That gives me source for old, outdated versions of Android, not what I'm looking for. You can get the source for old idTech as well, does that make idTech open source?
> Can't, only Google employees have access to the current version of Android.
Wrong. Google employees have access to source of binaries you don't have access to. If you happen to have the binaries of an unreleased version of Android, you are entitled to the source. At least, all of the parts that are under GPL licenses. Google may or may not release sources for other versions.
> But there is a process for getting commit privileges that doesn't involve job interviews.
Being able to contribute to the upstream is not what defines free software. Being able to fork released software and work on it is. Android passes this test. Also, accepting patches from third parties could open Android to all sorts of litigation. What if a former Microsoft employee contributes leap year handling code from their products? The fact Android phones will crash on every February 29th will be the least of Google's problems.
> That gives me source for old, outdated versions of Android
No. It gives you access to the sources of the Android versions publicly available. Being open source doesn't mean you get access to pre-release versions or to every single commit to the codebase. It means you can have the source code for the binary you have.
Can't, only Google employees have access to the current version of Android.
> You don't have commit privileges on the Linux kernel, Apache Tomcat or the GCC compilers and they are all free software.
But there is a process for getting commit privileges that doesn't involve job interviews.
> Oh... As for the source, http://bit.ly/UhVbyk
That gives me source for old, outdated versions of Android, not what I'm looking for. You can get the source for old idTech as well, does that make idTech open source?