OpenSourceAppSupport
[edit] Open Source App Support
Android demonstrates the many benefits of Open Source. It would make sense to extend that to many more applications, via a community-managed code repository, automated build server and market server which users can trust and build on, modeled or based on Debian/Ubuntu.
Goals: improve trust in app security, quality, likelihood of continued updates and availability, build community, share code snippets and libraries also, etc.
Ubuntu and Android can learn from each other.
The interface for downloading built packages should not depend on Android Market, as the Market cannot be accessed without Google binary packages and they are not available for some Android installs.
Thanks to the work of many other folks on this site, you can see information on the licensing status of many exisiting applications at Applications.
[edit] Open Issues
- Create a new market server with possibility of direct download via a web interface (a simple HTTP-based api for native clients might follow)
- Who wants to work on this?
- Hosting an automated build server
- What code hosting to use and integrate with the build servers?
See also work on running Android within Ubuntu:
