Then why did they release it to manufacturers like Motorola?
Edit: To clarify, I think being open means that you either release to everyone or to no one. So arguing that it isn't ready became irrelevant once the xoom shipped.
I think that this hits the nail on the head. If the code is ready to be used by consumers, it should be ready for developers to inspect it.
Imagine if a writer said "I'm ready to publish my book, but I'm not willing to release the manuscript to editors". This isn't a perfect analogy since I'm sure Google do massive amounts of in-house QA, but it seems like the more feedback you're getting on the code, the easier it will be to whip it into shape. Saying you don't want to release the source because it's not ready or not mature is almost nonsensical.
Actually, it seems like the reverse, "I'm ready for editors to take a look at my book, but not ready to publish everything."
I get what people are complaining about, and I'm not terribly happy about it either, but it's not like I push every commit to github as soon as I've got it running on my server; frequently there is cleanup to be done first.
If you want to make a credible claim to being open source, you have to realize that the code is your product. To say that the code is too bad to be seen and then turn around to say that the product is wonderful and everyone should buy an Android tablet is, while not evil, disappointingly low-class.
(Did I really expect otherwise? No, I'm not naive. Google's products are open source to the extent that it suits them, and no further.)
It feels to me like a lot of people who are complaining so bitterly about this just lack the relevant experience in corporate politics to understand what's going on here. I am not saying this to be inflammatory; please read on and I'll try to explain.
They released it to Mot because the reality of their situation is that Motorola is a very valuable customer who therefore gets special treatment. You can bet that they made commitments to Motorola so that Mot could get their product out on time, and if they don't follow through on those commitments, Mot might decide to go with Win Phone 7 in the future. That is the reality of being a vendor who caters to very powerful customers.
I work in the semiconductor industry, and most of the customers for the chips that I design are far larger companies than the one I work for (note: I'm not claiming that Mot is far larger than Google, only that the relationship dynamics are similar). As a result, those customers get extra special treatment. They get parts before they're released, they get more help from applications engineers, and they get a lot of attention from marketing to be sure that we are meeting their needs and keeping their products on track.
In our case, and in Google's, there are some very important reasons to forge such a relationship. One, you are sure that your product will gain traction in the market quickly, because you've lined up a big customer as an early adopter. Two, part of the deal with giving them pre-release versions is that they end up helping you find bugs in your product. In the case of the Xoom, it's apparent that some bugs have gotten into the initial release versions, but it's almost certain that there's been a lot of bug-finding already on the part of the Xoom team.
If you could get one of the Android devs to be completely honest with you, my bet is that they'd tell you that Honeycomb isn't ready at all, and that they were basically forced to release what they have to Mot despite its condition. I'd also bet a lot of money that the whole team is pretty unhappy with the situation, and they're not going to allow it to spread further by releasing a buggy software package to the world at large. When it's truly ready for release, it'll be available.
> So arguing that it isn't ready became irrelevant once the xoom shipped.
The heart of the matter: "when it ships" and "whether it's ready" become disjoint in a customer relationship like this one. "Is it ready?" is a question about the quality of the code. "When will it ship?" is a question for your manager. Them's the breaks in a situation like this.
Edit: To clarify, I think being open means that you either release to everyone or to no one. So arguing that it isn't ready became irrelevant once the xoom shipped.