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This is really cool, but, longer term, what happens if Google makes android closed source? I feel this is a very real risk.
by joelthelion 11mo ago
This is really cool, but, longer term, what happens if Google makes android closed source? I feel this is a very real risk.
- jhasse 11mo agoThen Android gets forked.
- worldsavior 11mo agoThey won't because they literally control the mobile market by having Android open source.
- joelthelion 11mo agoNow that their market is established, I don't think open-source is a requirement anymore. They would of course share with hardware vendors strategically.
- wkat4242 11mo agoTrue. All the big OEMs are in too deep with Android now, there's no going back. They could easily make it code share under NDA instead of open source.
- palata 11mo agoHuawei proved that they can move away from Android... unfortunately they did not go for a hard fork of AOSP but for a proprietary, new OS.
- tonyhart7 11mo ago"they can move away from Android" nah, it still android
- berdario 11mo agoSince 2024, it isn't https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HarmonyOS_NEXT https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HarmonyOS_NEXT
- tonyhart7 11mo ago[flagged]
- BenjiWiebe 11mo agoLooks like HarmonyOS no longer uses the Linux kernel, and removed all Android code. Pretty different from Android then.
- palata 11mo agoYou don't know what you're talking about.
- goku12 11mo agoThose OEMs are responsible for the Android lock-in situation, and they do profit off it. They have the power to break that dependency easily with any alternative platform of choice. Consider a GNU flavored Linux distro (includes busybox+musl also) or a BSD as an example. The difficulty that their devs face on smartphones is the driver set. Everything above it is open and free for anyone to implement any functionality without the need for any reverse engineering. All that the OEMs need to make them work is to release the hardware drivers for the platform - especially of the RF baseband. Open source drivers are preferable, but even proprietary driver blobs work to some extend (like the nvidia proprietary drivers on PCs). But if the OEMs do that, then people would do a lot more with their smartphones. No more OEM blot/malware, infinite customizability and app options and the biggest of all - endless updates. People would use them till something in it dies, and then use it for something else that doesn't need the dead part. For example, how many smartphones are thrown out because their screens died? How many kubernetes clusters could you build with them? Naturally, that would affect the phone sales and OEMs certainly don't want that. So then, what happens instead? Have you noticed how Graphene and Lineage struggle to support devices that already run Android? Obviously the drivers for AOSP exist. Google and the OEMs enter into a direct partnership where Google supplies the Android part with all its proprietary and play components, while OEMs convert it into the final blobs after adding their drivers and malware. The only way an external party is going to get those drivers is if somebody manages to extract them from those blobs. The OEMs supply updates for them for a few years and conveniently drop them after that. The consumer is forced to buy a new phone eventually, because their software becomes hopelessly outdated. In addition to this, similar restrictions are imposed by manufacturers of subsystems like SoCs and RF baseband. Make no mistake about it. No matter how open any of it seems, the entire group of companies involved in this is a racket that's out to squeeze out every penny and bit of personal information from you. The OEMs are very willing participants in this scam.
- worldsavior 11mo agoWhat would they gain from making it closed source? There isn't any distribution of AOSP that competes with Android. If they would close-source it, the community for sure will pick up the pieces.
- Xss3 11mo agoGrapheneOS is the community picking up the pieces.
- worldsavior 11mo agoThey're not. They're heavily dependent on Google, especially CVEs.
- subscribed 11mo agoWho do you think runs the AOSP project or Project Zero? What do you mean more precisely? :)
- array_key_first 11mo agoMore and more functionality is locked behind closed-source play services. AOSP is basically useless at this point, it can't do much of anything without Google Play Services.
- palata 11mo agoNot sure if the big manufacturers would want to depend on a proprietary Google OS. Samsung does make a lot of changes to the OS, for instance.
- WhyNotHugo 11mo ago> Not sure if the big manufacturers would want to depend on a proprietary Google OS. They already do; Google's flavour of Android adds plenty of proprietary components on top of AOSP.
- palata 11mo agoThey depend on the Play Service and Play Store, that's for sure. But I'm pretty sure they know it's a risk already. Don't get me wrong: they are locked-in, that's a fact. And to be fair they benefit from all the work of Google on the OS. But that's not a reason to desire to go further and lose even more control.
- fsflover 11mo agoWhat exactly are they going to do? Support GNU/Linux?
- palata 11mo agoIf Google goes proprietary with AOSP? They could fork AOSP, or go with their own proprietary system (like Huawei is successfully doing). Linux distros (including non-GNU/Linux distros, e.g. busybox/Linux distros) are way behind for smartphones. I don't think they would switch to that.
- fsflover 10mo agoAre you saying that developing their own system is easier than using existing one that needs some tinkering?
- tonyhart7 11mo ago
- ysnp 11mo agoWell, in the much longer term they have usually mentioned they would like to use a more secure/private foundation (more in the direction of Qubes/Redox/Fuchsia) with a compatibility layer for Android apps if they have the resources to do so.