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Looks like all Android-related projects, big or small, high profile or low profile, suffer from the same problem the iOS jailbreak community has: everybody with

Looks like all Android-related projects, big or small, high profile or low profile, suffer from the same problem the iOS jailbreak community has: everybody with power or a voice in the community is either a whiny bitch or a brat. Technical/legal stuff aside, all problems with projects related to the Android OS are all the same: immaturity, lack of responsibility, selfishness, etc.

_csoo 10y ago
feels like the old warez dayz
nas 10y ago
The Android open source community is deeply unhealthy, IMHO. Compare the pile of shit that is XDA vs a well run open source project. Most of the stuff posted there has no way to verify the source code, binaries download from sketchy sites, no issue tracker. If you have the stomach to wade through the cesspool of XDA threads, you will find the majorly of posters parroting cargo cult ideas (e.g. wiping battery stats to improve battery life). This is not the way to advance technology. Personally, I think Google is a lot to blame. They really don't care if Android is an open source platform and they don't foster an open source community building on it. So we have basically a mod scene that hacks binaries and passes around dirty hacks that break on every new release. I don't think the work done by the modders end up going back into the official source repo. So much waste of developer time for no long-term progress.
- NoGravitas 10y ago
  The biggest problem I see is (and there may be other biggies, but this is the one that has bitten me), is that device support in Android kernels never gets upstreamed to Linux. Not necessarily due to GPL violations, but because even though the device source tree is published, there's no one willing to shepherd the changes upstream (and many vendor changes are low quality, so it would be a lot of work). Typically even a Nexus device is stuck on the specific kernel version that it was released with. Google is a little better on the kernel side, but in other ways, AOSP is even worse. There's lots of good stuff done in Cyanogen and OmniROM, for example, but there's no way to get stuff into upstream AOSP. Google just pitches something over the wall once a year and ROM developers have to rebase or re-implement their ROM features.
  - dispose13432 10y ago
    The problem is that Linux's kernel interface isn't stable, so a module written for one kernel release won't work on another, and (AFAIK) they don't do major-minor releases (like PHP,Apache) where, say, the 4.0 kernel is stable and will stay stable for a few years. Rather, 4.1 could introduce braking changes as far as modules go. And, unlike PCs, most phones don't have standard hardware, so someone kernel modules tend to be closed source and don't have "basic" mode. As a result, to upgrade to a new Android release someone has to backport all new (kernel) features to old kernels.
    - dmm 10y ago
      If you upstream your drivers then the people who change interfaces also fix the modules that use those interfaces. The problem is SoC manufacturers that don't want to put in the work to upstream drivers.
      - dispose13432 10y ago
        >The problem is SoC manufacturers that don't want to put in the work to upstream drivers. They don't _open source_ their drivers.
        NoGravitas 10y ago
        Many (most?) of them do open source their drivers. But even then, no one is willing to do the work to upstream them.
        dispose13432 10y ago
        Really? Where is the full Samsung blobless kernel?
        yareally 10y ago
        They sometimes release the driver blobs so you don't have to rip them off the device, but rarely have I heard of drivers being open sourced outside of a few scattered instances.
qwertyuiop924 10y ago
Yep. It's the same in the Minecraft community. Perhaps not to the degree that it once was, but for a while the Tekkit dispute was a big deal, and people like FlowerChild continue to stir the pot of controversy to this day.
- SquareWheel 10y ago
  The modded community has largely matured, with the vast majority of mods being open source and open to contribution these days. Personally, I haven't heard from FlowerChild in 4+ years. Somebody did start a mod-friendly rewrite of BetterThanWolves though, built on Forge and with compatibility in mind. It's called Better With Mods. https://github.com/BeetoGuy/BetterWithMods https://github.com/BeetoGuy/BetterWithMods
  - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
    AFAICT, he's still around (although I haven't checked in a while). He hasn't talked to the forge folks, though, so nobody cares. Unless he's left the scene, we can assume that he merely continues to spread his particular brand of poison in his corner of the internet, rarely venturing into the wider community. But yes, the modding scene is better than it was. Thanks to FTB (as well as Tekkit cleaning up their act), the modpack controversy is mostly a thing of the past. And thanks to King_Lemming, Pahimar, Azanor, SpaceToad, and the rest of the major players in the scene, closed-source mods are very nearly a thing of the past (but not quite).
    - SquareWheel 10y ago
      Unfortunately Azanor's Thaumcraft is closed-source, so not a great example. King_Lemming (and the COFH team) have historically been closed-source as well, but they recently moved to visible source (sadly, probably due to leaving the scene). Those are the major exceptions though. Mekanism, EnderIO, Forestry, really all the other big mods are completely open source now. There's been a big shift in attitudes on that topic. For contrast, when I first got into modding nearly all the mods were closed-source. IC2, RedPower, Equivalent Exchange, Railcraft, and so on. Very glad to have seen this ethos shift.

