Android and Linux Discuss Code Reunion Tweet

The guardians of the Linux Kernel Archive, repository for the source code for the Linux open source operating system, turned the code for Google's Android phone out the door last year. The guardians felt they were getting too little cooperation from Google and too few patches from its engineers.

However, at the Linux Collaboration Summit, taking place today and tomorrow in San Francisco, Google has apparently broached the topic of bringing it all back home.

Both Jim Zemlin, Executive Director of the Linux Foundation, and Chris DiBona, open source and public sector engineering manager for Google, reportedly believe it will be done. DiBona, however, told a reporter that he believed the restoration would be a "multi-year process."

DiBona even told ZDNet's Paula Rooney that Google was hiring two engineers just to work on the kernel.

He dismissed worries over forking and fragmentation, "noting that smart phone operating system code is not all appropriate for the operating system kernel." In fact, that seems to lie at the kernel of the fuss over the kernel, the fact that Google, he says, is shipping millions of Androids per day. The exigencies of the profit-driven corporation and the clean code values of the guardians don't seem like they will ever fit together seamlessly.

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