Android has been bad-faith open source for as long as I can remember.
Android is look-but-dont-touch source.
Its massive codebase that requires immense resources to build is not open for negotiation, its existence is to serve Google's whims.
Android was already a platform on life support. Google has wielded its authority to dictate how apps should behave such that even 3rd party stores do not stray far from Google's rules. Users of android phones have little hope to run a program from 5 years ago, or to roll back a bad update in an era full of bad updates.
> Users of android phones have little hope to run a program from 5 years ago
Android is actually much much better than iOS. For some older unmaintained apps I've dug out the APKs and most of them run without major issues, though a scary warning saying it's designed for older versions of Android.
Yeah, not all hope is lost, but good apps do get delisted for not complying with whatever Google dictates on the Play store, so you have to make good backups of content that only exists there! Which is a really great reason to use f-droid instead of course.
God I miss the days when I could plug a phone in and get a mass storage device. Imagine, I could copy a video off my phone and copy music onto it at the same time.
To be fair to Android, this is a limitation of the MTP protocol and not android.
To mount your storage as a mass storage device then the host device (your computer in this case) does raw sector read/writes to the device, the host device provides the filesystem services. For this to work it has to be completely unmounted from the phone as obviously having the block mounted in two filesystems at once would corrupt everything very badly.
Android used to split storage into various partitions, which is why this used to work - It was able to unmount the partition and let your PC manage it. This meant any apps using that partition needed to be stopped, etc etc. It was a pain, and I can totally understand why they moved away from this approach.
Personally I prefer the new way, yes using MTP has some limitations as you've noticed but it does mean the storage can remain mounted on android while your PC accesses it.
What do you mean you miss it? What is stopping you from doing exactly that now? Plug it in, drag down the drop-down and make you phone identify as storage. Then you can copy video off it while moving music onto it, if that is what you want.
Let's not expand the term open source to automatically mean community driven development or free software. Neither need apply for a project to be open source.
> its existence is to serve Google's whims
Ah, yeah... the existence of every major project is to satisfy the companies paying for the development. Linux has been over 80% corporate commits every year since 2003. Blender is funded by 35 corporations. Not one open source project larger than a library has gotten anywhere major without corporate sponsorship.
I do think that Android is bad-faith open source too, but not in that sense. It's bad faith open source because only AOSP is actually open source, and AOSP by itself is not that useful of an operating system. There are a lot of proprietary components required for a functioning Android phone, usually known as Google apps, which are not open source. Android as a system is better described as open core, not open source. There are even mechanisms to prevent you from using your own fork, such as the various "integrity" APIs.
I'd love to expand the term actually, because it's been misused to come to mean that something is community oriented, collaborative, even benevolent. Not even open source, but just the word "open". OpenAI for one. It's been abused for public image.
You're example of Linux is a bad one. Its contributions are corporate, but they are collaborative. With Android, Google dictates and others follow. Linux is not this way.
> Not one open source project larger than a library has gotten anywhere major without corporate sponsorship.
Let's think on this statement a little. From top of my head:
- VLC
- Darktable
- rsync
- KDE as in the Desktop Environment
- Clementine Music Player
- MusicBrainz Picard
- GIMP
- Zotero
- GNU Octave
- Kid3
- KMail
- etc, etc...
> Linux has been over 80% corporate commits every year since 2003
There's a big difference between all/most of the interest coming from a large company, compared to the numerous organizations that work together to make Linux what it is.
What do you mean by this? I have had changes upstreamed into AOSP and I'm not a Google employee.
>Its massive codebase that requires immense resources to build is not open for negotiation
So is every other operating systems. Do you think the millions of lines of codes for Windows builds instantly? You can get by building AOSP on a normal desktop workstation.
Ah yes, the most popular mobile operating system in the world is “on life support.”
iOS must not even exist anymore because it’s closed source. I can feel my iPhone disintegrating before my eyes.
Look-but-don’t-touch source, except for how there are multiple successful alternative builds like /e/os, LineageOS, and GrapheneOS
The second largest country in the whole world gets by using Android without Google Play services even being available there, with Android commanding a 77 percent marketshare.
Sure, I fully agree that Google isn’t super enthusiastic about open source for Android beyond the ways in which it benefits them, but there’s a lot of hyperbole in your comment.
I don't know why you are relating any of what I said to popularity or the merits of closed source. I guess you misunderstand what I mean by "on life support".
Android is unhealthy versus its former self in that it has been increasingly hostile to developers. Your examples of /e/os and lineage are representative of the "look-but-dont-touch" nature of Android.
