It's not open until they release something. Calling it 'apparently' open might apply if there was something open released, but maybe not updated frequently enough. Using 'supposedly' is probably a better use of terms here.
Not so much, but it was necessary to do something against uglifications from the device makers, since seams that google is not willing/able to produce its own canon android hardware (and get the bigger slice of the android devices market, to make it actually canon).