N series Maemo web tablets will be getting into the future... Such a squandered opportunity. An up-scaled (in terms of size) N900 would be a killer "epad" device, even with everything else, except maybe the screen resolution, being the same. It makes me cry that a device like the N900 may never come around again...

Quoting: it's not about control, it's about money. They could care less about how, why or where you access, so long as they have a way to bill you for it, and a way to bill you for "extra" usage, whether it's really extra or not. Don't confuse simple greed with a desire for maniacal control.

Toh-may-toh, toh-mah-toh.

^ Used to have emo friends telling me the tomato joke from Pulp Fiction. Too bad I'm not a fan of Quentin Tarantino films.

JaseP: Intel is going to gain ground with their mobile cpu / apu I think, I thought there was no hope for Meego, but already some tablets makers are already using it, fear not, there will be Meego phones.

I am not convinced they are not about control until they improve their privacy policy, but that's inevitable now with any website/internet services using web bugs and trackers. What about the Cyanogenmod cease and desist, they wouldn't want an Android fork that become more popular than their own and lost the revenue in the process. I think its control in order to make money as with any other company, but Google is able to balance it well to still gain trust of its users despite all the privacy concern. What about the cloud thing where user have less control of their data? Whoops I'm getting rhetorically Stallman.

nevermind