[HN Gopher] Google will develop Android OS behind closed doors s...
___________________________________________________________________
Google will develop Android OS behind closed doors starting next
week
Author : josephcsible
Score : 211 points
Date : 2025-03-26 18:01 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (9to5google.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (9to5google.com)
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| It will remain open source
|
| > This does not mean that Google is making Android a closed-
| source platform, but rather that the open-source aspect will only
| be released when a new branch is released to AOSP with those
| changes, including when new full versions or maintenance releases
| are finished.
| ironman1478 wrote:
| This headline really is misleading. The source will still be
| released, it just means that the work leading up to a release
| will be in private. IMO, there's nothing wrong with that, since
| it's likely that a lot of the intermediate com mediates are
| likely just noise.
| mberlove wrote:
| I think the determinant will be how transparently this process
| is maintained.
| nthingtohide wrote:
| First they came....(Explains the strategy)
| bsimpson wrote:
| If I understand correctly, it sounds a bit like Valve and
| SteamOS. They publish the source, but they optimize for their
| internal developers and tools, not for easy source access by
| anonymous members of the public. Valve has been publishing its
| source as tarballs, not git commits (hence, projects like
| Jovian and Evlav reconstructing it in GitHub).
| npodbielski wrote:
| Which is bad since all the forks will be behind at least few
| weeks, months maybe.
|
| And think about all the merge conflicts you have to resolve
| after 3 months of code changes.
| rs186 wrote:
| "likely just noise"
|
| It's always noise to people that don't care, but matters to
| people who rely on AOSP, including third-party ROM developers.
| jeffbee wrote:
| You are saying that non-Google parties are reliant on AOSP
| being developed in the open on a public Gerrit instance? In
| what way?
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| I don't understand the difference between what is described in
| the article and how Android has been developed from the start.
| They have always developed new versions internally and then
| dumped into AOSP right before release.
| https://groups.google.com/g/android-building/c/T4XZJCZnqF8/m...
| ASinclair wrote:
| Some projects developed directly in AOSP. Those projects will
| now develop on the internal branch like the rest. So it's not
| as big of a change as some are making it out to be.
| ASinclair wrote:
| Additionally, that's already the case for much of the Android
| projects. The remaining projects that developed directly in
| AOSP will develop on the internal branch like the rest.
| nukem222 wrote:
| They don't publish the really interesting sources anyway, this
| doesn't really change anything.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| >This does not mean that Google is making Android a closed-source
| platform, but rather that the open-source aspect will only be
| released when a new branch is released to AOSP with those
| changes, including when new full versions or maintenance releases
| are finished.
|
| I'll believe it when I see it. These days, words are basically
| meaningless from these large tech companies. Actions are what
| matter.
|
| at the very least, I'm not convinced this internal branch and
| AOSP will be close to feature parity if they do throw some stuff
| out.
| merb wrote:
| The good thing is that at least the kernel and the VM/runtime
| need to be open source
| danieldk wrote:
| _the VM /runtime need to be open source_
|
| Isn't ART Apache 2-licensed? They don't have to provide the
| source. I don't see why they would completely close it
| though. It would lead to forks, plus they have a lot of
| control through Google Play Services etc. already.
| fweimer wrote:
| Parts are GPLv2 with Classpath exception:
|
| https://cs.android.com/android/platform/superproject/main/+
| /...
| schmorptron wrote:
| Until they swap out linux for fuschia!
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| ....any day now...
| rchaud wrote:
| No OEM is interested in AOSP builds, because no one is going to
| buy an Android phone without Google Play Services, which is
| required for many popular apps to work (banking, games). There
| were some Chinese OEMs that ran an Android build and have
| unofficial ways to get Play Store working (Boox eReaders for
| example), but those are increasingly rare now, as years of
| sanctions has led to Huawei de-Googling itself fast, with
| others following.
| rozab wrote:
| Kindle Fire? Your smart TV? Your car infotainment? Android is
| everywhere even without Google
| rchaud wrote:
| Android TV is not AOSP, it is an Android variant actively
| developed by Google and requires Google Play Services.
|
| Kindle Fire is based on AOSP, that was my mistake. I will
| say Amazon is a rare OEM in this regard; they're tablet-
| only, and happy with AOSP because they have their own app
| store that don't need Play Services integration.
