[Nook Color Android Development] fattire:
Some thoughts...

So there's apparently been some bit of controversy related to my request that people try to build themselves rather than someone posting a pre-made update.zip file. Let me go more into detail about what this experiment is about, at least from my perspective. But first, I do want to thank everyone for respecting the request so far-- I know it's not the traditional way of doing things, but I think it's been very fruitful and personally rewarding to see so many people who have never built jack before take on a project like this and be

successful

. I've received an enormous number of messages, both PMs here as well as in IRC, to the effect that this finally got them to try to build for the first time. It's introduced many people to actually using Linux, others may be having their first encounters with the command line, or git, or looking at source code, or learning about the build process in general. Whether or not the majority go on to become "devs" is irrelevant-- what I have been trying to encourage is curiosity and experimentation, and most of all a deeper understanding that your phones and "ereaders" are in fact full-fledged computers, not "appliances" or limited-purpose devices that others get to control. It's your property, and it can do a lot. There is an effort underway to discourage people from thinking of their devices this way or discouraging them from experimenting and learning with them. This IMO is an extremely harmful practice-- take a look at Cory Doctorow's recent speech on this subject. I could go on and on, but it seems important enough to me to make this request, and hopefully some of you are even subconsciously appreciating the awesomeness of what potential these general-purpose gadgets will have on society. So that's a lot of philosophizing, but there you go. And while I'm not naive enough to think that plenty of people aren't trading the file "under the table" at it were, for a variety of reasons, I do think that in a way they're cheating themselves; those who give building a shot are finding that learning is a reward unto itself. Those who are persistent, who pay attention, who don't give up, not only get a build at the end, plus the experience of doing it, plus the knowledge they picked up along the way-- they also discover things in the most unexpected of places, as in the link in the period at the end of the third sentence in this post. And while there's been some discussion of what a "dev" is and whether or not this is a gateway to bigger and better things, all I can assume is that if 5-10% of the people who built are intrigued enough to take it a step further, and maybe a step further than that... then we might end up with some new devs who appreciate the value of open source and whose contributions we can look forward to with eagerness in the future. Plus-- it's more fun this way.

I do hope this sounds good to everyone. If you understand what this post is about- no need for long, drawn-out elaborate responses... a simple "I got it" will do. ;)

More source is forthcoming... Thanks to dalingrin, arcee, keyodi, nemith, Scepterr, unforgiven512, etc. Oh, and shh.