What's Good for the Goose is Good for the Gander

Dr. Roy Schestowitz comes to use again from his tech pulpit with a great mishmash of spoutings about Android and Linux. In the rest of my discussion I am going to make an assumption. This assumption is that Linux refers to a typical deployment of the Linux kernel, GNU user land, and maybe a desktop environment or two. This seems perfectly founded, in fact, there is even the JustAKernel to highlight the hypocrisy of how Linux is everything most of the time and just a kernel when bugs are highlighted.

As with most of Dr. Schestowitz’s articles, this one begins with the spewing of vitrol against his target of destruction. In this particular case the Gartner Group is accused of having direct bias against Linux “because it doesn’t pay their bills.” The hypocrisy of using internal Microsoft documents as a means of belittling Gartner is even more amusing. Microsoft cannot be believed unless what they are saying aligns with the zealot viewpoint.

The real meat of the argument comes from the following assertion from Gartner.

That’s right, Gartner has decided that Android and Linux are completely separate. We’ll come to its pathetic excuse later on, but first we present some responses from Linux Today readers.

The responses from the Linux Today readers bear out the same basic viewpoint. And, continuing on:

Let’s be clear here. No phone can run just Linux. None. Linux is a kernel or a platform, it is not an operating system. Who would create or tolerate some self-serving illusions with a poor classification that belittles Linux, as it doesn’t hire Gartner? They use the word “ecosystem”, which GNU recommends avoiding. As the site explains it: “It is a mistake to describe the free software community, or any human community, as an “ecosystem,” because that word implies the absence of ethical judgment.

But wait, Linux is JustAKernel™ , except when counting bugs or anything else that might make it look bad. So, lets take a look at the architecture of Android which comes from Google’s own developer documentation

I see the Linux kernel, libc, SSL, FreeType, WebKit, SQLite and OpenGL ES. These are the components you might expect to see in a typical Linux distribution that are included in Android. I would be mighty impressed, however, if anyone could actually build a usable system of of these things. For instance, anything user facing like the desktop shell or even the bulk of the runtime libraries are of Google’s own creation (see the Dalvik components listed in the runtime area). Furthermore, Dalvik isn’t even a conforming Java SE implementation despite the fact it is Java. Going back to the assumption made at the start, Android is most clearly not Linux. Thus, Gartner’s assertion that Android has leapfrogged Linux and Windows Mobile is completely justified when there have, in the past, been legitimate Linux phones such as OpenMoko. Even more damning is the fact that Android maintains an independent kernel from what is hosted at linux.org. This is evidenced by the previous scuffle over how Android is developed seperates and its drivers are not suitable for admission into mainline.

In summary, this is nothing more than another attempt to blast a firm that has something other than rosy words for Linux and to ride along the coattails of Google’s fork of Linux.