| EgregiousCube wrote:
| They are shutting their app store down, at least for non-
| first-party devices:
| https://www.androidpolice.com/amazon-android-app-store-
| shut-...
| cyberax wrote:
| Your point is actually a good one because Amazon has
| abandoned its app store infrastructure. And it likely
| will just integrate Play Services in future.
| mfuzzey wrote:
| In the tablet / phone world where end users expect to
| install applications from the playstore yes but there are
| many other device types that do use AOSP.
|
| For instance some parking meters / train ticketing
| machines / payment terminals run Android. source: I work
| for company that makes some of them though we are moving
| away from Android to more classical embedded Linux.
|
| Google play services doesn't matter in these contexts.
| rchaud wrote:
| Interesting? So Android replaced Windows CE in some
| cases?
| bsimpson wrote:
| The Horizon OS for Oculus headsets too.
| bfrog wrote:
| All of the chinese and indian phones?
| echelon wrote:
| > Google Play Services, which is required for many popular
| apps to work
|
| And here's where we need to apply antitrust pressure.
| npodbielski wrote:
| So one of the giants will build their version of microg and
| it will be like with wine, proton and steam os.
| g-b-r wrote:
| Except that attestation (Play Integrity) exists, and its
| usage by the apps on the Play Store seems to be increasing
| exponentially (if I'm not mistaken it only takes enabling a
| switch now to have it in your app).
| IshKebab wrote:
| Hmm while this could be sold as just to prevent leaks (which
| occasionally happen), I think this is more likely a first step to
| closing the source, in light of the EU messing up their open
| source monetisation strategy.
|
| Well, more like the 5th step really. They already moved a ton of
| functionality into Google Play Services, and discontinued a load
| of the open source stock apps like Calendar.
| hypercube33 wrote:
| Google kinda irked me when they purchased Motorola - I was
| hopeful we'd get nice hardware with the android team focused on
| making android better but they instead gutted the company and
| sold it off and android has been more solid on non Google
| devices from what I can tell. From pixels not having an
| operating system shipping to people to pixels 4 and 7 having
| notable worse camera features (I should note I'm biased to how
| well the camera works since it's one of my three main uses of a
| smartphone) compared to say the Nexus 6 phones.
|
| I've wondered if android and pixel breaking off Google would be
| a good thing or not honestly since there is talk about cutting
| chrome off.
| mainecoder wrote:
| I hope they make it closed source and make us much money out of
| it as possible for shareholders that is their job and their duty,
| why are they giving this away for free they have already captured
| market share by claiming opensource and building a community now
| all they have to do is make it proprietary and the old opensource
| version slowly wither and become unstable, then they can charge
| money for the operating system just like mircrosoft but this time
| on phone millions and billions of phones, $$$$$. /S (I obviously
| do not agree with this)
| monetus wrote:
| It's a bit disturbing that that might be the plan though.
| danieldk wrote:
| But they can already do that, because most people and apps
| (outside China and maybe some other regions) expect Google
| Play/Play Services to be present.
| echelon wrote:
| They're under antitrust scrutiny. You have to boil the frog
| slowly.
| npodbielski wrote:
| What apps? I think only android auto requires it. All the
| rest works just fine with occasional glitches. Of course
| that most probably greatly depends of what kind of apps you
| are using but usually microG is just enough.
| maelito wrote:
| No, most "geo" applications depend on Google services and
| will crash without them. Local authority transit apps,
| etc.
| mschild wrote:
| I've been running GrapheneOS without any Google Services.
| Most things work without issue.
|
| In the past 2 years I've encountered a total of 3 apps
| that wouldn't run without Google.
| avgd wrote:
| Many banking apps will outright refuse to run on rooted
| devices, much less google-free forks. There are ways
| around that but those ways are unreliable and could break
| at any given time -- I am not risking losing the ability
| to pay for things online just for the sake of running an
| android fork. (in my country, all the banks switched to
| requiring 2FA from their app if you make online purchases
| with your visa or mastercard)
| johnfernow wrote:
| Right, but if Google's Android becomes closed source and
| a well-funded FOSS fork becomes available, that changes
| the situation. If Samsung, Xiaomi, Motorola, HONOR, OPPO,
| etc. all agree to use a new FOSS fork as their base, well
| Google's new closed-source Android becomes irrelevant.
