Google (NSDQ: GOOG) and Symbian don’t think much of the other’s claim to openness. Symbian Foundation director Lee Williams said that: “Android is not open…It’s a marketing label. It’s controlled by Google…It’s a pretty label but I don’t think the use of Linux is synonymous with open and they may have made that mistake of assuming it is.” He thinks that an open platform requires a community to direct it. “If you were to ask me [the Symbian Foundation] roadmap for the next two years I’m going to tell you I don’t know - I can tell you… what the plans are but other than that it’s up to the community to take it where it wants to go,” reports Silicon.com.

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Android co-founder and Google’s VP of mobile, Rich Miner, naturally has a different take on openness: “If you’re talking about a platform and the source code isn’t completely available for that platform, I would say it’s misleading to call that platform open because that platform can’t be adapted, changed and shaped by the people who are consuming that platform—the handset OEMs or the carriers. I’d say that if you need to join some sort of a club in order to get access to the source code, so membership in some consortium or some other group—then it really truly isn’t open.”

Meanwhile, VentureBeat has a post up warning that the danger of being open is having bad applications available through an app store. The example case is the $200 I Am Richer, a similar app to the $999 I Am Rich iPhone app: They both merely display an image of a gem on the handset screen. I don’t think this is going to be a big problem (not just because anyone who buys an application where the blurb begins “Prove your wealth to others by running this app” deserve what they get), because Android has a 24 hour return policy so there’s a lot less danger of getting ripped off.