honestly... that's not the type of 'open' we, as consumers are looking for.
that IS the thing that leads to fragmentation: i.e. because its as easy as that: ANYONE can get the code and make THERE OWN build. making it impossible to keep up to date.
while Andy's definition of Android's openness may be 'open source',
google's definition is about CUSTOMER FREEDOM, be it app developers, carriers, and most importantly, US. so lets hope that they succeed with 3.0, in making it like windows, with just ONE OFFICIAL 'retail' version of the OS.
by all means, keep the 'Android operating system' open source.
but make the 'Android smartphone platform' more like PC windows.
plz.
in a perfect world, you would have the ONE version of 'retail android' that came installed on every retail 'android phone' and then, if you felt inclined, you could easily install any other distro of android you wanted, just like you do with linux. and carriers would NOT feel tempted to ship with their own distro of android, because the 'retail' version would give them the freedom they wanted (through custom 'widgets' 'skins' 'drivers' ect)
you know... basically EXACTLY THE SAME AS THE PC WORLD WORKS.
is it really that hard? they've only been doing it for 30 years...
oh yeah, and obviously Jobs is a moron, trying to tell people that they can only have HIS closed system, or horrible fragmentation... he even MENTIONS windows, how they do it right... he should be quaking in his boots knowing its only a matter of time until they get android right. then it will be just like PC vs MAC: i.e. iphone with like 5% market share...