7 ms·

Can someone with more context explain what this means and maybe the background?

rk06 11mo ago
it means custom roms maintainers like lineageos, can now work on adding android 16.1 builds
josephcsible 11mo ago
Android 16 QPR1 rolled out in binary-only form to phones that are blessed by Google over two months ago, and it's only just now that they bothered to actually release the source of their open-source operating system.
- bitpush 11mo ago
  > it's only just now that they bothered to actually release the source of their open-source operating system. Do you really need to have snark for an open source project?
  - pseudosavant 11mo ago
    I thought we were talking about the Android project? /sarcasm
  - wongogue 11mo ago
    A project which uses and depends on a lot of other third-party OSS? Maybe.
  - josephcsible 11mo ago
    Open-source projects maintained by individual developers working for free absolutely deserve more respect than that, but ones maintained by the most profitable company in the world [1] do not, especially when they go out of their way to change from doing the right thing to doing the wrong thing [2]. [1]: https://www.financecharts.com/screener/most-profitable https://www.financecharts.com/screener/most-profitable [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43484927 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43484927
    - goku12 11mo ago
      > ..., especially when they go out of their way to change from doing the right thing to doing the wrong thing. And let's not forget this part. Android is a member of the mobile platform duopoly. Another similar project - Chrome - is almost a monopoly among web platforms. Both these projects exploit the open source label and most people's false belief that open source somehow equates to respect and protection of user rights. (Philosophically, it's only free software that cares about user rights. Both projects are textbook examples of non-free open source software.) This actually protects these projects to some extend from criticisms and penalties against the dark patterns that they employ to corrupt and exploit both the mobile and the web ecosystems. They absolutely don't deserve the same considerations as the passionate and underpaid small teams or individual maintainers.
  - ehnto 11mo ago
    It's Google, I think they've sucked up enough of our digital lives and economy to handle a bit of snark.
    - izacus 11mo ago
      So why do you so badly want to use their operating system to care what they do and how they license it? It's their work, their OS and we have others.
      - dvdkon 11mo ago
        Applying your argument more broadly, we shouldn't critique any product or changes made to it, and I don't see any reason why that should be true. Caring about the products you use is pretty standard behaviour, and when the product changes under the user's hands, it's normal to complain. It can resolve the issue faster and less painfully than switching products would.
        izacus 11mo ago
        No, my argument is not what you applied here. The fact of the matter is that Android is fully funded and developed by Google and you kinda don't have much standing to control what they do with their project and how - especially if all you can say is that their work is bad. You can be unhappy about it, but it doesn't change that its their work and their money on the line here with very little relationship to you or your wishes. You're not even a paying customer. This doesn't apply to "any product or changes" at large.
        guizadillas 11mo ago
        wym we are not paying customers? every person with an android phone is a paying customer indirectly and can complain about its development
        izacus 11mo ago
        You're a paying customer of Samsung et. al. You don't become a paying customer of Linus when you get a Thinkpad with Ubuntu.
