[HN Gopher] Google makes Android development private, will conti...
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Google makes Android development private, will continue open source
releases
Author : coloneltcb
Score : 94 points
Date : 2025-03-26 19:21 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| BeefySwain wrote:
| Android effectively stopped being "open source" when they added
| Google Play Services. Try running anything on stock AOSP now.
| Good luck!
| ewzimm wrote:
| You can have a very usable phone with https://f-droid.org/
|
| Obviously, you will be able to find plenty of examples of
| things that don't work, and you probably have a bank app or
| some other thing that you need Google for, but alternatives do
| exist, and I'd argue that you can have a healthier, more
| productive, and more enjoyable experience if you can have all
| your needs met by software that isn't treating you as a
| product.
|
| My opinion is you should use whatever works; I do. But try not
| to absolutely need software that you can't control.
| bitsandboots wrote:
| As you say, due to banking, this works more or less depending
| on which country you live in.
|
| Some countries have tied their banking to their phones, with
| apps that use SafetyNet to check how Googled you are.
|
| Somehow corporations and nations have given sovereignty away
| for convenience and so you may need 2 phones: the google one
| and the good one, to properly be f-droid only.
| tonyhart7 wrote:
| You acting like smartphone with google service is bad one
|
| You can hate google but android with google service is good
| for consumer, why you think consumer want a degoogled
| smartphone like HN user want????
| bitsandboots wrote:
| I agree with you that most consumers probably do want
| things that are bad for them. I would at least be
| cautious of services provided by one of the companies
| with the most anti-trust lawsuits this century, I really
| don't think they're your friend.
| tonyhart7 wrote:
| You are delude yourself with emotion, consumer want
| simple and useful enough
|
| nothing else matters, or are you voicing your opinion as
| entire consumer base???
| bsimpson wrote:
| Before Google Play Services, updates were a big concern for
| Android. If Android N had the feature you wanted, but
| Verizon/Motorola only shipped N-1 for your Droid, you were out
| of luck. There were pie charts routinely tossed around showing
| which devices had which Android version numbers. You don't hear
| those concerns nearly as often anymore.
|
| Makes me wonder what the tradeoffs/alternatives are. Maybe they
| could have still moved features to a Play Services-esque
| library but published the source for it. Considering we're
| commenting on a post about how developing in the open is too
| inconvenient for modern Google, the difference might have been
| moot.
| mrtksn wrote:
| So how fare we are from telling AI to make us a clone of iOS and
| include the good bits about Android, make no mistakes?
|
| If the stuff the AI companies are promising has any truth in
| them, Android and iOS or any software should become irrelevant
| soon.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| We are about as far from it as we were when we lived in caves
| and banged rocks together.
| mrtksn wrote:
| I'm not so sure about that anymore
| dmitrygr wrote:
| Tell your A"I" to generate you an SMP-capable scheduler,
| aware that each core cluster can be of a different perf and
| power consumption class. Not a vague explanation of one.
| Real code, please. Let me know how that goes for you. That
| is one of 1e9 problems that need to be solved to make a
| modern OS, not even one of the harder ones.
| hnlurker22 wrote:
| Google doesn't want AI to learn how to compete with them
| ImJamal wrote:
| The code will still be open source? How would AI be impacted?
| bayindirh wrote:
| So this is effectively the "Oracle Solaris" moment of Android,
| but without changing ownership?
|
| Nice. While Android was not open source for a long time, at least
| it's not openwashed anymore.
| dotancohen wrote:
| > While Android was not open source for a long time
|
| What do you mean by this? Maybe you couldn't get your
| contributions in, but you could fork Android any time.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Any important and useful part of Android is already moved to
| closed source components long time ago.
|
| Moreover, without closed source and kernel targeted drivers,
| it's not possible to even boot hardware with Android for an
| eternity now. None of the companies will give you even an
| object file which you can link against a more modern kernel
| (given the delta is not that big so ABI is not broken), yet
| alone the source code.
|
| As a result, Android is a big mountain of open code, without
| the crucial parts needed to make it work. AOSP is a shell of
| its former shell, and being emptied day by day.
|
| Now it's moving to a cathedral model from a bazaar one, and
| who knows when Google will release the source code of the
| "new version" of AOSP. They may even strip the tree to GPL
| parts since they _have to_ open these parts and conveniently
| forget to update the MIT parts on the open part.
|
| IOW, silently stop as Oracle did for the parts they can.
| Lammy wrote:
| It was closed-source for the entirety of Android 3.x
| "Honeycomb", the tablet-only Android version that introduced
| Holo on the Motorola XOOM etc. Source code for 3.x was
| retroactively made available when 4.0 resumed its open-
| sourceness:
|
| https://groups.google.com/g/android-building/c/T4XZJCZnqF8
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3235926
|
| > This release includes the full history of the Android
| source code tree, which naturally includes all the source
| code for the Honeycomb releases. However, since Honeycomb was
| a little incomplete, we want everyone to focus on Ice Cream
| Sandwich. So, we haven't created any tags that correspond to
| the Honeycomb releases (even though the changes are present
| in the history.)
| WalterSobchak wrote:
| Source: https://www.androidauthority.com/google-android-
| development-...
| bitsandboots wrote:
| Android has been bad-faith open source for as long as I can
| remember. Android is look-but-dont-touch source. Its massive
| codebase that requires immense resources to build is not open for
| negotiation, its existence is to serve Google's whims.
|
| Android was already a platform on life support. Google has
| wielded its authority to dictate how apps should behave such that
| even 3rd party stores do not stray far from Google's rules. Users
| of android phones have little hope to run a program from 5 years
| ago, or to roll back a bad update in an era full of bad updates.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Let's not expand the term _open source_ to automatically mean
| _community driven development_ or _free software_. Neither need
| apply for a project to be open source.