| Samsung alone is large enough to be able to maintain a
| fork of Android, and a large enough percentage of the
| smartphone market that whatever OS it's running will be
| supported by banking apps.
| overfeed wrote:
| > Samsung alone is large enough to be able to maintain a
| fork of Android
|
| Samsung would rather not - they played this card once
| whole negotiating for Google to get rid of Motorola.
| Samsung tried to prop up Tizen as an Android alternative.
| Samsung since closed a number of its US OS offices - why
| sacrifice profits when they have a cozy arrangement:
| Samsung & other Android partners will continue to get the
| Android previews before anyone else: open source or not.
| avgd wrote:
| Samsung recently deprecated their built in SMS/texting
| app and put an advertisement to tell us to switch for
| Google Messages in their app. They threw in the towel and
| not only will not maintain an android fork, they don't
| even want to maintain their own apps anymore.
| Yoric wrote:
| FWIW, my banking app works very well on /e/OS, which is
| an AOSP derivative.
| catlikesshrimp wrote:
| No Email or TOTP? (No, I am not suggesting sms)
|
| In my country one bank had a 2fa app. Then they
| backtracked on security, but kept policy: they included
| the 2fa in the regular bank app. Now you don't have to
| use 2fa if you are using the bank app, because the bank
| app generates its own authorization, in the same device
| (app) without user interaction!
|
| Fake admiration off. We also don't have to use any 2fa
| when we access banking through the website. (works on FF
| on Android)
| avgd wrote:
| > No Email or TOTP? (No, I am not suggesting sms)
|
| Nope. And accessing the website/online banking portal is
| not allowed without going through the smartphone app 2fa
| too.
| chasil wrote:
| Amazon maintains their Fire devices with their Android
| fork.
|
| Huawei maintains their Android fork that runs without the
| Play store.
|
| Google will not be able to close Android/AOSP without
| triggering a well-funded fork.
| cavisne wrote:
| The Fire devices seem like they are on life support from
| a technical point of view (even if Amazon is making money
| from them). Their fork is really out of date.
| la_fayette wrote:
| Also Meta Horizon OS is based on AOSP. This will probably
| also affect their development.
| theodric wrote:
| Why would a second company freeloading kernel and
| services from Google change Google's OSdev roadmap?
| Google could just say to Meta 'fine, fork and maintain it
| yourself, you're a grown-up company' and continue on with
| whatever nefarious rug-pull closed source pivot to
| Fuschia gambit that they might be plotting.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Isn't the plan to move Android to Fuchsia eventually (and
| seamlessly)?
| sphars wrote:
| Hasn't this been the plan for like a decade now? I know
| some of their products run Fuchsia, like the Nest displays,
| but no word on main Android devices
| MishaalRahman wrote:
| If they did ever have such a plan, they've clearly long
| since abandoned it. I bet they entertained the idea at
| one point but it was never seriously put into action.
| MishaalRahman wrote:
| No
| ImJamal wrote:
| As far as I can tell, Google has never stated that as a
| goal. It had always been a hypothesis.
| gman83 wrote:
| The plan was initially to merge Android & Chrome and create
| "Andromeda" -
| https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/09/android-chrome-
| andro...
|
| Then they decided that Fuchsia was going to be the way
| forward -
| https://www.thurrott.com/mobile/android/117587/google-
| allege...
|
| Now the latest is that they're once again merging Android &
| Chrome - https://www.androidauthority.com/chrome-os-
| becoming-android-...
|
| But Fuchsia is still being actively developed, not sure to
| what end - https://fuchsia-
| review.googlesource.com/q/status:open+-is:wi...
| c0n5pir4cy wrote:
| As far as I remember, Fuchsia is used for all Googles
| smart devices now. So maybe just for them?
| nimbius wrote:
| if it really is, they should take note of exactly what
| happened to Oracle when they acquired solaris and mysql and
| turned them into proprietary applications.
|
| Whatever investment they had made in them literally
| evaporated in a week as mariadb and galera showed up.
| OpenIndiana basically made continued solaris development at
| Oracle a moot point, not that it wasnt already with Linux on
| the scene.
|
| RedHat has tried something similar with CentOS, Encumbering
| it to try and drive sales, which backfired just as
| predictably. Rocky is a treat to run.