Not to diminish the hard work of the developers of them, as they are useful, but they do not stray far from what Google provides them for better and worse. As you say, they're alternative builds, primarily to reduce the ties to Google, but they largely adhere to the same APIs, have the same menus, have the same quirks. Perhaps graphene goes above and beyond, I have not used it. I remember Cyanogenmod having more divergence in feature set and appearance from what Google provided versus what Lineage can do for you now. I miss when Android was good, but it's just become the platform I don't want to upgrade and see what I lose next.
How successful can you consider the alternatives to be when using them means you can't (easily, potentially at all in the future with hardware backed attestation) use ChatGPT, banking apps, order McDonalds, etc.?
In recent Android versions increasingly more features got moved into proprietary modules. A few years ago AOSP felt pretty much the same as proprietary Android.
Now changes in toolkits made it so that e.g. copying text from apps sometimes doesn't work. Google Android has a work around by using OCR (?) in the overview to select text. I feel like the former change is directly related to the ability of the OS to copy text anyway. This might not be a deliberate choice to limit AOSP but it shows how they design with proprietary Android in mind. Thus AOSP gets less useful as an OS as the design is not well thought out.
Why are people surprised about this? You can chose between the walled garden of iPhone where Apple wages war against its userbase with every release they do and on the other side there is Android with the surveillance platform that makes the patriot act obsolete. Chose one. :)
Why don't you go back to 2006 and tell me which complete open source mobile OS you want to use.
An immense amount of time was spent beating up vendors and others to be able to release, as open source, an OS that you could actually build and put on a phone.
These were the days that verizon and AT&T and other controlled exactly what OS's were allowed to run on phones.
Even being able to unlock a bootloader was not a thing.
The only thing that has happened for "as long as i can remember" is that different factions of open source folks have never been happy with the precise contours of AOSP vs what they want, and choose to shit on the immense hard work of lots of people as a result.
Yet i doubt any of them would be close to where they are, at all, had android not been released as open source.
Can we please stop rewriting history because we have some disagreement with the contours. It was an immense leap forward for open source OSes on phones.
I generally agree with all of this but Google wasn't the one that stopped the vendor controlled OS. That was Apple for the most part.
Apple released the iPhone and basically told all of the carriers "tough crap, you can't put your bloatware on our phones. This started with AT&T (exclusive carrier for iPhone) and by the time that agreement ended, every carrier was clamoring for the iPhone on their network. It was the next big thing after all. If you don't want us on your network you can explain to your customers why they can get an iPhone on a competitor, but not on your network." Vendors had no choice.
Not the person you are asking but I would like to deprecate all SoCs, have generic ARM hardware, a kernel module approved by Linus for using a modular LTE modem the user can replace or upgrade with option-slots for different types optional devices based on the users needs wishes and desires. I should be able to plonk down whatever desktop Linux OS that tickles my fancy and it just works. There should be hardware modules and kernel modules for any network on earth. I should also be able to plug in any peripheral device that works on my workstations.
Obviously, you will be able to find plenty of examples of things that don't work, and you probably have a bank app or some other thing that you need Google for, but alternatives do exist, and I'd argue that you can have a healthier, more productive, and more enjoyable experience if you can have all your needs met by software that isn't treating you as a product.
My opinion is you should use whatever works; I do. But try not to absolutely need software that you can't control.
As you say, due to banking, this works more or less depending on which country you live in.
Some countries have tied their banking to their phones, with apps that use SafetyNet to check how Googled you are.
Somehow corporations and nations have given sovereignty away for convenience and so you may need 2 phones: the google one and the good one, to properly be f-droid only.
Before Google Play Services, updates were a big concern for Android. If Android N had the feature you wanted, but Verizon/Motorola only shipped N-1 for your Droid, you were out of luck. There were pie charts routinely tossed around showing which devices had which Android version numbers. You don't hear those concerns nearly as often anymore.
Makes me wonder what the tradeoffs/alternatives are. Maybe they could have still moved features to a Play Services-esque library but published the source for it. Considering we're commenting on a post about how developing in the open is too inconvenient for modern Google, the difference might have been moot.
Android is not any one thing and it was never open source. AOSP meanwhile is entirely open source, to the letter.
AOSP is a compromise, because device manufacturers don't want to share anything. Google effectively negotiated with device manufacturers to open source part of their software. Device manufacturers lose some of their secret features to competitors. In exchange, they don't have to develop those features themselves. App developers get a standard platform, which benefits everyone: users and manufacturers and app developers.
This is very much a win-win situation, because the alternative is that every manufacturer has their own proprietary system.
> This is very much a win-win situation, because the alternative is that every manufacturer has their own proprietary system.
No, it's a lose-lose situation. If we have 100 different mobile OS's it's a matter of time until a "good one" appears, and we get some sort of innovation in the space - be it from a technical perspective, from an UX perspective, or whatever.