|
| > its existence is to serve Google's whims
|
| Ah, yeah... the existence of every major project is to satisfy
| the companies paying for the development. Linux has been over
| 80% corporate commits every year since 2003. Blender is funded
| by 35 corporations. Not one open source project larger than a
| library has gotten anywhere major without corporate
| sponsorship.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| > Linux has been over 80% corporate commits every year since
| 2003
|
| There's a big difference between all/most of the interest
| coming from a large company, compared to the numerous
| organizations that work together to make Linux what it is.
| bitsandboots wrote:
| I'd love to expand the term actually, because it's been
| misused to come to mean that something is community oriented,
| collaborative, even benevolent. Not even open source, but
| just the word "open". OpenAI for one. It's been abused for
| public image.
|
| You're example of Linux is a bad one. Its contributions are
| corporate, but they are collaborative. With Android, Google
| dictates and others follow. Linux is not this way.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| I don't really buy that.
|
| Samsung tears most of the UI layer off Android and installs
| their own look and feel. Google does the same with Pixel,
| Huawei does with their phones, and so on. You have to
| follow some of Google's rules to get Play Services, but
| Android varies immensely depending on vendor. Ditto for
| things like background tasks and battery life management.
|
| The same applies to Linux. The kernel changes significantly
| on vendor as well, with changes making it upstream only if
| the famously tribal Linux maintainers find it interesting.
| I am sure that the same applies for code from Samsung or
| Qualcomm to the Android codebase.
| crapple8430 wrote:
| I do think that Android is bad-faith open source too, but not
| in that sense. It's bad faith open source because only AOSP
| is actually open source, and AOSP by itself is not that
| useful of an operating system. There are a lot of proprietary
| components required for a functioning Android phone, usually
| known as Google apps, which are not open source. Android as a
| system is better described as open core, not open source.
| There are even mechanisms to prevent you from using your own
| fork, such as the various "integrity" APIs.
| ChadNauseam wrote:
| The integrity APIs are horrible. Why can you not send RCS
| messages from a rooted phone or use the ChatGPT app?
| dangus wrote:
| Ah yes, the most popular mobile operating system in the world
| is "on life support."
|
| iOS must not even exist anymore because it's closed source. I
| can feel my iPhone disintegrating before my eyes.
|
| Look-but-don't-touch source, except for how there are multiple
| successful alternative builds like /e/os, LineageOS, and
| GrapheneOS
|
| The second largest country in the whole world gets by using
| Android without Google Play services even being available
| there, with Android commanding a 77 percent marketshare.
|
| https://microg.org/
|
| Sure, I fully agree that Google isn't super enthusiastic about
| open source for Android beyond the ways in which it benefits
| them, but there's a lot of hyperbole in your comment.
| jillyboel wrote:
| > Look-but-don't-touch source, except for how there are
| multiple successful alternative builds like /e/os, LineageOS,
| and GrapheneOS
|
| the point is that you're not going to be able to upstream any
| changes
| CamJN wrote:
| I think you mean second most populous country? The second
| largest country is Canada and we definitely have Google Play
| Services, for what it's worth.
| bitsandboots wrote:
| I don't know why you are relating any of what I said to
| popularity or the merits of closed source. I guess you
| misunderstand what I mean by "on life support".
|
| Android is unhealthy versus its former self in that it has
| been increasingly hostile to developers. Your examples of
| /e/os and lineage are representative of the "look-but-dont-
| touch" nature of Android.
|
| Not to diminish the hard work of the developers of them, as
| they are useful, but they do not stray far from what Google
| provides them for better and worse. As you say, they're
| alternative _builds_ , primarily to reduce the ties to
| Google, but they largely adhere to the same APIs, have the
| same menus, have the same quirks. Perhaps graphene goes above
| and beyond, I have not used it. I remember Cyanogenmod having
| more divergence in feature set and appearance from what
| Google provided versus what Lineage can do for you now. I
| miss when Android was good, but it's just become the platform
| I don't want to upgrade and see what I lose next.
| sdkfjalsdgj wrote:
| > Users of android phones have little hope to run a program
| from 5 years ago
|
| Android is actually much much better than iOS. For some older
| unmaintained apps I've dug out the APKs and most of them run
| without major issues, though a scary warning saying it's
| designed for older versions of Android.
| bitsandboots wrote:
| Yeah, not all hope is lost, but good apps do get delisted for
| not complying with whatever Google dictates on the Play
| store, so you have to make good backups of content that only
| exists there! Which is a really great reason to use f-droid
| instead of course.
| everyone wrote:
| I, and clients of mine, have a bunch of stuff on the play
| stores. google is going bananas recently, aggressively
| trying to delist every app it seems..
|
| Every few months they force you to upload new builds that
| use the latest "api level" .. This change makes zero
| difference to how the app functions.
|
| Its a massive pain updating them and I have let several
| apps lapse and be taken down cus I couldnt be bothered
| jumping though googles arbitrary hoops.
|
| Which I guess is google's aim, and also that they are doing
| this to clear as much space as they can and save a small
| amount of money on storage, as part of their general
| enshittification process.
| borntoolate wrote:
| It's similar to their optimization of the web for their
| customers. To remain indexed you have to jump through all
| their hoops which means you derive income and therefore
| are at least potentially an advertiser.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| [dupe]
|
| Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43484927
|
| (Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43482798)
| surgical_fire wrote:
| I am curious how it would affect projects such as GrapheneOS or
| LineageOS.
|
| Hopefully they can still function like this
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