The kind of open that they do is definitely less good than I would have hoped (I would love to be able to submit patches for the bugs I regularly encounter on my N1, say).
But trust me, of all the people I know who have android phones here in "Middle America" (off the top of my head without thinking too hard let's say more than 10), none of them bought them because of a techie brother in law raved about it being so cool because it was open. They all bought them because they wanted a smart phone and it was the one they were sold by the telco marketing. Period. (Okay, I'm up to more than twenty coming to mind just while thinking at the same time as typing, and still, none of them bought them because of the openness at all).
So yeah. While it's really marketing-speak to say that android is open in the sense that we all traditionally think of it, to google (and much more importantly to all the telco sales people) it means exactly squat as a selling point.
Which is why only people on HN (and Richard Stallman) get upset about it :)
But trust me, of all the people I know who have android phones here in "Middle America" (off the top of my head without thinking too hard let's say more than 10), none of them bought them because of a techie brother in law raved about it being so cool because it was open. They all bought them because they wanted a smart phone and it was the one they were sold by the telco marketing. Period. (Okay, I'm up to more than twenty coming to mind just while thinking at the same time as typing, and still, none of them bought them because of the openness at all).
So yeah. While it's really marketing-speak to say that android is open in the sense that we all traditionally think of it, to google (and much more importantly to all the telco sales people) it means exactly squat as a selling point.
Which is why only people on HN (and Richard Stallman) get upset about it :)