With google following apple’s walled garden, and limiting third party app installations, can someone else big (nonprofit like GNU or Linux foundation) fork and maintain android? Reason for choosing someone big is for mass adoption and that google is slowly boiling the pot to see what enshittification it could get away with
I’d rather they supported a full linux phone instead of investing in something Goofle owns.
Whose paying for it? Most Foss devs are paid now by companies.
Sorry to pop your bubble but Google is Platinum tier member of Linux Foundation.
That inefficient dumbster fire? What for?
The Linux foundation is not for the people either… They serve their corporate sponsors.
I’d disagree with that. The fact that they maintain a really good privacy respecting OS publicly available and open source is a point to me
What OS do they maintain? Linux is not an OS, but a kernel that powers many different OS’s, even Android.
I mean they fund kernel development which in turn indirectly funds OS . Like, what would the OS run without a kernel
How familiar are you with the Linux foundation?
Lets ignore the “is it possible” and imagine what would happen if it was. Whatever entity forks AOSP would start off with (next to) no userbase. The platform “Android” will remain Google’s AOSP, including some proprietary components. Whenever Google decides, they can enforce apps on the Google Play Store to use a new version of the Android system API. This is often a breaking change; apps that update won’t work on older Android. There is nothing stopping Google from creating complex breaking changes that tie into their proprietary components, killing off any attempt at running Google Play Store apps on older or “fully FOSS” Android. Even if a hard fork of AOSP existed, it would not remain compatible with the vast majority of applications.
So even if this could happen, it won’t. Nobody is going to invest in hard forking a project that is going to be killed off by Google’s monopoly.
The much better (long term) option is to stay completely outside AOSP, like with mobile Linux distros such as postmarketOS. Right now, it is underdeveloped and not an option as a daily driver for most. But over time, this is the only feasible option that can give control back to the user.
And well never happen. If Linux dies overtake Microsoft on desktop it is not because of user control but the fact Valve has made game playing possible and better on Linux. People well not switch till they have a reason.
Could that happen? No. A massive amount of android development comes from employees paid by google to do it. What amount of resources should be siphoned away from linux/gnu stuff to support android developers? None.
Is it possible though? No. Android is a proprietary binary blob core (idr if kernel is the right term) with a bunch of open source stuff wrapped around it. For gnu, that part would have to be rewritten and that’s too big a job to take on.
Should it happen? Again, no. There are already plenty of alternatives to google branded android. Just use those.
Even if you were to wave a wand and make the android custodians according to your will, play services, the thing google is restricting, is still googles thing.
The second paragraph isn’t accurate - Android uses the Linux kernel. Hardware manufacturers typically ship their own proprietary modules, but in principle there’s nothing stopping you from running a mainline kernel image as long as support for the specific device or SoC is present. Granted, this isn’t the case for the majority of phones, but this isn’t a limitation of Android itself and you’d run into the same issue trying to run postmarketOS or really anything else on an unsupported device.
I also want to point out that there really aren’t any good alternatives to Android (and its derivatives) at the moment. Mobile Linux distributions are getting better, but at least in my personal experience and from what I’ve heard from others it’s still a pretty janky experience in comparison and arguably is only suitable for enthusiasts.
The MIT License And its Future
Thanks for the correction, it was early and I’m not very smart.
The same hardware support problems exist for many SBCs in addition to the majority of phones like you pointed out. It’s a big pain in the butt.
The linux phone alternatives aren’t very mature, you’re right. I’d argue that to the extent that working on a free/libre/whatever phone system is a smart thing to do it’s probably best to focus on those alternatives as opposed to trying to reform android.
Tbh it seems beyond saving.
On another note, do you think the EU would have interest in forking android considering its push towards digital sovereignty away from US big tech
No, states dance with free software to make the vendors they came to the ball with jealous, not because they intend to take homely ol’ free software home when the music stops.
It’s actively against their interests to adopt open source standards in a multipolar world where the literal easiest and most common supply chain attack is against open source repos.
You wouldn’t want the eu to be the new shepherds of android anyway, they’d just be another giant power trying to control how development goes. Those same giant powers are all busy putting different kinds of age verification in their systems.
E: also the eus digital sovereignty braying is an attempt to remain relevant to the us, not a serious policy direction. It’s much more “better treat us nicer or we’ll cut you out of our tech buying pipeline” as opposed to “we are creating a real fourth pole in cyber power”.
It would be nice if they did that, or something similar involving Linux on phones.
I don’t think they have anywhere near the resources, unfortunately.
As long as Google is doing a better job maintaining AOSP than a nonprofit would, what’s the point?
If they ever stop doing so, then this might be an option.
yeah, people forget AOSP is actually foss and it’s pretty good by itself.
google play services is where the proprietary crud is at.
Keep telling yourself that when Google shuts down installation of 3rd party apps in AOSP.
they are literally doing that through play services.
No, and for that matter Linux can’t survive without for profit corporation labor either.
Their are already Linux phone options. I’m talking about full-fat installations and even distro-hopping.
Even assuming that happens (very unlikely), the real issue is convincing OEMs to ship this new version instead of Google’s
Iirc, there was talk of getting the android core to sync back to Linux and send plenty of code upstream. The project was supposed to take plenty of time as android had strayed very far away from its Linux origin. I have no idea what happened and when the project stopped.
Android uses mainline Linux kernel for several years already. Whatever drivers OEMs are using are provided as separate binaries.
I fuzzily remember that it had happened
I’m not sure what GNU is going to do. A while back they announced that they wanted to make sure free software phones were going to be a thing, but i don’t think they’re forking android to do it.
Yeah I think many members of the community would like to see android get forked but not many are willing to do it. I don’t blame them.