  - MarsIronPI 11mo ago
    Yes. Precisely because it's "open source", not "free".
  - estimator7292 11mo ago
    Yes, open source requires snark just as much as tone policing
- o11c 11mo ago
  And it is very important to remember: being able to do this is the reason why companies have brainwashed the Internet into choosing the MIT license for everything. With GPL-only code, the world would be much nicer for all of us.
  - RicoElectrico 11mo ago
    Why it seems that MPL is left out of the discussion? I find its clauses a reasonable middle ground.
  - semi-extrinsic 11mo ago
    Some of the reason why the MIT license etc. is more popular surely has to do with the license text itself. I can understand the MIT license, and my corp lawyer can easily understand all the consequences of using something under MIT license. With the GPL, not so much. It's verbose and complex and has different versions. Would it really be impossible to have a license with similar brevity as MIT but similar consequences as GPL?
    - dtech 11mo ago
      No, the MIT license is short exactly because it has so little restrictions. You simply can't encode the desired result of GPL into 160 words like MIT can.
    - debugnik 11mo ago
      Brevity maybe, but ease of understanding no. Copyleft licenses interact with copyright law in ways that permissive licences just don't need to. The closest you can get is probably MPL-2.0. The GPL is particularly bad here as it pretends to define what is or isn't a derivative work, which is outside the scope of a licence but within the scope of a court. The EUPL was created partly because EU directives bound the viral clause in ways the FSF won't admit to, although that one isn't simple either (I'm not a fan of its compatibility clause).
    - graemep 11mo ago
      > I can understand the MIT license, and my corp lawyer can easily understand all the consequences of using something under MIT license. Sounds like you need a better lawyer. The consequences of the GPL are not all that complicated. In most cases it boils down to offering the source if you distribute the code outside your organisation.
- rkagerer 11mo ago
  Have they been in breach of GPL terms during the intervening two months?
  - jhasse 11mo ago
    Most of Android isn't GPL, so I would guess not.
joecool1029 11mo ago
This means the source code is finally being released for the quarterly release that came out in september. Roms like lineageos had to target QPR0 which came out back in June but can now bring up to this. Google used to release the source to AOSP right after the releases happened, now they don't.
- gpm 11mo ago
  Additional context per fediverse thread: The GPL code (i.e. kernel) was released on time, this is the AOSP userspace portions which Google isn't legally obligated to release (which doesn't make it not a dick move not to).
- berkes 11mo ago
  What was Googles "corporatespeak" reason for not releasing it right away?
  - thevillagechief 11mo ago
    There doesn't need to be "corporatespeak". They don't have to release it right away. They don't have to release it at all.
    - jamesnorden 11mo ago
      "Leave the billion dollar corporation alone!"
lawn 11mo ago
Another practical consequence is that GrapheneOS may finally be able to support Pixel 10 phones.
- degamad 11mo ago
  Yep! https://piunikaweb.com/2025/11/12/grapheneos-pixel-10-support-after-android-16-qpr1-aosp-release/ https://piunikaweb.com/2025/11/12/grapheneos-pixel-10-suppor... Edit: never mind, this is just an article quoting the post at the top of this discussion.
jeffbee 11mo ago
The largest and most widely used open source project in history is releasing one of their periodic updates, and lots of people with no industry (or life) experience are going to complain about it.

