Google Finds Open Source Has Its Limits, Rations Android

The proprietary decision reportedly won’t affect companies about to put out an Android 3.0 tablet

· Contrary to its supposed open source belief system, Google is rationing Honeycomb, the tablet-optimized version of Android, ostensibly to keep it out of the hands of people who might customize it. Supposedly the widgetry isn't ready to be messed with. The proprietary decision reportedly won't affect companies about to put out an Android 3.0 tablet like Dell, HTC, Acer and Samsung. It won't affect games makers either since they don't need the source code. IDC told Dow Jones the brand-protecting, user experience-guarding move seems to be directed at "low-cost hardware makers that might try to push aggressively into the tablet market by cutting corners and lowering prices." Google is quoted as saying, "Android 3.0, Honeycomb, was designed from the ground up for devices with larger screen sizes and improves on Android favorites such as widgets, multi-tasking, browsing, notifications and customization. While we're excited to offer these new features to Android tablets, we have more work to do before we can deliver them to other device types including phones. Until then, we've decided not to release Honeycomb to open source. We're committed to providing Android as an open platform across many device types and will publish the source as soon as it's ready." When that will be exactly is unclear. BusinessWeek, which broke the story, suspects it's several months. And that doesn't exactly explain how come the Open Handset Alliance reportedly has access to the stuff even though it's not supposed to work on phones because of what Google called design tradeoffs or shortcuts. Meanwhile, RIM Thursday confirmed that it's going to support Android 2.3 and earlier apps as well as Java apps on its QNX-based Playbook tablet complements of so-called "app players." The dingus goes on sale April 19. The apps will be supplied by RIM's BlackBerry App World online store.

Google Finds Open Source Has Its Limits, Rations Android

The proprietary decision reportedly won’t affect companies about to put out an Android 3.0 tablet

· Contrary to its supposed open source belief system, Google is rationing Honeycomb, the tablet-optimized version of Android, ostensibly to keep it out of the hands of people who might customize it. Supposedly the widgetry isn't ready to be messed with. The proprietary decision reportedly won't affect companies about to put out an Android 3.0 tablet like Dell, HTC, Acer and Samsung. It won't affect games makers either since they don't need the source code. IDC told Dow Jones the brand-protecting, user experience-guarding move seems to be directed at "low-cost hardware makers that might try to push aggressively into the tablet market by cutting corners and lowering prices." Google is quoted as saying, "Android 3.0, Honeycomb, was designed from the ground up for devices with larger screen sizes and improves on Android favorites such as widgets, multi-tasking, browsing, notifications and customization. While we're excited to offer these new features to Android tablets, we have more work to do before we can deliver them to other device types including phones. Until then, we've decided not to release Honeycomb to open source. We're committed to providing Android as an open platform across many device types and will publish the source as soon as it's ready." When that will be exactly is unclear. BusinessWeek, which broke the story, suspects it's several months. And that doesn't exactly explain how come the Open Handset Alliance reportedly has access to the stuff even though it's not supposed to work on phones because of what Google called design tradeoffs or shortcuts. Meanwhile, RIM Thursday confirmed that it's going to support Android 2.3 and earlier apps as well as Java apps on its QNX-based Playbook tablet complements of so-called "app players." The dingus goes on sale April 19. The apps will be supplied by RIM's BlackBerry App World online store.

Google Finds Open Source Has Its Limits, Rations Android

The proprietary decision reportedly won’t affect companies about to put out an Android 3.0 tablet

