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The article is wrong on so many counts: 1. Closed source apps are not the threat (Nowhere does it say that the dialer, home screen, messaging app, or camera ar

The article is wrong on so many counts: 1. Closed source apps are not the threat (Nowhere does it say that the dialer, home screen, messaging app, or camera are a part of the OS. All are replaceable, and all replacements integrate just as well as the original, it's not an iPhone). 2. Google controlled Android through legal means - If you want to make your Android phone in a factory, or if you want to use any google app, you need to obey their rules. So if yo want Play store, you have to play along. 3. Cyanogen saw Google as a threat, but Google didn't see Cyanogen as a threat. Cyanogen didn't die because of Google's behavior. They died because of terrible execution. Remember the spat over split-windows. Google didn't ban the appstore (despite being able to), they demanded that the environment not be _too_ modified. Cyanogenmod backed down and Google let it go. The only thing is that they were forbidden to _package_ it, but opengapps is still around. 4. Google isn't closing-source because of Cyanogenmod or other custom Roms. It's bigger threat is Samsung or Amazon.

kuschku 10y ago
> Closed source apps are not the threat Yes, they are. See https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/shouldbefree.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/shouldbefree.html > All are replaceable You can not replace the Dialer at all. Replacements can not integrate at all. The others have similar problems. > Google controlled Android through legal means According to the EU, they didn’t – they abused their market power to extort companies to force them to bundle their products. > Google didn't see Cyanogen as a threat. Yet Google cracked down even more on OEMs that shipped non-Google Android in markets where Google Android exists in the meantime. They definitely saw a threat. > Google didn't ban the appstore (despite being able to), they demanded that the environment not be _too_ modified. See the EU argument again: Google does not have the right to restrict their services in that way, due to having too much market power. They can not discriminate against the environments their products will be used in.
- vidyesh 10y ago
  Came to say most of this and agree 100%. I would like to add more to this. Not only stock apps are not replaceable on most devices but they might not even work as OEMs are notorious with their ROMs and don't use all of the Android hardware API in their apps instead develop their own which makes it easy for them to update. This sounds good but isn't as most good third-party apps use those drivers & APIs to make them work. That is why until M fingerprint sensor mostly worked on all apps which used Android's fingerprint API but wouldn't work on a lot of devices as OEMs used their own to integrate in the device.
- dispose13432 10y ago
  > Closed source apps are not the threat > Yes, they are. See > https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/shouldbefree.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/shouldbefree.html Well, they should. But I wouldn't call a closed-source messaging app (which you can replace with qksms) proof that AOSP is over. >According to the EU, they didn’t – they abused their market power to extort companies to force them to bundle their products. I meant legal to contrast "force" (closing the source), not that it's not illegal. They could really open-source everything and still mandate people to use Hangouts. >Yet Google cracked down even more on OEMs that shipped non-Google Android in markets where Google Android exists in the meantime. They definitely saw a threat. Did they fight CM? What did they do to make CM's life difficult? >See the EU argument again: Google does not have the right to restrict their services in that way, due to having too much market power. They can not discriminate against the environments their products will be used in. But they can refuse to license the Google Play store to entities outside of OEMs, as long as the terms aren't discriminatory.
Mathnerd314 10y ago
> the dialer, home screen, messaging app, or camera are a part of the OS. All are replaceable At least for my phone (LG G2), the camera uses several proprietary frameworks and there are only 1-2 apps that work with them (the official one and a community replacement). Furthermore the frameworks only work on one Android version (Lollipop) so there is no way to upgrade to newer Android. Similarly there are a lot of LG UI tweaks (lock screen, notification bar, a few others) with no source (Although here at least there are custom mods with different tweaks, so there is some amount of freedom). > If you want to make your Android phone in a factory, or if you want to use any google app, you need to obey their rules. The first part is wrong - "Android" per-se is Apache 2, i.e. free to use without restrictions (thus Amazon's "Fire OS"). But Google has been moving more and more functionality (e.g. location services) into Google Frameworks so it's pretty hard to avoid signing an agreement. Opengapps isn't really a solution, you still need a license to use them on the phone (and Google could easily lock out an unlicensed manufacturer). https://microg.org/ https://microg.org/ is but it would still take some work to make it production-quality.
- dispose13432 10y ago
  > "Android" per-se is Apache 2, i.e. free to use without restrictions (thus Amazon's "Fire OS"). That's why I stressed "in a factory". No factory which makes commercial Android is permitted to make unlicensed android.
  - akiselev 10y ago
    I think that is almost certainly false. Do you have a source? According to [1], OEMs can use Android trademarks as long as they conform to the Android compatibility standard, which doesn't require a license for the Google Mobile Service (Google Play, etc) [2]. If you do want to brand it as an Android device, you largely just have to maintain compatibility with the Android ecosystem regardless of whether you distribute Google apps. If you don't want to use the Android trademark (which is independent of the source code), you don't have to do anything. [1] https://source.android.com/source/faqs.html https://source.android.com/source/faqs.html [2] https://source.android.com/compatibility/index.html https://source.android.com/compatibility/index.html

