Google's Android and the dream deferred
Developer Interest in Mobile Platforms
(Credit: Markmail and O'Reilly Research)What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.Or does it explode?
Langston Hughes may have been talking about the legal and social equality of the races in the United States when he penned "A Dream Deferred," but Google's would-be Android developers are suffering their own "dream deferred" with the the festering and stink of a delayed Android SDK.
Despite widespread and growing developer interest in Google's Android platform, as highlighted in recent studies done by O'Reilly Research, "Google's unresponsiveness and lack of transparency are beginning to make other mobile platforms look more appealing," suggests ars technica.
The iPhone is the obvious candidate for developer affection, but Mozilla's API improvements may make mobile Firefox (and applications written to run in it) a preferred platform, too.
No one is standing still, in other words. Except, apparently, Google.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