· Contrary to its supposed open source belief system, Google is rationing Honeycomb, the tablet-optimized version of Android, ostensibly to keep it out of the hands of people who might customize it. Supposedly the widgetry isn't ready to be messed with. The proprietary decision reportedly won't affect companies about to put out an Android 3.0 tablet like Dell, HTC, Acer and Samsung. It won't affect games makers either since they don't need the source code. IDC told Dow Jones the brand-protecting, user experience-guarding move seems to be directed at "low-cost hardware makers that might try to push aggressively into the tablet market by cutting corners and lowering prices." Google is quoted as saying, "Android 3.0, Honeycomb, was designed from the ground up for devices with larger screen sizes and improves on Android favorites such as widgets, multi-tasking, browsing, notifications and customization. While we're excited to offer these new features to Android tablets, we have more work to do before we can deliver them to other device types including phones. Until then, we've decided not to release Honeycomb to open source. We're committed to providing Android as an open platform across many device types and will publish the source as soon as it's ready." When that will be exactly is unclear. BusinessWeek, which broke the story, suspects it's several months. And that doesn't exactly explain how come the Open Handset Alliance reportedly has access to the stuff even though it's not supposed to work on phones because of what Google called design tradeoffs or shortcuts. Meanwhile, RIM Thursday confirmed that it's going to support Android 2.3 and earlier apps as well as Java apps on its QNX-based Playbook tablet complements of so-called "app players." The dingus goes on sale April 19. The apps will be supplied by RIM's BlackBerry App World online store.

Kindle and Libraries – Will Amazon’s exclusive ebook format effect sales of the Kindle?

You can’t read ebooks from your library on a Kindle:

This simple statement may well conceal a growing problem for Amazon in relation to the future sales of their Kindle ereaders.

Whilst the Kindle ereader is currently the world’s best selling ereader, is a superb piece of equipment, well made, easy to use (seriously easy to use), reasonably priced and generally a device that one would recommend without any hesitation to anyone wanting a good, dedicated ereader, it does suffer from a problem that the people at Amazon had never considered when they decided to use their own propriety ebook format with the Kindle, and this is the exponential growth of public libraries all over the developed world, who now offer their members ebooks as well as paper books.

But the wrong ebook format…..

The problem being, the format that libraries all over the world use for the ebooks they offer is the effective industry standard, ePub. And Kindle ereaders can’t work with ePub formatted ebooks. Thus Kindle owners are excluded from this source of ebooks to read.

Which is obviously a sad situation, and one that I imagine Amazon is concerned to address before to long.

Computer literate folk…. not a problem, but the rest of us?

I know that those of you out there who are handy with computers, will use a program such as Calibre to change the library ebooks to the Amazon format, and are also perfectly capable of stripping the DRM protection as well, and can thus merrily read these library ebooks on their Kindles, but I know from the many emails and comments that I get through this blog, the great majority of ereader owners are in fact not particularly interested in computers, and don’t want the extra hassle of converting ebook formats and so on, but simply want to download the ebooks they want to read, get them onto their ereaders and enjoy reading them.

This must surely mean that as the spread of libraries offering ebooks grows – which it assuredly will do – people contemplating purchasing a new ereader will think twice before deciding to buy a Kindle, and will very likely choose a Sony, a Nook or any one of the hundreds of other makes out there that do support ePub. Which is obviously bad news for Amazon.

Once upon a time it made sense.

Way back in the dark primaeval days of ereaders, when Amazon and Sony were to all intents and purposes the only players in the field, it made pretty good sense for Amazon to use an exclusive ebook format – it assured after all that people would buy their ebooks from Amazon, and not from any other source which was obviously the point. The Amazon format is not in any real respect better than ePub as far as I know.

But this is no longer an advantage it seems to me.

So, what happens next?

I am curious to see if in future versions of the Kindle, Amazon will broaden the range of ebook formats it can handle, or even go as far as to drop their own ebook format and simply go with the rest of the world and accept ePub as the format of choice for ebooks.

I am reasonably sure that if they stick to their guns, and refuse to make the Kindle work with ePub, their sales will surely suffer from this one unexpected development – the ebook lending libraries.

Of course, the other possibility (there are always other possibilities after all) is that libraries will change and start to stock their ebooks in the Amazon format as well as ePub. For Amazon, this would obviously be the best outcome, and one I am sure they are beavering away in the back rooms trying to bring about.

