FWIW, those numbers are based on "the number of unique contributors (users who pushed code, opened or commented on an issue or PR)" to a project in those orgs. So not really a measure of those companies' contributions to open source (it counts any action from any user, not just someone from those orgs), but companies also have more than one org (you can see the problem with all the articles covering this from the fact that both angular and google are in the top ten list...).

> That's debatable. According to GitHub, Microsoft is the biggest contributor to open source projects.

Sorry but this is so wrong, Google does not host any of its biggest project on github: Chromium and Android. There were articles written about this.

Yet android is distributed in a way leaves users with even less control than Windows.

So, is it possible to create your own forked open source Windows like CyanogenMod and tons of others in Android ecosystem?

You're proving the grandparent's point. Android's "openness" matters only if you want to build your own OS based on Android or you're a system integrator. For users buying Android devices, it's more often than not just as closed platform as any other alternative.

what kind of extra openness you expect from android?

For example:

- A way for users to prohibit internet access per application

- no forced installation of the whole Google Play Services, just to get access to the Play Store

- better root management, so that manufacturers can ship access to root to all users

- less politics in the Play Store. Google has for example thrown out 3rd party YouTube apps that offered background playback, because those supposedly violated YouTube ToS with that, shortly before introducing a paid option for background playback in their own YouTube app.

> A way for users to prohibit internet access per application

For background data: https://ting.com/blog/ting-tip-for-android-control-which-app...

> - better root management, so that manufacturers can ship access to root to all users

Are you sure it is Android problem and not manufacturers decision, because they are afraid to be flooded with warranty issues from broken rooted phones?

> ess politics in the Play Store. Google has for example thrown out 3rd party YouTube apps that offered background playback, because those supposedly violated YouTube ToS with that, shortly before introducing a paid option for background playback in their own YouTube app.

So, these apps are illegal from law standpoint, and make damage to Google. How is this politics?

> Are you sure it is Android problem and not manufacturers decision, because they are afraid to be flooded with warranty issues from broken rooted phones?

I'm dead certain that some manufacturers would still not ship root, but I'm also dead certain that more would do than do right now, if it was officially supported.

> So, these apps are illegal from law standpoint, and make damage to Google.

They're not illegal. It was never trialled whether they're illegal. Google did not sue these app developers and did not have a judge confirm that they actually violate the YouTube ToS. They just threw them out of the Play Store, with the accusation pretty much just for PR reasons.

And I'm sure that they would not have won an actual lawsuit. The point in the YouTube ToS that they accused with, basically said that you're not allowed to separate the audio from the visuals of a YouTube video. Supposedly this was in there, to have something against people pirating music through YouTube.

If this were to suddenly be interpreted as it not being legal to have any way of just listening to YouTube videos without seeing it, then tabbed browsers would be illegal, any sort of multi-tasking-capable operating system would be illegal, it could technically even be illegal for users to not adamantly stare at their screen as soon as they click on a YouTube video.

No judge would push this through and no judge would rule someone guilty for not knowing that all these seemingly accepted uses were apparently different to offering background playback in an Android app.

That Google seems to not think much of their own rules would not have helped the case either.

Android, as is offered to most of the customers, is basically a completely closed platform that just happens to allow you to side-load APKs. It's basically Windows.

For starters - have you tried to use Android without Google Play Services or its reverse engineered open reimplementation, microG? Android with F-Droid is like a completely different runtime platform than Android with Google Play. It might be a nice platform, but it's different - you can't just switch without extreme changes to your habits and apps you use, even if you don't mind installing closed apps. If you say "Android is open", you really mean something completely different than most of Android users think about when hearing "Android". When they hear or say "Android", they think "Google Play's Android".

would you call anyone capable of creating, or even installing something like CyanogenMod a user?

Most of Microsoft contributions to open source are "how to make X work on windows or Azure" kind of projects such as linuxkit, node etc. There are a few exceptions though and it's getting better (yay) with really cool projects such as VS code and now many more.

And that is different than any corporate open source project how, exactly?

Did you know that GitHub doesn't equal the definer of open source, in fact in many ways they are the opposite, and that GitLab and many other projects operate outside the confinements of a commercial solution?

Let me know when they open source their spyware OS and then we'll talk. Until then you are just continuing to campaign for exploiting educational tools by locking them down so that students can't understand why they are getting forced upgrades, always getting viruses, and having their shopping and browsing information sent to Microsoft Moscow or Mossad.

Entirely too much FUD in your comment.