Will Android draw developers to Linux? (was: Interesting article, games)

[Joshua Judson Rosen]

Thomas Charron <twaffle at gmail.com> writes:
> On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 9:52 AM, Benjamin Scott <dragonhawk at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Droid seems like the first Android phone that's getting
> > marketing budget, mainstream attention and adoption, and also has an
> > impressive feature set.  While widespread use of Android as a generic
> > phone engine might be good for Linux tech, it's not going to help the
> > desktop market much because it's not going to be attracting
> > application programmers.  But if Droid gathers the kind of developer
> > ecosystem that iPhone has, *that* might be a gateway drug for the
> > Linux desktop.
> 
>   Except for the fact that Andriod is pretty much all written in Java.
>  :-D  And doesn't use X.  And must be run in a VM which isn't the Java
> VM.

So, from everything that I remember reading, it's basically *not Java*,
but rather some weird mutant mostly-similar Java-alike.

But at least it's closer to Java than the underlying OS is to anything
that people call "Linux". Have you read the recent "Android Mythbusters"
discourse? Even the kernel (Linux proper) is significantly mutant.

BUT: I wonder if maybe Ben isn't talking about it being a `gateway drug'
that draws people to platforms that are *technologically similar*,
but if he instead is talking about it drawing people to platforms
that are more, um..., `culturally' related? Almost like how people
buy Macintoshes because they support their iPods better
than Windows PCs would?

-- 
"Don't be afraid to ask (λf.((λx.xx) (λr.f(rr))))."