|
| Rolling up Android into a proprietary walled garden would be
| a disaster. This isnt apple. What you could expect is a
| massive developer exodus from the open community to other
| friendlier projects. If your interest is western
| security/hegemony in technology then it would be a shame to
| see all that intellectual capital suddenly captured by a FOSS
| project from a marxist leninist country thats all too happy
| to give it away for free (DeepSeek anyone?)
| JustExAWS wrote:
| > _What you could expect is a massive developer exodus from
| the open community to other friendlier projects_
|
| You act as if anyone to a first approximation cares about
| indie developers. Most of the popular apps on Android and
| iOS are from the big corporations and pay to win games.
| They could care less about ideology.
| nvllsvm wrote:
| As much as I - a Pixel 7 (GrapheneOS) user - would hate that,
| doing so would essentially put Android on equal footing as iOS
| and would give me a serious reason to consider switching to an
| iPhone. Apple's hardware is just so much sleeker, faster, and
| better than Google's mediocre Pixel line.
| cbdumas wrote:
| Maybe I'm just a tech philistine but I find my Pixel 8a and
| my wife's iPhone <N> to be basically indistinguishable in any
| meaningful way.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| They are completely different. One of them lets you have
| the sexy blue text boxes in iPhone group chats, and the
| other makes everyone see you with the green box of shame.
| yurishimo wrote:
| Unless you live outside of the US in which nobody gives a
| damn and they all use WhatsApp. After moving, I only get
| sms messages from the doctors office and my friends back
| in America.
| omnimus wrote:
| Not true at all. This effect is pretty common in
| countries outside of US. It makes sense. WhatsApp is just
| another messaging app thats popular depending on a local
| whim. Where as iMessages get sent automatically between
| iOS users.
| beAbU wrote:
| What countries other than US is this so prevalent?
| jbarham wrote:
| According to https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-
| rankings/iphone-ma... iPhone also has > 50% market share
| in Canada, Norway, Sweden, Australia and Japan. FWIW I
| live in Australia and most group chats are via WhatsApp
| vs SMS/iMessage.
| NBJack wrote:
| Outside the US, and a handful of other countries, Android
| is far more dominant than iOS (75% vs 25%). [1]
|
| WhatsApp has an estimated active userbase of
| approximately 3 billion. [2] The number of iMessage users
| is estimated to be about 1 billion. [3]
|
| [1] https://explodingtopics.com/blog/iphone-android-
| users#iphone...
|
| [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1306022/whatsapp-
| global-...
|
| [3] https://usesignhouse.com/blog/imessage-
| stats/#:~:text=iMessa...
| 31337Logic wrote:
| Y'all bitches gotta get on Signal. ;-)
| dividedbyzero wrote:
| I hear even the US government trusts Signal
| dividedbyzero wrote:
| I'm sure there are dozens of people in Germany who
| actively prefer iMessage but I haven't met one yet.
| Whatsapp achieved pretty much total market capture here
| back when SMS still were costly and the network effects
| that arose from that are among the strongest I've ever
| seen. I'm pretty sure if someone was to do a survey,
| almost everyone would say Messages is for SMS only and I
| think most of them wouldn't know it can do more than
| that.
| oska wrote:
| > Unless you live outside of the US [...] and they all
| use WhatsApp
|
| This is such a ridiculously incorrect over-
| generalisation. China, Japan & Russia are obvious
| counter-examples, plus many others.
| homarp wrote:
| i don't think China uses SMS though.
| needlesslygrim wrote:
| In China WeChat is the dominant messaging platform, SMS
| is only used for delivery notifications, spam, etc.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| Neither of them causes anyone else to see _your_ messages
| as green. Or blue.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| The camera - the only reason I would buy an iPhone is for
| the better camera.
|
| Sure, the Pixel 8a camera is not bad for the price but it's
| still noticeably worse. The kind of difference you notice
| when someone with an iPhone shares photos with you.
|
| Apps and the whole phone experience are a sh*tshow on both
| sides and I hate both with a passion. I'm still waiting for
| a decent linux experience on a phone - possibly with stupid
| banking apps support.
| gman83 wrote:
| Whenever they do these blind tests for different phone
| cameras, the iPhone never wins.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRoTOE3FqT0
| izacus wrote:
| Pixels have been beating iPhones in camera quality for
| years now on pretty much every blind test. Even the cheap
| ones.
| Yeul wrote:
| I play videogames and I can tell the difference between 60
| and 120herz screen. Always amused me that a so called
| premium device had worse hardware than a flagship killer.
| Apple apparently finally caught up with their latest phone?
