Android is Now Available as Open Source

I've mentioned Android before when I shared the T-Mobile G1's first video commercial. Now the same mobile platform that powered the smartphone is now available as open source. Here's an intro to the Android Open Source Project:



According to the Android website, Tuesday’s release “offers a full stack: an operating system, middleware, and key mobile applications. It also contains a rich set of APIs that allows third-party developers to develop great applications.” Among the features accessible via those APIs are the speech recognition engine, some software development tools and virtual libraries. There’s also embedded Linux (the system was built using the Linux kernel). Not to be confused with Android’s software development kit (SDK), the toolset used to build individual applications which was released earlier this year, Tuesday’s source code release offers the operating system code — the actual software which runs the applications.

Learn more at source.android.com »