Build your own Gphone: Google open-sources Android code

There’s been a lot of talk about how Google’s Android mobile operating system is the open competitor to Apple’s more closed iPhone. Today, Google made Android truly open source by releasing all of its code under the open-source Apache license.

Google already released the Android software development kit (SDK), but that’s just for creating Android applications. As Product Manager Erick Tseng tells eWeek, the SDK didn’t include the system’s network and telephony layers. With today’s release, anyone can actually build and release their own phone using Android software. (Well, anyone with the technical abilities and resources.) Open-sourcing Android also means that anyone can contribute to the platform’s code.

The first Android phone, the T-Mobile G1 (built by HTC), goes on sale tomorrow — we plan to cover the early release event in San Francisco tonight — and Motorola may have another one coming next year. But the code release solidifies Google’s claim that Android isn’t a single phone or set of phones, and instead a software platform that can run on any mobile device. In the video introducing the Android Open Source Project, Dave Bort envisions a time when “each one of [the devices on the shelf] will be running Android.”

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Y4thikv-OM&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&fs=1]

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