Why don't ACER work with us?

[Guest willyaranda]

(Disclaimer: I collaborate with Mozilla, I'm part of the Spanish (spoken) community and I translate Firefox to Spanish, so I have some ideas about this)

Acer is a business, and we are a community here.

Acer is creating ROMs for our Liquids, from Android 1.6 to 2.1 and, now, it seems 2.2.

We have awesome cookers, like Xian, the LCR team and some kernel hackers like Phhusson.

I believe that in an open world like this, it is not useful, but necessary to work together. In our case, Acer could do more with the community. Both will benefit from this: they will have nice ROMs to put on their phones (Liquid, LiquidE, Stream…), and we will have better ROMs for our existing phones.

Why do I say that? I'm seeing leaks. And I usually don't like leaks. Acer could provide us weekly builds for example, and we could give input based on these leaks. An open repository with work both from Acer and the community will help both of us.

Just my 0.02€

ideas?

[Guest thedicemaster]

the issue here i think is that companies like acer are afraid.

if they put an in-development rom available to users they might get a bad name for putting out broken software.

and even if they make it available for developer communities only, there's a risk that other companies run of with their technology(tweaks, custom interfaces, hardware handling, etc.)

[Guest Auxx]

the issue here i think is that companies like acer are afraid.

if they put an in-development rom available to users they might get a bad name for putting out broken software.

and even if they make it available for developer communities only, there's a risk that other companies run of with their technology(tweaks, custom interfaces, hardware handling, etc.)

ROMs are divided into two parts: open source Android stuff and proprietary bits. For example, Google Market and other Google Experience apps are proprietary. Google does not share proprietary stuff with us and prevent us from "pirating" it. Remember Cyanogen VS Google issue.

So Acer can freely put ROMs without proprietary bits like Nemo Player and Acer Settings, just bare OS. Even without Google Experience apps. Just like HTC does with Google Dev phones. And then if you want to have proprietary bits, you just overlay them from your device - this is legal and does not spoil anything, cause these bits from phone are: already yours; already well-known.

That will help testing core OS, that will make us happy, that will make Acer's progress faster, that will make Acer secure. And one important thing - being that open will make Acer more attractive to users and potential buyers. I think devs (we have many great devs in community! Do I really need to list everyone?) can form a team with access to Acer's Android sources, help extract proprietary bits into separate project (like HTC) and work on Liquid ROM in open source way. I think that if Acer wants to cooperate then we are open for a dialog and together we can find the best way to speed up development, free our devices from hacks (I prefer clean ROMs) and secure Acer's IP.

Acer was surprised by Liquid's selling numbers and I think creating an open source community around Acer devices will boost them by a magnitude if done properly. If anyone with some power from Acer reading this - guys, I think we should talk on that. Create a thread here, let's elect devs we trust to (I vote for Phhusion, Vache, Malez and Paul - random order here) and find a solution to make ROMs open and a bit more independent. This way Acer will get some free time to improve and innovate their proprietary bits and we will get a steady stream of updates.

P.S. Sorry for my awful Engrish...

Edited September 7, 2010 by Auxx

[Guest Master_T]

The point is companies want control over their products' life cycle. If they opened the source completely we would probably see a gingerbread release and more, which means less people will buy the liquid successor or wathever comes out.

[Guest lgcmn]

Acer could provide us weekly builds for example, and we could give input based on these leaks

i think they are already doing this since 0.004.01 leak..open ur eyes, i give 100% that it is Acer who made this "leaks" possible..

[Guest skitbra8934]

"officially" they dont.

mainly is that because there are one nation in this world where ppl are sue-happy and sue anyone and everyone for anything in the world.

hence why companies dont open up and let ppl work with them unless its with huge 400pages of legalese to sign first.

[Guest HustlinDaily]

i think they are already doing this since 0.004.01 leak..open ur eyes, i give 100% that it is Acer who made this "leaks" possible..

Agreed. Pretty sure they are reading these forums and taking into account all bugs reported from these leaks.

[Guest jayziac]

If that's the case then we should have a thread that consolidates all the problems we find to make their jobs easier and we get the fixes faster.

[Guest Auxx]

The point is companies want control over their products' life cycle. If they opened the source completely we would probably see a gingerbread release and more, which means less people will buy the liquid successor or wathever comes out.

OS updates do not affect product life-cycle in that way. You will not buy Acer Liquid 2.3 next year just because it will have Gingerbread. And nobody will. New devices will be bought because of hardware features and proprietary software additions like you see in Stream. Updating OS is very important for existing users, otherwise they will migrate to other manufacturers. Just like owners of Samsung Spica - they will never buy Android device from Samsung again. Sitting with 1.5 in 2.2 days is just embaracing let alone dozens of bugs which will never be fixed. Samsung just F-ed their customers.

I think it will be better for Acer to focus on small amount of devices with more or less compatible hardware inside. That will make both hardware and software life predictable. Just like Apple did - they have only two devices at any time (current iPhone and current iPod Touch, ok, now they also have iPad), yet they still provide updated for old devices. This strategy may help Acer to produce high quality OS updates without wasting lots of time to support thousands of different devices.

I would like to recommend Acer to consider proper software support for their Android range. This is the biggest problem with Android devices - you never know when your device will be outdated. Xperia devices are shipping with 1.6 in 2.2 days - that's insane! And I don't think Xperia owners will see much of updates. That makes us, users, very unhappy. We start to search for reliable manufacturer and... Well... We only have a choise of Nexus One and iPhone today - these will be properly supported through life-time.

So it is in Acer's best interest to prove to the world that they are the only reliable guys on Android scene (Nexus is a kind of hackers-only device, you can't easily go and buy it today and no more devices from Google in near future) today and next morning too. I will buy Acer again if I will be confident that it will be up to date. And then I will buy again. Just like people buy iPhones. They know that Apple will not abandon them just because they don't have money for new hardware this month. This makes users secure, they start to trust.

So I see Acer's business model this way. They don't make thousands of devices every week like everyone does. Instead they make product lines, for example four of them: low-end, mid-end, high-end, tablet. These will cover most of users needs. They update product line every one or two years. Lines differ in both hardware and software (for example, low-end will be almost stock Android, mid-end will have office suite bundled and so on). The base OS is the same with the same UI, it is regurarly updated. Proprietary stuff and bundles are packed as a separate software library and updated separately. Acer have a lot of free time to properly support software side of things and regurarly update hardware for those who needs it. People see Acer as a reliable Android driver in this crazy world, buy tons of Acer stuff, Acer guys are rich, users are happy.

Khm... Why do I write it here?..

[Guest Quipeace]

OS updates do not affect product life-cycle in that way. You will not buy Acer Liquid 2.3 next year just because it will have Gingerbread. And nobody will. New devices will be bought because of hardware features ers *cut*

Khm... Why do I write it here?..

I could have tried, but I couldn't have said it better :P.