In any event, I hope that a sensible solution is found, since the Kindle is one of the best ereaders out there, and I can understand that people would like to buy it… But if that choice closes a wonderful source of ebooks, then I can only see sales dropping in time, as other brands of ereader who do support ePub take the lead.

Why Readers Hate DRM

I received an email today from an author who has been networking a little among fledgling backlist self-publishers, and she mentioned a question had come up about DRM. She had made a comment about how most readers hate it, and the question came up: why? Was there a post or blog or article, she wondered, that succinctly explained just what it was about DRM that most readers find so onerous?

Well, there is now! Here are my top six reasons; feel free to add your own in the comments. As you will see, it is not about fleecing authors or getting away with taking advantage of them. It’s about readers simply wanting to be able to enjoy in appropriate ways the books they legally and legitimately purchase. DRM, as it is currently implemented, does nothing to stop ‘piracy’ and it punishes the paying customer with onerous restrictions, and with both complexity—and cost—in usage.

So, what are my top six reasons why readers hate DRM?

1) DRM removes rights that users have with paper books, so they resent paying the same price and getting less. For example, if I have a paper book, I can loan it to someone and if I have an ebook I cannot; I can re-sell the book if I am finished with it and want to get it out of my house; I can read the book as many times as I want and in as many places. With ebooks some of these uses may be limited.

2) DRM creates artificial restrictions that limit the ability of users to exercise their fair, legal enjoyment of content they legally purchase. For example, Adobe DRM limits the user to five devices. If they have more than five devices they have legally bought and paid for, it can be difficult or impossible for them to enjoy the also legally paid for content on them. For example, I have a computer at home, an iPod Touch for on the go, an iPad for work, a Kindle for listening to books via text to speech at the gym and a Kobo for library books and for my mother’s use. That is five devices right there! If I upgrade to a new device, or another technology comes along that I want to benefit from, I might not be able to use my Adobe ebooks on it.

3) DRM can make users pay multiple times for the same content. For example, if I buy an Amazon book and then later buy a Sony, I cannot use the same book on the Sony and have to re-buy it. I had a device once whose on-board store limited the user to using books they purchased only on the device on which is was bought—so if I lost the device, or it got stolen, or if I bought another device—even from them—I would have to re-buy all the books! That is just absurd. If you want the book to be only a rental, you need to charge rental prices, not full hardback ones!

4) DRM can leave users reliant on outside agencies in order to enjoy their books. For example, if using my ebook is reliant on having it validated through an Adobe server and that server is ever down, I cannot use my book. This happened once with mobipocket books—users were locked out of their purchased books for about a week when a downed server prevented them from validating new purchases. I also had a problem earlier in the year where I lost some books in a hard drive crash (most were backed up, but a few had escaped the time machine backup process) and because of new publisher-imposed restrictions which had not been in effect when I had purchased them, the vendor would not let me re-download them and I basically lost the books. This is completely unacceptable.

5) DRM forces users to rely on buggy or difficult software they may not need or want. For example, if my mother wants to read a library book on her Kobo, she cannot use the Kobo software to download it but must use the Adobe Digital Editions software instead. This software is a large download which takes up a lot of space on her computer. Similarly, this software is not available for all operating systems, so Linux users (for example) are simply out of luck and cannot use these books.

6) DRM is an extra cost to the book—there are development and implementation costs to it that are incorporated into the cost of the book and are passed on to the end user. Plus it is not even effective, as every major DRM scheme can be bypassed. So all it does is add cost, complexity and hassle for the legitimate, paying customer while not affecting at all the ‘pirate’ who was not going to pay anyway, or who will pay and then simply bypass the protections in order to use the book as they wish to.

Did I miss anything? Leave a comment! I’ll pass along the link to this article to the author in question so her author friends can read it. Let’s make sure that authors entering into the e-publishing market for the first time have all the information they need to make good choices to help reach their potential readers in the best way.