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This really reminds me of Open Solaris. > We will no longer distribute source code for the entirety of the Solaris operating system in real-time In the case o

This really reminds me of Open Solaris. > We will no longer distribute source code for the entirety of the Solaris operating system in real-time In the case of Open Solaris, the code never came out from that point onwards. For Android, the likely end goal is to do the bare minimum of distributing only copyleft code that they don't own copyright to. Until those get replaced with a closed alternative. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=2482s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=2482s

EGreg 2y ago
Can someone just fork it? Like MySQL was forked into MariaDB?
- fmajid 2y ago
  Yes: https://illumos.org/ https://illumos.org/
  - jazzyjackson 2y ago
    This doesn’t appear mobile oriented, or is this an open Solaris fork? I suppose lineageOS is the closest thing for Android tho from what I understand it is built upon AOSP
    - fmajid 2y ago
      Yes, an OpenSolaris fork. I thought that was the "it" you were referring to, as that was what the parent was talking about. There are quite a few AOSP forks, like LineageOS and GrapheneOS to cite the most famous ones, but with this change in process by Google, they will have to wait a year of no changes, then scramble when the next release of Android drops.
rwmj 2y ago
But copyleft is bad and everyone should use BSD ... Code is turned proprietary by huge corporate with massive development resources. No one could have predicted this.
- red-iron-pine 2y ago
  "curse your sudden and inevitable betrayal"
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- bogwog 2y ago
  Stallman was right again.
  - ddingus 2y ago
    The dude is solid as it gets on all this. Yet people ignore him and then realize that was one of those too late types
    - cyanydeez 2y ago
      none of us have economic incentives to build global infrastrcture. Let me know what governments decide among the people that there's value in open source and it's software
      - soraminazuki 2y ago
        Agreed, but I doubt governments would be good stewards of open source either. They engage in illegal mass surveillance, cyber warfare, and is constantly trying to undermine encryption.
        cyanydeez 2y ago
        in the abstract, governments are indistinguishable from any other collective of people. So yeah, if open source orgs can keep going, there's no reason to think government can't do the same. It's about public goods.
        tharne 2y ago
donmcronald 2y ago
Yep. An open source license doesn't mean anything if a project is dependent on a single company for ongoing development.
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  The weird thing is, why is that the case? I'm trying to think of a mobile OS feature addition that has made me say "I need to upgrade my phone" and it just hasn't happened recently. It's more like, damn it, the dastardly thing stopped receiving security updates and now I have to replace it for no good reason. Isn't Android done yet? What further development is required that couldn't be done by the community?
  - desdenova 2y ago
    The point is it doesn't have a developer community that could maintain the project without Google.
    - borntoolate 2y ago
      Porting lineage to new hardware mostly includes development teams that have nothing to do with Google.. Convincing no one to leave the thin veneer of mediocre code and "free" storage is a game that is harder to play than Apple makes it look with OsX.
    - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
      It doesn't have one because Google is doing it and then publishing the code so there is no point in someone else redoing what's already been done. If they were to stop, the demand for someone to do it would still be there, and that demand wouldn't be getting met anymore, which creates the incentive for others to do it. Meanwhile the point is that most of "it" doesn't actually need to be done anyway. You don't need to do everything Google is currently doing. Adding support for new hardware is important, but that has an obvious source of someone to do it because the hardware vendors want their new hardware to be widely supported so they can sell more of it. So all you really need is security updates, and a community can handle that as evidenced by the many instances of it actually happening for other code. What stops the thing that makes Debian work from making this work?
nubinetwork 2y ago
Only if they stop pushing code changes to AOSP...

EGreg 2y ago

Can someone just fork it? Like MySQL was forked into MariaDB?

fmajid 2y ago
Yes: https://illumos.org/ https://illumos.org/
- jazzyjackson 2y ago
  This doesn’t appear mobile oriented, or is this an open Solaris fork? I suppose lineageOS is the closest thing for Android tho from what I understand it is built upon AOSP
  - fmajid 2y ago
    Yes, an OpenSolaris fork. I thought that was the "it" you were referring to, as that was what the parent was talking about. There are quite a few AOSP forks, like LineageOS and GrapheneOS to cite the most famous ones, but with this change in process by Google, they will have to wait a year of no changes, then scramble when the next release of Android drops.

rwmj 2y ago

But copyleft is bad and everyone should use BSD ... Code is turned proprietary by huge corporate with massive development resources. No one could have predicted this.

red-iron-pine 2y ago
"curse your sudden and inevitable betrayal"
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
bogwog 2y ago
Stallman was right again.
- ddingus 2y ago
  The dude is solid as it gets on all this. Yet people ignore him and then realize that was one of those too late types
  - cyanydeez 2y ago
    none of us have economic incentives to build global infrastrcture. Let me know what governments decide among the people that there's value in open source and it's software
    - soraminazuki 2y ago
      Agreed, but I doubt governments would be good stewards of open source either. They engage in illegal mass surveillance, cyber warfare, and is constantly trying to undermine encryption.
      - cyanydeez 2y ago
        in the abstract, governments are indistinguishable from any other collective of people. So yeah, if open source orgs can keep going, there's no reason to think government can't do the same. It's about public goods.
        tharne 2y ago

donmcronald 2y ago

Yep. An open source license doesn't mean anything if a project is dependent on a single company for ongoing development.

AnthonyMouse 2y ago
The weird thing is, why is that the case? I'm trying to think of a mobile OS feature addition that has made me say "I need to upgrade my phone" and it just hasn't happened recently. It's more like, damn it, the dastardly thing stopped receiving security updates and now I have to replace it for no good reason. Isn't Android done yet? What further development is required that couldn't be done by the community?
- desdenova 2y ago
  The point is it doesn't have a developer community that could maintain the project without Google.
  - borntoolate 2y ago
    Porting lineage to new hardware mostly includes development teams that have nothing to do with Google.. Convincing no one to leave the thin veneer of mediocre code and "free" storage is a game that is harder to play than Apple makes it look with OsX.
  - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
    It doesn't have one because Google is doing it and then publishing the code so there is no point in someone else redoing what's already been done. If they were to stop, the demand for someone to do it would still be there, and that demand wouldn't be getting met anymore, which creates the incentive for others to do it. Meanwhile the point is that most of "it" doesn't actually need to be done anyway. You don't need to do everything Google is currently doing. Adding support for new hardware is important, but that has an obvious source of someone to do it because the hardware vendors want their new hardware to be widely supported so they can sell more of it. So all you really need is security updates, and a community can handle that as evidenced by the many instances of it actually happening for other code. What stops the thing that makes Debian work from making this work?

nubinetwork 2y ago

Only if they stop pushing code changes to AOSP...