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| High refresh on its own is not enough to constitute a
| better screen. While Apple could certainly stand to bump
| the minimum refresh rate to 120hz across the board, I
| wouldn't want that to come at the expense of the other
| more important specs as has been common outside of the
| Apple sphere, particularly on budget devices. If one has
| to choose, a color accurate screen is preferable to a
| fast but less accurate one in most circumstances for
| instance.
| sho_hn wrote:
| Almost _anyone_ can tell the difference between 60 and
| 120 Hz.
|
| Seriously, if you haven't upgraded your desktop PC to a
| higher refresh rate screen yet: It's the biggest "feels
| like a new computer!" upgrade since we swapped HDDs for
| SSDs and the days when your new CPU was 2.5x as fast as
| the old one. There is no turning back after having
| experienced the buttery smoothness, and the impact is
| IMHO higher during regular usage than during games.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| I upgraded to 144 hz on my primary monitor in 2016 and
| it's absolutely noticeable and makes things feel so
| smooth.
|
| Last week I went to 240 hz and while it's noticeably even
| smoother, it wasn't nearly the upgrade, so there's
| certainly diminishing returns. Though I did go from IPS
| to OLED and THAT is really nice.
|
| This is usually the point where someone will chime in and
| say something dumb like "The human eye can't see more
| than X frames per second" which is just hogwash. It's not
| about individual frames, but the fluidity of motion. At
| 60 fps, an object moving across the screen is moving 4x
| as many pixels per frame as 240 fps. When you get used to
| 240 fps, 60 fps feels like it's strobing.
| sho_hn wrote:
| I recently bought a 240 Hz OLED monitor as well, but to
| my dismay the 80 Gbps data rate mode is actually optional
| in DisplayPort 2.1a. Even though I have a DP2.1-capable
| GPU (9070 XT) and monitor, it's not possible to do 4k
| 10bit HDR at 240 Hz with DSC off. Since I don't want
| compression to be on I've compromised to sticking with
| 180 Hz, which as you say due to the diminishing returns
| above 120 is still plenty.
|
| Still quite frustrating that the display industry did it
| again in specifying a standard that makes most of what's
| interesting about it optional, so everyone can print it
| on their boxes without delivering the expected value.
| overfeed wrote:
| Parity will only be achieved for me when the iPhone supports
| FDroid, and allows the replacement of default apps with apps
| of my choosing.
| baby_souffle wrote:
| I'm in a similar spot. There are a few pixel exclusive
| features that I would certainly miss but I spent a few
| decades not having a personal assistant robot screen my
| calls and texts, I can survive without it in the future.
|
| Tasker used to be in a class of its own but I believe
| shortcuts is now as powerful and it even has a user
| experience that isn't hostile! That might be a net
| benefit...
|
| I hate the iOS keyboard and method of text selection but I
| could adopt.
|
| I'll have to re buy some apps or find alternatives but
| that's not an impossible hill to climb.
|
| The biggest pain points are file management and
| notifications. Having spent a decade plus on a blackberry
| before going Android full-time, neither dominant platform
| is even close to good with respect to notifications but
| Android is far less crappy than iOS.
|
| File management is probably a deal breaker. Every time I
| have to download a file on my iPad and try to use it in
| another app or even just get it off the damn thing, I spend
| 5 minutes swearing before I just give up and attach the
| file to an email and then go to a PC to pull the file out
| of the draft folder...
| WorldPeas wrote:
| my chief grief with Apple is the same as yours, I solve
| it by using a home server w/ self hosted pwas to do
| everything this pocketable "computer" should be able to
| do. Sometimes I wonder about flying to the EU to
| reactivate my phone there if that's possible but knowing
| Apple there'll be some terrifying kafkaesque twist
| singpolyma3 wrote:
| And fixes their garbage autocorrect and notification UI
| singularity2001 wrote:
| Apple's hardware is just so much sleeker, faster, and better
| than Google's
|
| On the other hand I was recently testing a friends pixel
| phone and was shocked by the speed and integration of Gemini.
| reactordev wrote:
| It's important to compare apples to apples. Certain phone
| models have different CPU's etc. I'd love to see a
| benchmark of iPhone 16 Pro Max vs Pixel's top of the line
| model.