rk06 11mo ago

it means custom roms maintainers like lineageos, can now work on adding android 16.1 builds

Android 16 QPR1 rolled out in binary-only form to phones that are blessed by Google over two months ago, and it's only just now that they bothered to actually release the source of their open-source operating system.

bitpush 11mo ago
> it's only just now that they bothered to actually release the source of their open-source operating system. Do you really need to have snark for an open source project?
- pseudosavant 11mo ago
  I thought we were talking about the Android project? /sarcasm
- wongogue 11mo ago
  A project which uses and depends on a lot of other third-party OSS? Maybe.
- josephcsible 11mo ago
  Open-source projects maintained by individual developers working for free absolutely deserve more respect than that, but ones maintained by the most profitable company in the world [1] do not, especially when they go out of their way to change from doing the right thing to doing the wrong thing [2]. [1]: https://www.financecharts.com/screener/most-profitable https://www.financecharts.com/screener/most-profitable [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43484927 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43484927
  - goku12 11mo ago
    > ..., especially when they go out of their way to change from doing the right thing to doing the wrong thing. And let's not forget this part. Android is a member of the mobile platform duopoly. Another similar project - Chrome - is almost a monopoly among web platforms. Both these projects exploit the open source label and most people's false belief that open source somehow equates to respect and protection of user rights. (Philosophically, it's only free software that cares about user rights. Both projects are textbook examples of non-free open source software.) This actually protects these projects to some extend from criticisms and penalties against the dark patterns that they employ to corrupt and exploit both the mobile and the web ecosystems. They absolutely don't deserve the same considerations as the passionate and underpaid small teams or individual maintainers.
- ehnto 11mo ago
  It's Google, I think they've sucked up enough of our digital lives and economy to handle a bit of snark.
  - izacus 11mo ago
    So why do you so badly want to use their operating system to care what they do and how they license it? It's their work, their OS and we have others.
    - dvdkon 11mo ago
      Applying your argument more broadly, we shouldn't critique any product or changes made to it, and I don't see any reason why that should be true. Caring about the products you use is pretty standard behaviour, and when the product changes under the user's hands, it's normal to complain. It can resolve the issue faster and less painfully than switching products would.
      - izacus 11mo ago
        No, my argument is not what you applied here. The fact of the matter is that Android is fully funded and developed by Google and you kinda don't have much standing to control what they do with their project and how - especially if all you can say is that their work is bad. You can be unhappy about it, but it doesn't change that its their work and their money on the line here with very little relationship to you or your wishes. You're not even a paying customer. This doesn't apply to "any product or changes" at large.
        guizadillas 11mo ago
        wym we are not paying customers? every person with an android phone is a paying customer indirectly and can complain about its development
        izacus 11mo ago
        You're a paying customer of Samsung et. al. You don't become a paying customer of Linus when you get a Thinkpad with Ubuntu.
- MarsIronPI 11mo ago
  Yes. Precisely because it's "open source", not "free".
- estimator7292 11mo ago
  Yes, open source requires snark just as much as tone policing
o11c 11mo ago
And it is very important to remember: being able to do this is the reason why companies have brainwashed the Internet into choosing the MIT license for everything. With GPL-only code, the world would be much nicer for all of us.
- RicoElectrico 11mo ago
  Why it seems that MPL is left out of the discussion? I find its clauses a reasonable middle ground.
- semi-extrinsic 11mo ago
  Some of the reason why the MIT license etc. is more popular surely has to do with the license text itself. I can understand the MIT license, and my corp lawyer can easily understand all the consequences of using something under MIT license. With the GPL, not so much. It's verbose and complex and has different versions. Would it really be impossible to have a license with similar brevity as MIT but similar consequences as GPL?
  - dtech 11mo ago
    No, the MIT license is short exactly because it has so little restrictions. You simply can't encode the desired result of GPL into 160 words like MIT can.
  - debugnik 11mo ago
    Brevity maybe, but ease of understanding no. Copyleft licenses interact with copyright law in ways that permissive licences just don't need to. The closest you can get is probably MPL-2.0. The GPL is particularly bad here as it pretends to define what is or isn't a derivative work, which is outside the scope of a licence but within the scope of a court. The EUPL was created partly because EU directives bound the viral clause in ways the FSF won't admit to, although that one isn't simple either (I'm not a fan of its compatibility clause).
  - graemep 11mo ago
    > I can understand the MIT license, and my corp lawyer can easily understand all the consequences of using something under MIT license. Sounds like you need a better lawyer. The consequences of the GPL are not all that complicated. In most cases it boils down to offering the source if you distribute the code outside your organisation.
rkagerer 11mo ago
Have they been in breach of GPL terms during the intervening two months?
- jhasse 11mo ago
  Most of Android isn't GPL, so I would guess not.

joecool1029 11mo ago

This means the source code is finally being released for the quarterly release that came out in september. Roms like lineageos had to target QPR0 which came out back in June but can now bring up to this. Google used to release the source to AOSP right after the releases happened, now they don't.

gpm 11mo ago
Additional context per fediverse thread: The GPL code (i.e. kernel) was released on time, this is the AOSP userspace portions which Google isn't legally obligated to release (which doesn't make it not a dick move not to).
berkes 11mo ago
What was Googles "corporatespeak" reason for not releasing it right away?
- thevillagechief 11mo ago
  There doesn't need to be "corporatespeak". They don't have to release it right away. They don't have to release it at all.
  - jamesnorden 11mo ago
    "Leave the billion dollar corporation alone!"

lawn 11mo ago

Another practical consequence is that GrapheneOS may finally be able to support Pixel 10 phones.

degamad 11mo ago
Yep! https://piunikaweb.com/2025/11/12/grapheneos-pixel-10-support-after-android-16-qpr1-aosp-release/ https://piunikaweb.com/2025/11/12/grapheneos-pixel-10-suppor... Edit: never mind, this is just an article quoting the post at the top of this discussion.

jeffbee 11mo ago

The largest and most widely used open source project in history is releasing one of their periodic updates, and lots of people with no industry (or life) experience are going to complain about it.