Android runs millions of devices worldwide, but could consumers have reaped the rewards of a more open Android system?

When Google, along with a consortium of other companies, announced the open-source operating system we call Android way back in 2007, the world was paying attention. The iPhone had launched the same year, and the entire mobile space was wary of the rush of excitement around the admittedly revolutionary device. AOSP (Android Open Source Project) was born, and within a few years Android swallowed up market share with phones of all shapes and sizes from manufacturers all over the globe. Android eventually found its way into TVs, fridges, washing machines, cars, and the in-flight entertainment system of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner.

  • jet@hackertalks.comEnglish
    43·
    5 months ago

    AOSP absolutely is a massive success. The fact that all of these Android handset manufacturers exist today, is thanks to AOSP. The fact that Android is a major competitor to the Apple ecosystem, is thanks to AOSP.

    I think the biggest criticism we can say is AOSP has not taken off like Linux with different forks being maintained and parallel, mostly because people who are using AOSP want to sell devices and not maintain an operating system… If AOSP was LGPL, and all of the manufacturers who fork it, had to release their code openly, that would be interesting… Heck, if Google required open bootloaders, and the ability to secure bootloaders, to get Google Play services on the phone. We would see a massive amount of user empowerment in the entire ecosystem…

    I think the biggest excitement we see for companies to fork AOSP is when they want to try to make their own walled garden like Google Play, like the app store… So we see this with Samsung, the Chinese phones etc.

    As long as Google does the heavy lifting of AOSP I don’t think we’re going to see major commercial forks, nobody got rich duplicating Google’s work they give away for free.

    I am very thankful that AOSP exists so we can get programs like replicant, and graphene OS. And will I love these projects, if AOSP stop getting updates tomorrow, there is not enough momentum for these projects to survive on their own, so they’re more like very enthusiastic skins that depend on AOSP updates rather than independent operating systems.

    • tiramichu@lemm.eeEnglish
      19·
      5 months ago

      Google absolutely made a calculated decision when they decided to allow device manufacturers to fork AOSP and introduce closed-source modifications. If it wasn’t for that, I can’t imagine OEMs would have wanted to get on board, and so we wouldn’t have seen the huge adoption that happened, and Android might have become just another failed operating system.

      I do truly wish for a fully open-source “Linux on the phone” type experience, but what always kills that is apps, because companies just don’t make them unless the market share is there. Even Microsoft had to pull out after pumping so much money into Windows phone, and I think most of the reason was because they couldn’t incentivise developers to make apps enough.

      So I’m glad at least I can run Calyx, and have just a tiny bit more freedom while still keeping the apps I need, even if it’s nowhere near perfect.

    • jet@hackertalks.comEnglish
      22·
      5 months ago

      I am very happy that we will not see AOSP get killed like every other good Google service, because the Google Play store makes so much money… So much money… So much money… It would be suicidal to kill this project