[ Thanks to Bill Greenwood
for this link. ]
“That means Google allows anyone to look at and modify
most of Android’s source code. Ideally, this would mean that if a
developer felt Android needed a specific feature or capability, he
or she could build it and incorporate it into the OS. The software
would constantly evolve.“Initially, the Android platform didn’t support many of the
features of other smartphone operating systems. For example,
Android offered no Microsoft Exchange support upon release. Many
companies use Microsoft Exchange as a platform for e-mail and
scheduling applications. But because of the open source nature of
Android and Google’s support for third-party developers, it didn’t
take long before a company offered an application that would sync
Exchange functions with the phone. The Android platform may have to
play catch up with the other operating systems on the market, but
it may have the ability to go even farther.”