| parliament32 wrote:
| It's not going to be possible because Apple hasn't come
| out with an equivalent to Gemini. It would be like if
| Siri also had full LLM conversation capabilities, and
| access to all your documents/email/etc, and direct
| integration to run web searches, analyze web pages, etc.
| And it's fast enough to have a real-time conversation[1],
| as if you were speaking to a human on the phone. Oh, and
| that's on my Pixel 7, which is two years behind.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ks21fpjH9M
| scythe wrote:
| On the other hand, this would breathe new life into the world
| of open source cellphone software that isn't Android. It has
| existed in a limbo of free and corporate for over a decade and
| everyone gave up on alternatives like FirefoxOS.
| jokoon wrote:
| I mean nothing changes, it was already open source, and few
| people outside Google know how to dev things around android, it's
| now a very complex os
| soraminazuki wrote:
| This really reminds me of Open Solaris.
|
| > We will no longer distribute source code for the entirety of
| the Solaris operating system in real-time
|
| In the case of Open Solaris, the code never came out from that
| point onwards. For Android, the likely end goal is to do the bare
| minimum of distributing only copyleft code that they don't own
| copyright to. Until those get replaced with a closed alternative.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=2482s
| EGreg wrote:
| Can someone just fork it? Like MySQL was forked into MariaDB?
| fmajid wrote:
| Yes: https://illumos.org/
| rwmj wrote:
| But copyleft is bad and everyone should use BSD ...
|
| Code is turned proprietary by huge corporate with massive
| development resources. No one could have predicted this.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| "curse your sudden and inevitable betrayal"
| bogwog wrote:
| Stallman was right again.
| kome wrote:
| and yet, corporate drones will make fun of him, and they
| will keep missing the point...
| ddingus wrote:
| The dude is solid as it gets on all this.
|
| Yet people ignore him and then realize that was one of
| those too late types
| donmcronald wrote:
| Yep. An open source license doesn't mean anything if a project
| is dependent on a single company for ongoing development.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| The weird thing is, why is that the case?
|
| I'm trying to think of a mobile OS feature addition that has
| made me say "I need to upgrade my phone" and it just hasn't
| happened recently. It's more like, damn it, the dastardly
| thing stopped receiving security updates and now I have to
| replace it for no good reason.
|
| Isn't Android done yet? What further development is required
| that couldn't be done by the community?
| desdenova wrote:
| The point is it doesn't have a developer community that
| could maintain the project without Google.
| nubinetwork wrote:
| Only if they stop pushing code changes to AOSP...
| llarsson wrote:
| Help me understand what this means to e.g. GrapheneOS, please.
| Will it be able to exist and just have to wait longer for updates
| or will it be in real jeopardy?
| lunar_rover wrote:
| Potentially longer gaps between major updates, since they can
| no longer follow upstream closely.
|
| However, Google might have planned to slowly make Android
| proprietary, which means death to 3rd party forks.
| pas wrote:
| Most of those forks twiddle a lot of low-level knobs, and if
| Google does not want to support those then the forks will
| have a hard time anyway.
|
| The big problem is that aaaaaalll these forks are still just
| a tiny tiny tiny drop in the bug mobile phone OS bucket.
|
| If the forks want to be sustainable they need to cater to the
| market a bit. (Of course that's much harder said than done,
| but we see - for example with Nothing Tech - that there are
| new successful upstarts from time to time.)
| lenerdenator wrote:
| But at least Windows isn't the number one OS anymore.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Yeah, yet my 2009 laptop still gets updates.
| bsimpson wrote:
| Both The Verge and 9to5 are citing this as the original source:
|
| https://www.androidauthority.com/google-android-development-...
| MishaalRahman wrote:
| Thanks for linking it.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| Can we please just go back to having some sort of Debian-based
| GNU/Linux on a smartphone. Just create a really great mobile
| interface on top of that.
|
| The more I learn about Android, the more I think the whole thing
| is a waste of time.
| SllX wrote:
| You say "go back" but that was never more than a niche thing.
| For better or worse, Google's Android has pretty much always
| been the chief representative of mobile Linux. And far from
| being a waste of time, Android is the most widely distributed
| mobile operating system on the planet.
| owebmaster wrote:
| > You say "go back" but that was never more than a niche
| thing.
