Android guru calms source code delay fears

Google's delay in publishing the source code to Android 3.0 'Honeycomb' beyond a handful of large companies is temporary and does not represent a sudden change in its openness, project guru Andy Rubin has said.

"As I write this the Android team is still hard at work to bring all the new Honeycomb features to phones," Rubin writes in a new blog designed to clarify the company's recent source code release delay which alarmed some developers.

"As soon as this work is completed, we'll publish the code," Rubin promises. "This temporary delay does not represent a change in strategy. We remain firmly committed to providing Android as an open source platform across many device types."

The delay was nothing more than as originally stated, a desire not to let Android fragment under the weight of the huge interest shown in it by device vendors and developers, he said.

He reiterated that Google also had no plans to "standardise the platform" on a single chip or chipset.

Rubin even titled his blog "I think I'm having my Gene Amdahl moment," a reference to the latter's famous coining of the term 'fear, uncertainty and doubt' at the time of his fractious departure from IBM to found his own company.

Now a Google VP of engineering, Rubin was one of the founders of Android Inc, taken over by Google in 2005, which is where the extraordinary rise of the OS began. As a project guru, his words will probably soothe the anxieties of only some of the company's critics.