Freedom of Android

[scottuss]

I don't usually read women's magazines, but with my Mrs being involved with them, I often can't avoid it. Anyway, long story short: I saw an advert for an Android handset in one of these magazines, targeted as it should be at the audience (women aged 18-35ish) and one of the key selling points was the, and I quote, "freedom of the Android operating system"

Now, I know what this means. Hell, if you're reading this you probably know what it means. But with the upmost respect, I'm willing to bet the people looking at that ad don't really know (and/or care) what it means.

Just occured to me though, maybe, just maybe "Freedom" and "Openness" will start to feature more in the public's mind. Perhaps. Maybe they ran out of good things to say about the phone :p

Anyway, just thought I'd share that :P

[SirGrant]

Just a heads up Android is not fully free just like Ubuntu isn't fully free either. People are working on a 100% free version of android though (http://trac.osuosl.org/trac/replicant)

[gnomeuser]

The Motorola Droid was hyped amongst other things on the openness of the platform, this in nationally transmitted TV ads as I understand.

With open standards becoming a political issue and one IT issue that is very easy to understand for regular people (what do you mean my files can't be read.. the vendor did what.. and then they went bankrupt and now you can't open anything in the new version?).

This I suspect helps with leading people to consider transparency a value that matters in buying decisions.

[red_Marvin]

'Freedom' is also a word that has positive associations and can be used in advertizing even if the audience cannot be expected to fully understand or care about the open source context interpretation. woah, long sentence...

[neonl]

'Freedom' is also a word that has positive associations and can be used in advertizing even if the audience cannot be expected to fully understand or care about the open source context interpretation. woah, long sentence...

All said. Everybody likes nice words, even if they don't make technical sense!

[t0p]

How many average IT users know the dirrerence between free libre and free gratis? Not many, methinks.

[Dr. C]

When it comes to Android and Free (as in speech) software the real issue is root. There is no freedom without root.

[aeiah]

because of the context and target audience, i suspect they're really just saying 'free, as opposed to the iPhone iApp iStore, where you have to pay for a flashlight app or a calculator'