You're not mistaken about the commits, but you're mistaken about what it means. That command will clone the 2.3 branch, aka Gingerbread. Honeycomb has been shipping on devices for months now, and Ice Cream is the current development branch.
Even if you want to claim that I shouldn't be able to see the current work in progress in an "open" project, which is debatable, I should at least be able to get the code for the currently released version, which would be Honeycomb.
I can't get access to those unless I'm in Google's Super Best Friends club.
GPL issues notwithstanding, Google is completely within their rights to keep their code away from me. However, it makes their trite definitions of "open" look pretty hollow.
I am quite sure all the GPL parts of Gingerbread are available. I am also sure Google is not withholding parts of Gingerbread for no reason. I have no knowledge about their reasons to do so, but, considering many if not all 3.x tablets run on Nvidia chips, I'd bet this has some relationship to Nvidia's historic reluctance in supporting open-source. I am also quite sure Google is working on that as it's not in their best interest to alienate the open-source developer community.
So you agree then, that Honeycomb is not available, and that google is withholding it for "some reason" (although you just have to look at their own statements, they're withholding it because they don't want OEMs putting it on phones).
"Android 3.0, Honeycomb, was designed from the ground up for devices with larger screen sizes and improves on Android favorites such as widgets, multi-tasking, browsing, notifications and customization," Google said in an email to PCMag.com. "While we're excited to offer these new features to Android tablets, we have more work to do before we can deliver them to other device types including phones. Until then, we've decided not to release Honeycomb to open source. We're committed to providing Android as an open platform across many device types and will publish the source as soon as it's ready."
Meaning it's not ready. (emphasis mine)
I have to agree that, right now, Android has a closed branch (two - HC and whetever's not released) but claiming it's closed-source because it has one branch closed is not quite honest - like claiming MySQL is not open-source because they sell proprietary addons. My phone runs the open-source 2.3.4 version that was assembled by developers who don't work for Google.
Even if you want to claim that I shouldn't be able to see the current work in progress in an "open" project, which is debatable, I should at least be able to get the code for the currently released version, which would be Honeycomb.
I can't get access to those unless I'm in Google's Super Best Friends club.
GPL issues notwithstanding, Google is completely within their rights to keep their code away from me. However, it makes their trite definitions of "open" look pretty hollow.