kuschku 10y ago

> Closed source apps are not the threat Yes, they are. See https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/shouldbefree.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/shouldbefree.html > All are replaceable You can not replace the Dialer at all. Replacements can not integrate at all. The others have similar problems. > Google controlled Android through legal means According to the EU, they didn’t – they abused their market power to extort companies to force them to bundle their products. > Google didn't see Cyanogen as a threat. Yet Google cracked down even more on OEMs that shipped non-Google Android in markets where Google Android exists in the meantime. They definitely saw a threat. > Google didn't ban the appstore (despite being able to), they demanded that the environment not be _too_ modified. See the EU argument again: Google does not have the right to restrict their services in that way, due to having too much market power. They can not discriminate against the environments their products will be used in.

vidyesh 10y ago
Came to say most of this and agree 100%. I would like to add more to this. Not only stock apps are not replaceable on most devices but they might not even work as OEMs are notorious with their ROMs and don't use all of the Android hardware API in their apps instead develop their own which makes it easy for them to update. This sounds good but isn't as most good third-party apps use those drivers & APIs to make them work. That is why until M fingerprint sensor mostly worked on all apps which used Android's fingerprint API but wouldn't work on a lot of devices as OEMs used their own to integrate in the device.
dispose13432 10y ago
> Closed source apps are not the threat > Yes, they are. See > https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/shouldbefree.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/shouldbefree.html Well, they should. But I wouldn't call a closed-source messaging app (which you can replace with qksms) proof that AOSP is over. >According to the EU, they didn’t – they abused their market power to extort companies to force them to bundle their products. I meant legal to contrast "force" (closing the source), not that it's not illegal. They could really open-source everything and still mandate people to use Hangouts. >Yet Google cracked down even more on OEMs that shipped non-Google Android in markets where Google Android exists in the meantime. They definitely saw a threat. Did they fight CM? What did they do to make CM's life difficult? >See the EU argument again: Google does not have the right to restrict their services in that way, due to having too much market power. They can not discriminate against the environments their products will be used in. But they can refuse to license the Google Play store to entities outside of OEMs, as long as the terms aren't discriminatory.

Mathnerd314 10y ago

> the dialer, home screen, messaging app, or camera are a part of the OS. All are replaceable At least for my phone (LG G2), the camera uses several proprietary frameworks and there are only 1-2 apps that work with them (the official one and a community replacement). Furthermore the frameworks only work on one Android version (Lollipop) so there is no way to upgrade to newer Android. Similarly there are a lot of LG UI tweaks (lock screen, notification bar, a few others) with no source (Although here at least there are custom mods with different tweaks, so there is some amount of freedom). > If you want to make your Android phone in a factory, or if you want to use any google app, you need to obey their rules. The first part is wrong - "Android" per-se is Apache 2, i.e. free to use without restrictions (thus Amazon's "Fire OS"). But Google has been moving more and more functionality (e.g. location services) into Google Frameworks so it's pretty hard to avoid signing an agreement. Opengapps isn't really a solution, you still need a license to use them on the phone (and Google could easily lock out an unlicensed manufacturer). https://microg.org/ https://microg.org/ is but it would still take some work to make it production-quality.

dispose13432 10y ago
> "Android" per-se is Apache 2, i.e. free to use without restrictions (thus Amazon's "Fire OS"). That's why I stressed "in a factory". No factory which makes commercial Android is permitted to make unlicensed android.
- akiselev 10y ago
  I think that is almost certainly false. Do you have a source? According to [1], OEMs can use Android trademarks as long as they conform to the Android compatibility standard, which doesn't require a license for the Google Mobile Service (Google Play, etc) [2]. If you do want to brand it as an Android device, you largely just have to maintain compatibility with the Android ecosystem regardless of whether you distribute Google apps. If you don't want to use the Android trademark (which is independent of the source code), you don't have to do anything. [1] https://source.android.com/source/faqs.html https://source.android.com/source/faqs.html [2] https://source.android.com/compatibility/index.html https://source.android.com/compatibility/index.html