_csoo 10y ago

feels like the old warez dayz

nas 10y ago

The Android open source community is deeply unhealthy, IMHO. Compare the pile of shit that is XDA vs a well run open source project. Most of the stuff posted there has no way to verify the source code, binaries download from sketchy sites, no issue tracker. If you have the stomach to wade through the cesspool of XDA threads, you will find the majorly of posters parroting cargo cult ideas (e.g. wiping battery stats to improve battery life). This is not the way to advance technology. Personally, I think Google is a lot to blame. They really don't care if Android is an open source platform and they don't foster an open source community building on it. So we have basically a mod scene that hacks binaries and passes around dirty hacks that break on every new release. I don't think the work done by the modders end up going back into the official source repo. So much waste of developer time for no long-term progress.

NoGravitas 10y ago
The biggest problem I see is (and there may be other biggies, but this is the one that has bitten me), is that device support in Android kernels never gets upstreamed to Linux. Not necessarily due to GPL violations, but because even though the device source tree is published, there's no one willing to shepherd the changes upstream (and many vendor changes are low quality, so it would be a lot of work). Typically even a Nexus device is stuck on the specific kernel version that it was released with. Google is a little better on the kernel side, but in other ways, AOSP is even worse. There's lots of good stuff done in Cyanogen and OmniROM, for example, but there's no way to get stuff into upstream AOSP. Google just pitches something over the wall once a year and ROM developers have to rebase or re-implement their ROM features.
- dispose13432 10y ago
  The problem is that Linux's kernel interface isn't stable, so a module written for one kernel release won't work on another, and (AFAIK) they don't do major-minor releases (like PHP,Apache) where, say, the 4.0 kernel is stable and will stay stable for a few years. Rather, 4.1 could introduce braking changes as far as modules go. And, unlike PCs, most phones don't have standard hardware, so someone kernel modules tend to be closed source and don't have "basic" mode. As a result, to upgrade to a new Android release someone has to backport all new (kernel) features to old kernels.
  - dmm 10y ago
    If you upstream your drivers then the people who change interfaces also fix the modules that use those interfaces. The problem is SoC manufacturers that don't want to put in the work to upstream drivers.
    - dispose13432 10y ago
      >The problem is SoC manufacturers that don't want to put in the work to upstream drivers. They don't _open source_ their drivers.
      - NoGravitas 10y ago
        Many (most?) of them do open source their drivers. But even then, no one is willing to do the work to upstream them.
        dispose13432 10y ago
        Really? Where is the full Samsung blobless kernel?
        yareally 10y ago
        They sometimes release the driver blobs so you don't have to rip them off the device, but rarely have I heard of drivers being open sourced outside of a few scattered instances.

qwertyuiop924 10y ago

Yep. It's the same in the Minecraft community. Perhaps not to the degree that it once was, but for a while the Tekkit dispute was a big deal, and people like FlowerChild continue to stir the pot of controversy to this day.

SquareWheel 10y ago
The modded community has largely matured, with the vast majority of mods being open source and open to contribution these days. Personally, I haven't heard from FlowerChild in 4+ years. Somebody did start a mod-friendly rewrite of BetterThanWolves though, built on Forge and with compatibility in mind. It's called Better With Mods. https://github.com/BeetoGuy/BetterWithMods https://github.com/BeetoGuy/BetterWithMods
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  AFAICT, he's still around (although I haven't checked in a while). He hasn't talked to the forge folks, though, so nobody cares. Unless he's left the scene, we can assume that he merely continues to spread his particular brand of poison in his corner of the internet, rarely venturing into the wider community. But yes, the modding scene is better than it was. Thanks to FTB (as well as Tekkit cleaning up their act), the modpack controversy is mostly a thing of the past. And thanks to King_Lemming, Pahimar, Azanor, SpaceToad, and the rest of the major players in the scene, closed-source mods are very nearly a thing of the past (but not quite).
  - SquareWheel 10y ago
    Unfortunately Azanor's Thaumcraft is closed-source, so not a great example. King_Lemming (and the COFH team) have historically been closed-source as well, but they recently moved to visible source (sadly, probably due to leaving the scene). Those are the major exceptions though. Mekanism, EnderIO, Forestry, really all the other big mods are completely open source now. There's been a big shift in attitudes on that topic. For contrast, when I first got into modding nearly all the mods were closed-source. IC2, RedPower, Equivalent Exchange, Railcraft, and so on. Very glad to have seen this ethos shift.