6 ms·

The fundamental problem is that we are relying on the good graces of Google to keep Android open, despite the fact that it often runs run contrary to their goal

by paxys 9mo ago

The fundamental problem is that we are relying on the good graces of Google to keep Android open, despite the fact that it often runs run contrary to their goals as a $4T for-profit behemoth. This may have worked in the past, but the "don't be evil" days are very far behind us. I don't see a real future for Andrioid as an open platform unless the community comes together and does a hard fork. Google can continue to develop their version and go the Apple way (which, funny enough, no one has a problem with). Development of AOSP can be controlled by a software foundation, like tons of other successful projects.

microtonal 9mo ago
A hard fork is not needed. Non-Google Android do not have to enforce this requirement. It's more important to get as many people on alternatives like GrapheneOS as possible. And fund them by donating to them. If every ~0.5 million GrapheneOS users donated 10 Euro per month, they would be very well-funded.
- paxys 9mo ago
  There is no such thing as non-Google Android. At most you have people applying tiny patches on top of AOSP, but 100% of the code in the underlying project is still Google-approved, and none of the alternatives have control over that. It's the same as the situation with Chrome/Chromium. There are a million "de-Googled"/"privacy focused" alternatives to Chrome all using the same engine, and when Google pushed manifest v3 changes to block ad-blockers every single one of them was affected.
  - microtonal 9mo ago
    At most you have people applying tiny patches on top of AOSP, but 100% of the code in the underlying project is still Google-approved, and none of the alternatives have control over that. You are making an orthogonal point. Yes, Google maintains AOSP. No, that does not mean that AOSP OSes that are not in Google's Android program (calling it that to avoid semantics games) have to adopt this change. If you want to hear it from the experts: https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/116103732687045013 https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/116103732687045013
    - paxys 9mo ago
      Unless these different Android flavors all have the resources to indefinitely rewrite AOSP and remove all Google code they don't agree with - no, they pretty much have to adopt the changes (see the earlier Chromium example). And if they do somehow manage this after a point all the patching basically becomes a fork, which is exactly what I started the conversation with.
      - microtonal 9mo ago
        I see your point, but it all hinges on when you consider the changes to be a patch set and when a fork. I don't think there is a very clear definition, except I don't think most of these projects would call themselves AOSP forks. At any rate, this particular Google anti-feature does not require a large patch (or maybe none at all).
      - kelvinjps10 9mo ago
        I think is good to extract the value of billionaire companies, why not use it?
        fsflover 8mo ago
        Because they're not stupid and will use you instead. See: Google and XMPP story.
  - Tharre 9mo ago
    > and when Google pushed manifest v3 changes to block ad-blockers every single one of them was affected. That's just objectively wrong, both Brave and Opera still support manifest v2 and are committed to continue doing so for the foreseeable future. Even Edge apparently still has it, funnily enough.
    - paxys 9mo ago
      Nope, actually "both Brave and Opera still support manifest v2" is objectively wrong. Brave does NOT support manifest v2. They have instead hand picked exactly 4 manifest v2 extensions (AdGuard, NoScript, uBlock Origin, and uMatrix) and have hard-coded special support for them. They quite literally say in https://brave.com/blog/brave-shields-manifest-v3/ https://brave.com/blog/brave-shields-manifest-v3/ that all other v2 extensions will go away from Brave once Google fully removes support for them (which may have happened already, since it was posted a while ago). As for Opera (https://blogs.opera.com/news/2025/09/mv2-extensions-opera/ https://blogs.opera.com/news/2025/09/mv2-extensions-opera/): > MV3 extensions are the new standard and will offer a more stable and secure experience. Opera itself will shift to an MV3-only extension store.
      - Tharre 9mo ago
        > They have instead hand picked exactly 4 manifest v2 extensions (AdGuard, NoScript, uBlock Origin, and uMatrix) and have hard-coded special support for them. They quite literally say in https://brave.com/blog/brave-shields-manifest-v3/ https://brave.com/blog/brave-shields-manifest-v3/ You're misreading that page, they have special cased the hosting of those 4 extensions, because they do not have their own addon web store and are relying on Chrome's instead. You can still install any manifest v2 addon manually, not that there are going to be many outside of those 4 that care about v2. As for Opera: "Today, we reiterate what we said back in October 2024: MV2 extensions are still available to use on Opera, and we are actively working to keep it that way for as long as it’s technically reasonable."
        paxys 9mo ago
        > for as long as it’s technically reasonable Read: for as long as Chromium allows this via a flag.
- anonzzzies 9mo ago
  Get a large phone vendor to get a flagship phone with Graphene or so on the market. Otherwise nothing will happen. Even starting with the smaller ones like Blackview would do something. But almost no one will do that because users are said to want android; like my parents care... But they will care of course when their banking app stops working... That is the real issue imho.
realusername 9mo ago
The answer has to come from anti trust legislation. Android is too big for Google to control.
- Tharre 9mo ago
  Who else is going to maintain and develop it? It's the same issue as with Chrome, even if you force Google to give it to some other company, they're all just as bad. And it's too big and too costly to maintain for anyone else but tech giants. The only other options would be convincing users to pay 5 bucks a month for their software, or have some Government fork over the tens of millions required to pay open source developers. And good luck with that.
  - iririririr 9mo ago
    I welcome feature stagnation on mobile! Every single release is a step backwards. Android 15 cannot hold a candle to what cynogenmod did on top of android 2.3. And that's objective.
    - jajuuka 9mo ago
      Historical meaning is pretty worthless though. It's like saying CPU's are going backwards because the 386 was a bigger jump. Technology matures eventually and that's not a bad thing.
      - realusername 9mo ago
        Android doesn't really work on hardware changes as AOSP doesn't run on a single phone on earth anyways, not even the emulators, this is the goal of the manufacturers. For the features you can read here for example what Android 16 changed: https://www.android.com/articles/android-16-features/ https://www.android.com/articles/android-16-features/
      - iririririr 8mo ago
        no my friend. i mean objectively, not some rose tinted nostalgia glasses. android2.3 allowed so much better control for people who are not installing all sort of crap apps, that the usability was something unimaginable to an android15 user. not to mention we had devices with trackballs, keyboards etc sadly, given that both manufacturers on this duopoly are highly incentivised to push malicious apps, everything must be throw out for a cat and mouse game of sand boxing
handity 9mo ago
A hard fork doesn't matter when the vast majority of phones have a locked bootloader.
- paxys 9mo ago
  Google's own phones do not have a locked booloader. You can buy a Pixel and put GrapheneOS on it in like 10 minutes. But basically no one does this, because no matter what people say in online forums they actually value ease of use and shiny features over privacy and software freedom.
  - gonzalohm 9mo ago
    That's probably their next target once android is fully locked down
  - catlikesshrimp 9mo ago
    A google tax which google's grace bestows upon us for as long as its whim want.
  - Affric 9mo ago
    It's the nature of free software. The reason GNU and Linux won was because they produced software that was sufficient for the market: servers. The software is also sufficiently good for a PC for software development. There's almost sufficient software for PC gaming (up against an absolutely insane monopoly that is Microsoft). Phones are slightly different and for something more than a dumb phone you need great hardware; great software; and great integration. Employee computers for companies and general home users or tablets? Still a ways to go. I don't think wanting features and good UX is unreasonable from consumers.
  - themafia 9mo ago
    > no matter what people say in online forums The people who speak in forums are a minority. > they actually value ease of use and shiny features over privacy and software freedom. There's no actual competition so we don't know this on any level.
- 9mo ago
chistev 9mo ago
What is stopping a hard fork?
- microtonal 9mo ago
  The gigantic task of maintaining and developing a mobile OS that needs to retain compatibility with AOSP/GPS anyway to tap into the huge amount of applications that are available? It will cost a lot of money and as long as Google is still doing regular AOSP code drops, what's the point?
- g947o 9mo ago
  The same reason nobody is doing a hard fork of Chromium.
palata 9mo ago
What about the Android SDK? I don't think that this is open source, is it? As a developer, when you download an Android SDK you have accept a licence that is not open source, right?
- maxloh 9mo ago
  Yeah. It is [1]. Surprisingly, Android Studio is open source too [2]. [1]: https://android.googlesource.com/platform/sdk/+/refs/heads/main https://android.googlesource.com/platform/sdk/+/refs/heads/m... [2]: https://android.googlesource.com/platform/tools/base/+/studio-master-dev/source.md https://android.googlesource.com/platform/tools/base/+/studi...
  - palata 9mo ago
    Oh is it Apache 2? That's what I see looking at a random file [1] but there is no global LICENSE file. And I didn't expect Android-Studio to be open source! [1]: https://android.googlesource.com/platform/sdk/+/refs/heads/main/apps/SdkController/src/com/android/tools/sdkcontroller/service/ControllerService.java https://android.googlesource.com/platform/sdk/+/refs/heads/m...
    - maxloh 9mo ago
      Yeah, they're Apache 2.0. That's how Android and some of its forks handle licensing. For example, most repos in LineageOS's GitHub org lack a global LICENSE file. Instead, licensing is specified on a file-by-file basis within the comment headers. This does lead to some ambiguity though. You can't put a license header into binary files like PNGs. In those cases, you can only trust that Google won't sue you for using them.
apitman 9mo ago
Google's moat with Android is the same as it's moat with Chrome: complexity. There are very few entities that could fork Android.