|
| but you could walk to a phone shop and buy a Linux phone, for
| example FirefoxOS.
| SllX wrote:
| Firefox OS lived a short and obscure life years after
| Android entered the market and certainly wasn't a GNU or
| Debian-like distribution of Linux.
| Phrodo_00 wrote:
| Yeah, and there was also Maemo/Meego that was also sold on
| stores. Neither had a very high market share.
| rmholt wrote:
| > just go back to having some sort of Debian-based GNU/Linux on
| a smartphone
|
| Two years of full time engineering man hours
|
| > Just create a really great mobile interface on top of that.
|
| Probably another 3 years of full time engineering man hours
| pjmlp wrote:
| It was never a thing since OpenMoko, with exception of Nokia's
| N9.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| There's still Sailfish OS... which is not open-source.
| kop316 wrote:
| Here you go: https://mobian-project.org/
|
| postmarketOS is based on Alpine Linux:
| https://postmarketos.org/
| tantalor wrote:
| Just do what Apple does, less likely to be sued by DOJ
| amlib wrote:
| And lots of people wants to yield full control of the web to
| google by letting then be the sole web browser engine...
| fblp wrote:
| Keeping android open source would be a helpful antitrust defence
| when some of Alphabet / Googles other products dominate markets
| (chrome, search). I wonder if they're now less worried about anti
| trust under the current administration.
| kccqzy wrote:
| Google has had a strategy of keeping some parts of Android open
| source for the benefit of the world, and other parts closed
| source inside Google Play Services. However European regulators
| continue to rule that Google Play Services itself is the
| leverage Google uses to lessen competition. If regulators have
| antitrust concerns with just one proprietary blob, there's
| really no incentive to make Android truly open. Opening up the
| rest of the Android literally doesn't help with antitrust.
| axegon_ wrote:
| I've seen that one before. Next thing you know licenses start
| changing, features locked out and completely removed and
| development slowly starts creeping towards full proprietary
| prison. Time to throw some money at Jolla and Sailfish OS and
| migrate I suppose.
| bfrog wrote:
| Android is going to go closed source. There's no benefit to
| Google when a Chinese company takes Android, guts the Google
| parts, and shoves it on a cheap ass phone for a market with a few
| billion people.
|
| Maybe longer still... I could see Google fully jettisoning the
| "other" phone makers and going all in on its own hardware to
| boost profits further. The iPhone is highly profitable, wouldn't
| you as a Google share holder want them to maximize the value
| there?
|
| Personally I gave up on Android years ago. It was never great,
| but the endless poor support of software updates (mostly stemming
| from Qualcomm blobs as I understand it) was enough to drive me
| away. Apple really does support iPhone's for a very long time,
| and their sole goal isn't to sell more eyeballs. Good enough
| reason for me.
| gopher_space wrote:
| > There's no benefit to Google when a Chinese company takes
| Android, guts the Google parts, and shoves it on a cheap ass
| phone for a market with a few billion people.
|
| There's nobody at Google who knows what to do with that kind of
| market leadership, so they're just folding up shop?
| nukem222 wrote:
| > There's no benefit to Google when a Chinese company takes
| Android, guts the Google parts, and shoves it on a cheap ass
| phone for a market with a few billion people.
|
| Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery! This might give
| them more credibility.
|
| Anyway, I think we're a half decade past where android source
| has been worth stealing: China now has strong domestic
| competition.
| zakki wrote:
| It will be interesting when the world move to HarmonyOS
| graymatters wrote:
| Well, I hope that if they do so, the FSF and all copyright
| holders of the Open Source software used to make Android Great
| In-the-First-Place will sue their a$$e$ off.
| zmmmmm wrote:
| Will they still push all the native commits once they release?
|
| I think it's OK if they do the dev internally, but if they just
| release source snapshots and we lose visibility of the dev
| process that occurred to get there, that will be a big loss.
| colordrops wrote:
| They are giving reasons that claim it will be better for everyone
| in the end, but this is obviously not true for devs of LineageOS
| and Graphene.
|
| Why is it OK for corporations to make self-interested sociopathic
| decisions that harm consumers then slap a post-hoc
| rationalization that is basically a lie to appease the public?
| It's so common that almost every corporation does it, and most
| people don't even take note.
| WorldPeas wrote:
| I bet they'll regret turning their back on grapheneOS
| https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114230671644378529
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