[XDA Developer TV] monkeychef:
This is in response to your newest video.

I believe your suggestion for open sourcing patents is a fantastic idea to keep android alive while protecting companies from getting sued, but there is a huge flaw with your suggestion. At this time it seems that Motorola and Samsung are not competing against each other, but against apple.

Here is how I see it. There currently are no iPhone killer phones out there yet. I will say that there are some fantastic android phones out there, but none of them are actual iPhone killers. Even though this fact exists, Android phone manufacturers believe that they are competing against apple and ONLY apple. Here's an example; the Acer iconia and the Asus transformer are both great android tablets priced below the lowest priced Ipad, whereas the Motorola xoom and the Samsung galaxy tab 10.1 (which have the same hardware inside) are both priced evenly or above the lowest priced Ipad. Now I haven't played with the galaxy tab, but I did play with the xoom. The xoom is nowhere near the quality of the Ipad, and I even found the experience to be worse than that of the transformer and the iconia. I'm sure that the galaxy tab's experience is similar to that of any other android tablet. None of these tablets are able to compete with the ipad, no matter how good they are.

So what does this mean?

This means that android tablet and phone manufacturers must compete against each other for dominance of the platform. They must attempt to make better phones, better tablets, and more fluid software than their competitors. They must also learn how to keep the developer community engaged, by keeping their phones unlocked and always having their source code available. By doing these things, they drive both hardware and software innovation forward at an amazing rate, which will in turn create an amazing experience for the end user, eventually killing the iPhone.

But here's the problem.

Motorola doesn't want competition. Neither does apple. Motorola won't open source their patents because they want to be the "big dog" of the android world. What better way of getting rid of your competition than watching them get sued into nonexistance? Not only that, but I also believe that Motorola isn't making android products to drive innovation forward (at least I don't think it is high on their list of priorities). I believe Motorola just wants money, and lots of it. Let other manufacturers pay royalties on their patents, and let them die so you can gain more market share. (I know Motorola made the first big android handset, and they were also the first company with a honeycomb tablet and dual core phone. I believe they mainly did these things in hopes of gaining more market share and to see if they could make people pay more for their products.)

So to summarize-

Android would be a much better platform if all android manufacturers competed against each other, not apple. Motorola won't open source their patents because it is a poor business move, and they don't care if their competition suffers. Not only that, but Motorola doesn't have the same feelings towards development and open source software as you and me.

I feel that android has a lot of potential. The issue is that it needs a large group of people and companies to keep driving it forward. Google needs to work with manufacturers, manufacturers must compete against each other, and both must work towards the goal of making the best customer experience for the end user.

Just my two cents.