Comment by paxys
6 days 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.
A hard fork doesn't matter when the vast majority of phones have a locked bootloader.
Yeah, that's the biggest issue. And it all originally stemed from phone carriers wanting to lock customers into their services.
We need some pro-consumer regulations on hardware which mandate open platforms. Fat chance of that happening, though, as the likes of both the EU and US want these locked down systems so they put in mandatory backdoors.
The other big issue is the closed source binary only drivers for almost everything.
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.
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.
That's probably their next target once android is fully locked down
A google tax which google's grace bestows upon us for as long as its whim want.
> 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.
Even if locked bootloaders weren't a thing, not being able to just buy a phone with an open Android pre-installed means it would get relegated to the Linux Zone, with a whole lot of "security alert" and "device not supported". Also, low popularity leads to fewer development resources, so it would probably suffer from lack of polish.
People will keep using the OS their phone comes with and that would be Google's Android. It's worse than with Windows PCs and Windows to be honest because phones have a locked bootloader.
People give a lot of flack to the EU, but this is the sort of thing they would regulate.
The Italian digital ID wallet is already in fact banning GrapheneOS and other ROMs [1], the EU doesn't mandate that member states have to allow non-Android/iOS apps [2]
[1] https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/eudi-app-andro...
[2] https://github.com/eu-digital-identity-wallet/eudi-doc-archi...
Or the fact that you need device drivers for every piece of hardware in a phone.
Yep, exactly why I've always supported the adoption of GPLv3. What point is there to FOSS if you cant use it?
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.
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.
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
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> 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.
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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.
The answer has to come from anti trust legislation. Android is too big for Google to control.
Under what law is that a legal or ethical thing to do? Why not suggest ios be taken away from Apple as well and windows from Microsoft?
I'd be fine with that too
Those things should also happen. Users shouldn't be forced to choose between 2 dictators to drop their pants for.
Can you be more specific on exactly what "that" you are thinking of which would be illegal or unethical?
Parent-poster just referenced past/future legislation in general.
I also suggest that indeed, if you can't avoid those companies it means it's time for antitrust
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.
I'm thinking with ever increasing seriousness: let's split any company that grows past a certain size. Each side gets a copy of the codebase and half the assets, no one who's been on the board on one side can be on the other side's board, and neither side can buy off the other. They can use the existing branding for a limited time and with a qualifier (say Google Turnip vs Google Potato) but after that it's on the strength of the new brand which they're each building and for which they're competing against each other and the rest of the market.
This is not happening in my lifetime, of course it isn't. But by god does it need to happen.
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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.
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Google's moat with Android is the same as it's moat with Chrome: complexity. There are very few entities that could fork Android.
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?
Yeah. It is [1]. Surprisingly, Android Studio is open source too [2].
[1]: https://android.googlesource.com/platform/sdk/+/refs/heads/m...
[2]: https://android.googlesource.com/platform/tools/base/+/studi...
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/m...
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What is stopping a hard fork?
The same reason nobody is doing a hard fork of Chromium.
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?