Murphy’s Law dictates that, as soon as I defend Android against charges of not being open enough, word comes out about…well…Android perhaps not being open enough.

Specifically, I’m referring to this report from Hello Android regarding the 50 first-round winners of the Android Development Challenge getting private, NDA-ified access to newer editions of the Android SDK than, apparently, will the rest of the Android development community.

I haven’t run across independent verification of the claims in this report, and so it’s entirely possible that something got lost in translation. But, for the purposes of this blog post, I’m assuming it’s accurate.

The notion that there are milestones of the Android SDK that the public doesn’t see is nothing new — they went from M3 to M5, and one would have to assume M4 was kept internal to OHA for whatever reason. I’ve also been assuming that OHA members have been getting access to more stuff as well, since some of them have to worry about that teeny little detail of putting Android in silicon.

However, the decision to give ADC winners other private confidential SDK editions trips over a few aspects of the open source model that Android is trying to cultivate:

  • Open source is frequently touted as being a meritocracy. While that’s true, the more fundamental underlying assumption is that open source provides equal opportunity: anyone can succeed as well as anyone else given time, talent, and effort, and not be hampered by externally-imposed limitations. Many of the brouhahas one sees in open source — from the ExtJS licensing fiasco to the various efforts to get hardware makers to honor the GPL — stem from the notion of equal opportunity and some players with authority electing to eschew such a balanced approach. Google giving money, publicity, and whatnot to ADC winners is to be expected; giving them extra development assistance, however, runs counter to equal opportunity.

  • This is exacerbated by the prospects that such a schism might be permanent. What happens if Google/OHA effectively create a two-tiered development community, with the honored few getting what is deemed platinum treatment compared to the masses getting less? Certainly, some level of this is to be expected (e.g., OHA members will get more), but the more such schisms are fostered, promoted, and made visible to the public, the less developers will perceive that there is equal opportunity, and the more likely it is they will wander elsewhere where they feel that they have fewer impediments to success.

  • Requiring an “confidentiality clause” (a.k.a., NDA) for ADC winners is troublesome. ADC round 1 winners will have to sign the NDA, since they have to submit their round 2 application under the private SDK, and the private SDK apparently requires the NDA. Google’s NDAs are legendary. Again, expecting OHA members to agree to confidentiality clauses is well within reason. But NDAs and open source go together like oil and flamethrowers. This further widens the schism by making it more difficult for ADC winners to even talk to the rest of the Android development community.

None of this is to say that Android is doomed (doomed!) to failure. Strategically, this all may be just fine, and we’ll know in the fullness of time. And certainly Google and OHA have every right to do whatever they please with Android and its ongoing development.

Right now, though, with the limited information at our disposal, the direction depicted by the private confidential SDK releases is disturbing. Certainly, it would run counter to the types of recommendations I made back when I advised Google-ish firms on open source and collaborative development back in my CollabNet days. Of course, they didn’t always listen to me, either…