[Ouya Android Development] flamepanther:
It seems to me that people are confusing design flaws with closedness. I don't think it's a secret that OUYA was rushed and has a lot of flaws. The stock ROM has a lot of things that don't work right or shouldn't even be included. If they haven't even polished things up for themselves internally while running as intended, I don't think we can expect a smoother ride when we start messing with things. And if people want to ***** and gripe about implementation that doesn't meet their expectations, then fine. But that's got nothing to do with whether the system is "open."

Earlier this week, I helped a guy fix his OUYA which he had semi-bricked. He managed to get himself into that situation by modifying and deleting system files before he even rooted the device! He had to use ADB to push the root exploit to his device and run it, install CWM recovery, and flash the stock ROM. But it's crazy that this could even happen! I haven't been able to tinker with important system files at will without root/admin rights since Windows was still running on top of DOS. It's a very bad idea to allow that, but it is very open. Not only is it both open and dangerous, but it is dangerous specifically because it is so open. But they promised that if we didn't like something we could change it, and they'll let this guy try to do just that. Doesn't mean they'll keep him from breaking it.

People seem to want to jump straight to the worst possible conclusion. I remember not long ago when The Cave came out and people were having nothing but trouble installing it. Someone noticed that it especially seemed to affect rooted users, and started spreading rumors that OUYA and Double Fine had conspired to implement some kind of anti-root DRM. As it turned out, the issues were actually caused by two really bad bugs: one was keeping very large games from being moved to external storage; the other was causing the OUYA to store duplicate APKs of every game, making it almost impossible to have enough internal memory free to install The Cave. The issues affected plenty of non-root users, but since root users tend to have extra system files and apps installed (Google Play), they affected us more often. OUYA fixed both bugs within a week, people were able to play The Cave, and everything turned out okay... except that Double Fine seemed somewhat offended by the accusations.

So, when you've got a problem with how somebody does something, don't jump to the worst possible reason they might be doing it deliberately. If you have a suspicion that you think has merit, then look for other things you'd expect to see if your suspicion were true. In this case, if OUYA wanted to lock down their system, there are other, better measures they could take to do that. They wouldn't be letting users access and modify system files without being root. They would patch the exploits they know people are using to get root access. They would lock down the bootloader instead of just implementing it strangely. Reality is inconsistent with the accusation, and is more consistent with an inexperienced group making some big mistakes while trying to implement an open system.