Now we're all stuck with Android, where manufacturers can't really do anything interesting with their phones, users get an incredibly bloated, technically incompetent system, and all parties have to abide by Google's every whim.
It sounds to me like Graphene will have a large gap of access to fixes compared to the special vendors.. I wont be upgrading to a newer Pixel until I see a year or two of this working out and I think that is less likely than a descent.
I doubt it effects them. Those operating systems are based off Android 15. I don't think either of them were trying to backport Android 16 code into their OS.
+1 I don't think it effects them as they usually only pick up releases after they are published, which is when Google will release the source now anyways.
Any important and useful part of Android is already moved to closed source components long time ago.
Moreover, without closed source and kernel targeted drivers, it’s not possible to even boot hardware with Android for an eternity now. None of the companies will give you even an object file which you can link against a more modern kernel (given the delta is not that big so ABI is not broken), yet alone the source code.
As a result, Android is a big mountain of open code, without the crucial parts needed to make it work. AOSP is a shell of its former shell, and being emptied day by day.
Now it’s moving to a cathedral model from a bazaar one, and who knows when Google will release the source code of the “new version” of AOSP. They may even strip the tree to GPL parts since they have to open these parts and conveniently forget to update the MIT parts on the open part.
IOW, silently stop as Oracle did for the parts they can.
It was closed-source for the entirety of Android 3.x “Honeycomb”, the tablet-only Android version that introduced Holo on the Motorola XOOM etc. Source code for 3.x was retroactively made available when 4.0 resumed its open-sourceness:
> This release includes the full history of the Android source code tree, which naturally includes all the source code for the Honeycomb releases. However, since Honeycomb was a little incomplete, we want everyone to focus on Ice Cream Sandwich. So, we haven't created any tags that correspond to the Honeycomb releases (even though the changes are present in the history.)
This title is clickbait. A lot of repos in AOSP were already like this. Calling development private seems misleading because you can still contribute to them.
Readit News
Android was already a platform on life support. Google has wielded its authority to dictate how apps should behave such that even 3rd party stores do not stray far from Google's rules. Users of android phones have little hope to run a program from 5 years ago, or to roll back a bad update in an era full of bad updates.
Android is actually much much better than iOS. For some older unmaintained apps I've dug out the APKs and most of them run without major issues, though a scary warning saying it's designed for older versions of Android.
- Unless you don't want Google to know your location constantly, no matter what setting you use for the GPS chip.
- Unless you want security updates past a year.
Android used to split storage into various partitions, which is why this used to work - It was able to unmount the partition and let your PC manage it. This meant any apps using that partition needed to be stopped, etc etc. It was a pain, and I can totally understand why they moved away from this approach.
Personally I prefer the new way, yes using MTP has some limitations as you've noticed but it does mean the storage can remain mounted on android while your PC accesses it.
> its existence is to serve Google's whims
Ah, yeah... the existence of every major project is to satisfy the companies paying for the development. Linux has been over 80% corporate commits every year since 2003. Blender is funded by 35 corporations. Not one open source project larger than a library has gotten anywhere major without corporate sponsorship.
You're example of Linux is a bad one. Its contributions are corporate, but they are collaborative. With Android, Google dictates and others follow. Linux is not this way.
Let's think on this statement a little. From top of my head:
There's a big difference between all/most of the interest coming from a large company, compared to the numerous organizations that work together to make Linux what it is.
Bold statement. Who is the corporate sponsor of Emacs?
What do you mean by this? I have had changes upstreamed into AOSP and I'm not a Google employee.
>Its massive codebase that requires immense resources to build is not open for negotiation
So is every other operating systems. Do you think the millions of lines of codes for Windows builds instantly? You can get by building AOSP on a normal desktop workstation.
iOS must not even exist anymore because it’s closed source. I can feel my iPhone disintegrating before my eyes.
Look-but-don’t-touch source, except for how there are multiple successful alternative builds like /e/os, LineageOS, and GrapheneOS
The second largest country in the whole world gets by using Android without Google Play services even being available there, with Android commanding a 77 percent marketshare.
https://microg.org/
Sure, I fully agree that Google isn’t super enthusiastic about open source for Android beyond the ways in which it benefits them, but there’s a lot of hyperbole in your comment.
Android is unhealthy versus its former self in that it has been increasingly hostile to developers. Your examples of /e/os and lineage are representative of the "look-but-dont-touch" nature of Android.
