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You've hit the nail entirely on the head. Re: the reasons vendors never push code upstream, have you read http://lwn.net/Articles/662147/ http://lwn.net/Articl

• mschuster91 11y ago
  Yes. I seriously hope someone finds a local-root exploit for some out-of-tree driver used in a lot of devices, bonus points if it affects multiple vendors. Only when the pain/cost of going out-of-tree is too high, vendors will be forced to listen to the FOSS community instead of their bonehead lawyers telling that "drivers are our IP!!!!!!!!!!!". I'm shocked neither Heartbleed, Stagefright or that (iirc) Samsung kernel driver bug had enough of an effect. Or that Google does not require a (Github) published source tree for kernel+AOSP in order for certification.
  • throwaway2048 11y ago
    The problem is this: Ask a lawyer if arbitrary activity is a legal risk, they are always going to answer yes. After-all somebody can sue you for any reason whatsoever. Without a strong counterballacing party to that point of view, the default is always going to be closed with a collective shrug from developers that tacitly accept the "legal realities". It will probly take a worm of sasser-like porportions on android to break this pattern of closed drivers that work on one 3 year old kernel that never get updated.