Another possibility is that this is as open as Android is ever going to be. The original Droid was a high-water mark for openness and standardization on Android. Subsequent phones have been progressively more customized and locked down.
Examples: AT&T banning sideloading, Motorola phones taking a more aggressive approach toward hacking, Verizon signing exclusive deals like Skype and moving toward a proprietary app store, Google deferring to carriers on tethering, Verizon's forcing Bing on users, etc.
"I can always hack it" isn't a solution, unless you'd accept that hacking is also a solution to Apple's App Store censorship. Android's fans are so focused on how evil Apple is that they're ignoring the way Android itself is becoming less open. I'm not entirely happy with Apple, but I'll take their curation over the carrier's vision of a new walled garden based on Android any day.
Another possibility is that this is as open as Android is ever going to be.
This is a great point. Many of us are imagining a hypothetical alternate world where Google forced all Android phones to be non-evil, but maybe that world can't exist. Maybe if Google was fascist about openness, the carriers would just ship Symbian and WinMo instead.
The original Droid was a high-water mark for openness and standardization on Android.
I would say the Nexus One is the high-water mark, although apparently many people never even knew that it existed due to the lack of marketing.
We can't do an all-out attack on the carriers since they will fortify their positions and we need the carriers to move data for us.
So we will take them by stealth and guerilla warfare, a little bit at a time, forcing them to be dumb bit-movers.
Google could move faster than they do right now. I think they already have the infrastructure and applications on Android to make a worldwide Skype alternative which is free. But the carriers would scream if Google does that. Hence, they slowly morph the Android system into their vision over time. A carrier can't complain on each of the small steps -- but take all the steps together and their power is dwindling.
"Open" is not a discrete thing. You can be "more open" than another handset or operating system. But "not being open" does not imply being "closed". The positive thing about Android is that we are seeing the most open devices ever. And this signals the slow but sure death of the carrier conglomerates.
Examples: AT&T banning sideloading, Motorola phones taking a more aggressive approach toward hacking, Verizon signing exclusive deals like Skype and moving toward a proprietary app store, Google deferring to carriers on tethering, Verizon's forcing Bing on users, etc.
"I can always hack it" isn't a solution, unless you'd accept that hacking is also a solution to Apple's App Store censorship. Android's fans are so focused on how evil Apple is that they're ignoring the way Android itself is becoming less open. I'm not entirely happy with Apple, but I'll take their curation over the carrier's vision of a new walled garden based on Android any day.