Monday, September 05, 2011

Tablets: Forking Android | The Economist

So maybe Amazon and Google won’t be working together after all…

The operating system may also prove less of a challenge for Amazon than it did for other tablet hopefuls. HP bought Palm for its webOS system, and RIM grabbed QNX, another OS maker, to power its PlayBook. Like Motorola (which is being acquired by Google) and Samsung, Amazon is sticking with Google's Android, broadly similar to a version of Linux it has used for years to run its e-book reader. But if the TechCrunch report is accurate, Amazon has decided to ditch its own Linux flavour, and take a mature, licence-free version of the Android open-source software and start building an in-house system on top of it. Such forking, as the practice is known in techie circles, means that development paths of the open-source software and Amazon's version of it will diverge. As a result, software built for one will not easily run on the other.

Tablets: Forking Android | The Economist

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