ELC: Android and the community

“Greg Kroah-Hartman delivered some “tough love” to Android in
his keynote at this year’s Embedded Linux Conference (ELC). He is
very clearly excited about Android and what it can do—uses it
daily as his regular phone—but is unhappy with Google’s lack
of community engagement. There is hope that things will change, he
said; there has been a fair amount of “introspection” at Google
that he hopes will lead it in a more community-oriented
direction.

“CE Linux Forum architecture group chair and ELC organizer Tim
Bird introduced Kroah-Hartman by noting how many kernel subsystems
he maintains: eight. The “amount of work that Greg does in the
Linux kernel is really hard to comprehend”, Bird said. In addition,
he has a knack for “involving people in the community”.
Kroah-Hartman is “omnipresent” in kernel circles and “when he sees
a problem, he just comes up with a solution for it”. It would seem
that the keynote was targeted at solving the “Android problem”.

“As part of his disclaimer, Kroah-Hartman noted that he comes at
the problem as an experienced kernel developer who also has a
background in the embedded space. While he works on MeeGo for
Novell as his day job, “they don’t even realize I’m here giving
this talk”. He also noted that he is only looking at the Android
kernel, as the user space is “weird” and won’t be part of his
talk.”

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