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> Furthermore, dumped-over-the-wall projects like Android would be better referred to as "Shared Source" (with its association) - the Free branches are seemingl
by Lorkki 8y ago
> Furthermore, dumped-over-the-wall projects like Android would be better referred to as "Shared Source" (with its association) - the Free branches are seemingly unable to actually keep up with the master!
That's because AOSP by itself is Android without all the integration work that's necessary to make a useful image for a specific device, and traditionally it's been a lot of work for each new version. Things are better in that respect since Android 8.0, which I think shows in frequency of both manufacturer updates and community builds.
- mindslight 8y agoYes, that's the mechanism. The point is that if Android were really Free/OpenSource, that integration work should have gotten pushed back to the main branch and carried into the new version alongside everything. Then that work would be done across the board when making breaking changes to the driver API. I recognize that the embedded culture of zip+email version control has much to do with this - manufacturers don't care if the starting source was retrieving using git pull or wget. But that's merely an explanation, not a justification. I don't worry about not being able to install the latest Debian on an older machine, because the drivers for the hardware have been carried forward.