Not to diminish the hard work of the developers of them, as they are useful, but they do not stray far from what Google provides them for better and worse. As you say, they're alternative builds, primarily to reduce the ties to Google, but they largely adhere to the same APIs, have the same menus, have the same quirks. Perhaps graphene goes above and beyond, I have not used it. I remember Cyanogenmod having more divergence in feature set and appearance from what Google provided versus what Lineage can do for you now. I miss when Android was good, but it's just become the platform I don't want to upgrade and see what I lose next.
Now changes in toolkits made it so that e.g. copying text from apps sometimes doesn't work. Google Android has a work around by using OCR (?) in the overview to select text. I feel like the former change is directly related to the ability of the OS to copy text anyway. This might not be a deliberate choice to limit AOSP but it shows how they design with proprietary Android in mind. Thus AOSP gets less useful as an OS as the design is not well thought out.
the point is that you're not going to be able to upstream any changes
Why don't you go back to 2006 and tell me which complete open source mobile OS you want to use.
An immense amount of time was spent beating up vendors and others to be able to release, as open source, an OS that you could actually build and put on a phone. These were the days that verizon and AT&T and other controlled exactly what OS's were allowed to run on phones.
Even being able to unlock a bootloader was not a thing.
The only thing that has happened for "as long as i can remember" is that different factions of open source folks have never been happy with the precise contours of AOSP vs what they want, and choose to shit on the immense hard work of lots of people as a result.
Yet i doubt any of them would be close to where they are, at all, had android not been released as open source.
Can we please stop rewriting history because we have some disagreement with the contours. It was an immense leap forward for open source OSes on phones.
Apple released the iPhone and basically told all of the carriers "tough crap, you can't put your bloatware on our phones. This started with AT&T (exclusive carrier for iPhone) and by the time that agreement ended, every carrier was clamoring for the iPhone on their network. It was the next big thing after all. If you don't want us on your network you can explain to your customers why they can get an iPhone on a competitor, but not on your network." Vendors had no choice.
This is also true of iOS. What alternative would you propose?
Obviously, you will be able to find plenty of examples of things that don't work, and you probably have a bank app or some other thing that you need Google for, but alternatives do exist, and I'd argue that you can have a healthier, more productive, and more enjoyable experience if you can have all your needs met by software that isn't treating you as a product.
My opinion is you should use whatever works; I do. But try not to absolutely need software that you can't control.
Some countries have tied their banking to their phones, with apps that use SafetyNet to check how Googled you are.
Somehow corporations and nations have given sovereignty away for convenience and so you may need 2 phones: the google one and the good one, to properly be f-droid only.
Makes me wonder what the tradeoffs/alternatives are. Maybe they could have still moved features to a Play Services-esque library but published the source for it. Considering we're commenting on a post about how developing in the open is too inconvenient for modern Google, the difference might have been moot.
AOSP is a compromise, because device manufacturers don't want to share anything. Google effectively negotiated with device manufacturers to open source part of their software. Device manufacturers lose some of their secret features to competitors. In exchange, they don't have to develop those features themselves. App developers get a standard platform, which benefits everyone: users and manufacturers and app developers.
This is very much a win-win situation, because the alternative is that every manufacturer has their own proprietary system.
No, it's a lose-lose situation. If we have 100 different mobile OS's it's a matter of time until a "good one" appears, and we get some sort of innovation in the space - be it from a technical perspective, from an UX perspective, or whatever.
Now we're all stuck with Android, where manufacturers can't really do anything interesting with their phones, users get an incredibly bloated, technically incompetent system, and all parties have to abide by Google's every whim.
Hopefully they can still function like this
Nice. While Android was not open source for a long time, at least it's not openwashed anymore.
What do you mean by this? Maybe you couldn't get your contributions in, but you could fork Android any time.
Moreover, without closed source and kernel targeted drivers, it’s not possible to even boot hardware with Android for an eternity now. None of the companies will give you even an object file which you can link against a more modern kernel (given the delta is not that big so ABI is not broken), yet alone the source code.
As a result, Android is a big mountain of open code, without the crucial parts needed to make it work. AOSP is a shell of its former shell, and being emptied day by day.
Now it’s moving to a cathedral model from a bazaar one, and who knows when Google will release the source code of the “new version” of AOSP. They may even strip the tree to GPL parts since they have to open these parts and conveniently forget to update the MIT parts on the open part.
IOW, silently stop as Oracle did for the parts they can.
https://groups.google.com/g/android-building/c/T4XZJCZnqF8
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3235926
> This release includes the full history of the Android source code tree, which naturally includes all the source code for the Honeycomb releases. However, since Honeycomb was a little incomplete, we want everyone to focus on Ice Cream Sandwich. So, we haven't created any tags that correspond to the Honeycomb releases (even though the changes are present in the history.)
Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43484927
(Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43482798)
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