That means that Rubin, who rose to fame in the tech industry for co-founding Android, essentially wants to apply the same open-source philosophy that made Android the most dominant mobile operating system to the smart home.
Given how disparate the smart home landscape is right now, with myriad interoperability standards and wireless platforms trying to marry various devices together, Essential’s Ambient OS does have a massive opportunity here. However, the decision could also mean that the platform ends up as fragmented and splintered as Android is at the moment, leading some consumers to miss out on vital upgrades and advances.
Rubin did agree that Android’s upgrade rate was much lower, but said that his new venture’s Ambient OS had “a solution for that.” He stopped short of describing what that solution was, however, noting only that it was “more of a managed service on the back-end.” How exactly Ambient OS will stay open source while also keeping users up to date remains to be seen.
