VisionMobile has just released The Open Governance Index, a deep look at the openness of various open source platforms, and has concluded that Google’s Android was the most closed open source platform included in their report.
The index evaluated eight major open source projects: Android, Qt, Symbian, MeeGo, Mozilla, WebKit, Linux and Eclipse, and determined that Qt is the most open platform available, while Android, which scored only 23% in the index, isn’t very open at all.
The report continues to suggest that Android’s success is not due to its status as an open platform, but rather with Google’s financial backing, making the software available for zero cost to hardware manufacturers.
Intriguingly, the report finishes by saying that Android would not have been so successful were it not for the strong competition provided by Apple’s iOS:
Android would not have risen were it not for the billions of dollars that OEMs and network operators poured into Android in order to compete with Apple’s iconic devices
While it’s interesting to see VisionMobile openly state this, it’s really not surprising – we’ve been saying this for ages! VisionMobile has produced an infographic charting their results, shown below:
