“It has always been said to be based on GNU/Linux and to be an open source project.”

That isn’t actually true. Android is based on Linux, but not GNU/Linux. There is no FSF/GNU code in Android.

The G1 actually ships with a running debug daemon. Awesome.

There you go, a standard commercially available phone that runs all Linux applications, including Android ones…

Even if Google were working against running non-Java applications on Android phones, they would fail. Android is open source, so anyone can take the code and compile it for a platform that allows you to run your own applications. You could even run Dalvik on your PC if you feel like it – the Cairo backend for Skia means that any Skia application could run on a standard Linux desktop. As far as phones go, you certainly don’t need a G1 – the Neo Freerunner already runs full Linux applications, and Android is being ported to it (see http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Android ) – current estimates are that porting will be done in November. As you can see from the status (see http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pzDEXnU19gkeTjpD28t-7fw ) most of the patching is already done.

“my point was, that Linux still doesn’t take a point-and-click approach to third-party software. It still has a fragmented world view about how to handle that.” – most distributions do package up massive amounts of third party software, many thousands of applications in fact. How many applications do Apple or Microsoft package and provide through a unified installation system? Only the iPhone approaches what the Linux distributions already have, and Android has its own equivalent application repository – the only difference is that the Android store only includes Java applications approved by Google, whereas the iPhone store only includes Objective-C applications approved by Apple.