by paxys 9mo ago

microtonal 9mo ago

A hard fork is not needed. Non-Google Android do not have to enforce this requirement. It's more important to get as many people on alternatives like GrapheneOS as possible. And fund them by donating to them. If every ~0.5 million GrapheneOS users donated 10 Euro per month, they would be very well-funded.

paxys 9mo ago
There is no such thing as non-Google Android. At most you have people applying tiny patches on top of AOSP, but 100% of the code in the underlying project is still Google-approved, and none of the alternatives have control over that. It's the same as the situation with Chrome/Chromium. There are a million "de-Googled"/"privacy focused" alternatives to Chrome all using the same engine, and when Google pushed manifest v3 changes to block ad-blockers every single one of them was affected.
- microtonal 9mo ago
  At most you have people applying tiny patches on top of AOSP, but 100% of the code in the underlying project is still Google-approved, and none of the alternatives have control over that. You are making an orthogonal point. Yes, Google maintains AOSP. No, that does not mean that AOSP OSes that are not in Google's Android program (calling it that to avoid semantics games) have to adopt this change. If you want to hear it from the experts: https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/116103732687045013 https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/116103732687045013
  - paxys 9mo ago
    Unless these different Android flavors all have the resources to indefinitely rewrite AOSP and remove all Google code they don't agree with - no, they pretty much have to adopt the changes (see the earlier Chromium example). And if they do somehow manage this after a point all the patching basically becomes a fork, which is exactly what I started the conversation with.
    - microtonal 9mo ago
      I see your point, but it all hinges on when you consider the changes to be a patch set and when a fork. I don't think there is a very clear definition, except I don't think most of these projects would call themselves AOSP forks. At any rate, this particular Google anti-feature does not require a large patch (or maybe none at all).
    - kelvinjps10 9mo ago
      I think is good to extract the value of billionaire companies, why not use it?
      - fsflover 8mo ago
        Because they're not stupid and will use you instead. See: Google and XMPP story.
- Tharre 9mo ago
  > and when Google pushed manifest v3 changes to block ad-blockers every single one of them was affected. That's just objectively wrong, both Brave and Opera still support manifest v2 and are committed to continue doing so for the foreseeable future. Even Edge apparently still has it, funnily enough.
  - paxys 9mo ago
    Nope, actually "both Brave and Opera still support manifest v2" is objectively wrong. Brave does NOT support manifest v2. They have instead hand picked exactly 4 manifest v2 extensions (AdGuard, NoScript, uBlock Origin, and uMatrix) and have hard-coded special support for them. They quite literally say in https://brave.com/blog/brave-shields-manifest-v3/ https://brave.com/blog/brave-shields-manifest-v3/ that all other v2 extensions will go away from Brave once Google fully removes support for them (which may have happened already, since it was posted a while ago). As for Opera (https://blogs.opera.com/news/2025/09/mv2-extensions-opera/ https://blogs.opera.com/news/2025/09/mv2-extensions-opera/): > MV3 extensions are the new standard and will offer a more stable and secure experience. Opera itself will shift to an MV3-only extension store.
    - Tharre 9mo ago
      > They have instead hand picked exactly 4 manifest v2 extensions (AdGuard, NoScript, uBlock Origin, and uMatrix) and have hard-coded special support for them. They quite literally say in https://brave.com/blog/brave-shields-manifest-v3/ https://brave.com/blog/brave-shields-manifest-v3/ You're misreading that page, they have special cased the hosting of those 4 extensions, because they do not have their own addon web store and are relying on Chrome's instead. You can still install any manifest v2 addon manually, not that there are going to be many outside of those 4 that care about v2. As for Opera: "Today, we reiterate what we said back in October 2024: MV2 extensions are still available to use on Opera, and we are actively working to keep it that way for as long as it’s technically reasonable."
      - paxys 9mo ago
        > for as long as it’s technically reasonable Read: for as long as Chromium allows this via a flag.
anonzzzies 9mo ago
Get a large phone vendor to get a flagship phone with Graphene or so on the market. Otherwise nothing will happen. Even starting with the smaller ones like Blackview would do something. But almost no one will do that because users are said to want android; like my parents care... But they will care of course when their banking app stops working... That is the real issue imho.

realusername 9mo ago

The answer has to come from anti trust legislation. Android is too big for Google to control.

Tharre 9mo ago
Who else is going to maintain and develop it? It's the same issue as with Chrome, even if you force Google to give it to some other company, they're all just as bad. And it's too big and too costly to maintain for anyone else but tech giants. The only other options would be convincing users to pay 5 bucks a month for their software, or have some Government fork over the tens of millions required to pay open source developers. And good luck with that.
- iririririr 9mo ago
  I welcome feature stagnation on mobile! Every single release is a step backwards. Android 15 cannot hold a candle to what cynogenmod did on top of android 2.3. And that's objective.
  - jajuuka 9mo ago
    Historical meaning is pretty worthless though. It's like saying CPU's are going backwards because the 386 was a bigger jump. Technology matures eventually and that's not a bad thing.
    - realusername 9mo ago
      Android doesn't really work on hardware changes as AOSP doesn't run on a single phone on earth anyways, not even the emulators, this is the goal of the manufacturers. For the features you can read here for example what Android 16 changed: https://www.android.com/articles/android-16-features/ https://www.android.com/articles/android-16-features/
    - iririririr 8mo ago
      no my friend. i mean objectively, not some rose tinted nostalgia glasses. android2.3 allowed so much better control for people who are not installing all sort of crap apps, that the usability was something unimaginable to an android15 user. not to mention we had devices with trackballs, keyboards etc sadly, given that both manufacturers on this duopoly are highly incentivised to push malicious apps, everything must be throw out for a cat and mouse game of sand boxing

handity 9mo ago

A hard fork doesn't matter when the vast majority of phones have a locked bootloader.

paxys 9mo ago
Google's own phones do not have a locked booloader. You can buy a Pixel and put GrapheneOS on it in like 10 minutes. But basically no one does this, because no matter what people say in online forums they actually value ease of use and shiny features over privacy and software freedom.
- gonzalohm 9mo ago
  That's probably their next target once android is fully locked down
- catlikesshrimp 9mo ago
  A google tax which google's grace bestows upon us for as long as its whim want.
- Affric 9mo ago
  It's the nature of free software. The reason GNU and Linux won was because they produced software that was sufficient for the market: servers. The software is also sufficiently good for a PC for software development. There's almost sufficient software for PC gaming (up against an absolutely insane monopoly that is Microsoft). Phones are slightly different and for something more than a dumb phone you need great hardware; great software; and great integration. Employee computers for companies and general home users or tablets? Still a ways to go. I don't think wanting features and good UX is unreasonable from consumers.
- themafia 9mo ago
  > no matter what people say in online forums The people who speak in forums are a minority. > they actually value ease of use and shiny features over privacy and software freedom. There's no actual competition so we don't know this on any level.
9mo ago

chistev 9mo ago

What is stopping a hard fork?

microtonal 9mo ago
The gigantic task of maintaining and developing a mobile OS that needs to retain compatibility with AOSP/GPS anyway to tap into the huge amount of applications that are available? It will cost a lot of money and as long as Google is still doing regular AOSP code drops, what's the point?
g947o 9mo ago
The same reason nobody is doing a hard fork of Chromium.

palata 9mo ago

What about the Android SDK? I don't think that this is open source, is it? As a developer, when you download an Android SDK you have accept a licence that is not open source, right?

maxloh 9mo ago
Yeah. It is [1]. Surprisingly, Android Studio is open source too [2]. [1]: https://android.googlesource.com/platform/sdk/+/refs/heads/main https://android.googlesource.com/platform/sdk/+/refs/heads/m... [2]: https://android.googlesource.com/platform/tools/base/+/studio-master-dev/source.md https://android.googlesource.com/platform/tools/base/+/studi...
- palata 9mo ago
  Oh is it Apache 2? That's what I see looking at a random file [1] but there is no global LICENSE file. And I didn't expect Android-Studio to be open source! [1]: https://android.googlesource.com/platform/sdk/+/refs/heads/main/apps/SdkController/src/com/android/tools/sdkcontroller/service/ControllerService.java https://android.googlesource.com/platform/sdk/+/refs/heads/m...
  - maxloh 9mo ago
    Yeah, they're Apache 2.0. That's how Android and some of its forks handle licensing. For example, most repos in LineageOS's GitHub org lack a global LICENSE file. Instead, licensing is specified on a file-by-file basis within the comment headers. This does lead to some ambiguity though. You can't put a license header into binary files like PNGs. In those cases, you can only trust that Google won't sue you for using them.

apitman 9mo ago

Google's moat with Android is the same as it's moat with Chrome: complexity. There are very few entities that could fork Android.