Google released Android 16 to AOSP without Pixel device-specific source code, which impacts all custom ROM development
Posted by SpecialistPlan9641@reddit | linux | View on Reddit | 106 comments
kansetsupanikku@reddit
Is that any different from tivoization? Can the complete device specific code be moved to non-gpl, out-of-tree modules?
I know that the Linux code used by Google doesn't have to be public. But as an user who receives update from them, one should be entitled to request the source code (on copyleft conditions). I wonder how did they organize this in order not to have to include any if the pixel-specific parts.
ScratchHistorical507@reddit
Doesn't need to be, but since absolutely every user of a Pixel device has the right to receive the source code at no cost higher than what it would cost Google to hand it over - which is basically zero - there's no other realistic way to do it.
You literally are. That's the whole point of GPLv2.
kansetsupanikku@reddit
Yes, I know that my claims are based on GPL-2. What I'm wondering about is whether Google truly made the device support a separate project (a big change from the former versions), or are they just violating GPL-2 like Xiaomi. I guess it would be easy enough to determine from the running system.
zalnaRs@reddit
Xiaomi since released kernels for their devices and they're constantly updating it. MediaTek devices don't have them or it's incomplete.
Aiden-Isik@reddit
Unfortunately they did move a lot of hardware specific drivers from the kernel to "HALs" instead, presumably so they could pull this exact stunt.
EmptyMindTM@reddit
c'est quoi des hal ?
ScratchHistorical507@reddit
Xiaomi can get away with such things because they are a Chinese company, and they are quite small in the markets where they would be most likely sued over this. But Google is a very large US company, and currently both the US and the EU are very happy over any excuses these big tech companies give them to file lawsuits.
AntLive9218@reddit
Does legality really matter if laws are not going to be enforced?
The US is becoming more and more protective of its own industries, and others are relying on US technology mostly because of the lack of their own mature tech industry are more than happy to keep on mooching.
I find the EU the most hilarious related example of how governments and large companies ignore laws for the sake of convenience. GDPR be damned, just to digitally interact with some governments, people already get to be abused by Google Analytics and Google Play Services, but if you include banking, then you've got to be really picky to still remain free, and if you include other common services, then there's no country safe despite the promises of the laws.
So which government would allow a meaningful lawsuit? The one that would hurt its money maker, or one of the many small ones which which are already okay with the current abusive trade-offs for their own benefit?
kansetsupanikku@reddit
Dunno about your place, but governments usually don't allow or disallow lawsuits. It's up to prosecutor and the court.
And Google is selling Pixel devices in many countries, they also have local offices registered there. Contributors to Linux also come from all that countries. If GPL was broken (and that's an actual "if" regarding whether kernel license was broken or the drivers were all moved to Apache-licensed projects), this could be just a civil trial. With no big consequences besides fixing the status, i.e. stopping to distribute that version with Linux or providing the code.
Plan_9_fromouter_@reddit
Courts are part of the government. Lawsuits are often brought simply because someone has a lot of money to pay lawyers and get to a judge. Like Johnny Depp's mostly bogus lawsuit in the US. He probably spent 20 million dollars to mount it, conduct it, and win it.
kansetsupanikku@reddit
Right, I should say "execution" instead. Regardless, adjudication should be largely separate unless you live in an authoritarian regime. Which USA might be. But not all the countries where smartphones are sold, especially not in Europe.
Plan_9_fromouter_@reddit
Much of the US is run by the judicial system because it encompasses LE down to the local level---the county sheriffs' offices. And it is run by presidential executive order.
kansetsupanikku@reddit
Let's not pretended USA is civilized, or a reference for anything. Democratic countries aren't that blatantly broken. And that's where lawful steps could be taken.
Plan_9_fromouter_@reddit
Tell the people running the deep state and overseas military empire from DC that.
kansetsupanikku@reddit
That they are based on primal power play and war policies rather than social norms and democracy? I believe they know.
Plan_9_fromouter_@reddit
Like it or not, those are your norms. And democracy a basically meaningless term.
kansetsupanikku@reddit
I know that USA want to see themselves as the whole world, the norm, or even the best miracle there is. But they are neither, and this aspect (completely politicized jurisdiction) actually sucks. If it goes as far as the comments indicate, that would put USA closer to Venezuela or Zimbabwe than to the "norm".
Plan_9_fromouter_@reddit
Why drag them into it? The USuk alliance plus puppet NATO/EU is what you ought to be worrying about.
kansetsupanikku@reddit
Because that's where USA is. Corruption + common law would cause that. Most of the EU uses civil law and apply power separation, which makes jurisdiction way more reliable and meaningful. Perhaps we should switch, because of being USA puppets? Makes one wonder why it hasn't happened yet.
Plan_9_fromouter_@reddit
LOL. The US destroyed Nordstream and the EU puppets blame Russia. LOL. You are laughingstocks. The US has you under their thumbs through NATO.
kansetsupanikku@reddit
Some other than US blames Russia? It's the first time I hear of this. It wasn't exactly done in white gloves. We know.
Plan_9_fromouter_@reddit
The point is the EU did nothing about the US's criminal acts. That is not a functional anything.
AntLive9218@reddit
Dunno about your place either, but it doesn't matter, because I don't think there's any court that's not biased towards the interests of the local government.
People stopped pursuing GPL violations because it was expensive to just get courts to pretend there's nothing that could be done with a foreign violator. On the other hand governments impose import restrictions and taxation changes even on foreign goods and services with ease.
There's also what you mentioned, stopping distribution. Which country would be okay with being excluded from not just a globally significant service, but also one they likely rely on? EU politicians talked a lot about the dangers of this dependency, then they ended up not doing anything about it, letting citizens keep on taking the abuse even as it's getting worse.
Also, to skip the "if" part, this whole issue was already tested as countries were flooded with completely closed source (mostly) Chinese phones obviously using the Linux kernel. Hell, there are worse tangible issues, like it's even more damning how the EU started requiring more info on imports and VAT being paid, and they'll happily collect all of that for dangerous products which wouldn't be legal to produce locally. Laws are really meaningless when rights are sacrificed for political interests.
kansetsupanikku@reddit
Taxes and trade agreements are completely separate legal means from court judgements. Court can't judge that an European country has to stop all trade with USA, not even with Google. But to list Pixel models that were being sold with violation of the law? It would have nothing to do with government work. If Google wanted to trade cocaine here, it wouldn't be the government who would force them to stop, either.
HiPhish@reddit
Linux is under the GPLv2, which does not protect from Tivoization, and Linus has gone on record saying that he does not mind Tivoization, he only wants to get the source code. As always, Stallman was right.
irasponsibly@reddit
Unfortunately he's [very wrong about a lot of other things] (https://stallman-report.org/)
Richard_Masterson@reddit
The author of that piece has a personal grudge against RMS and was found to host and share erotica depicting children, just for your information.
The article also takes quotes out of context and presents them in a malicious way.
Tormenator1@reddit
Do you have a article talking about that accusation? That's a big claim to make?
Richard_Masterson@reddit
Of course.
oxid111@reddit
Was right about what? Genuinely asking
HiPhish@reddit
About the importance of anti-tivoization measures in the GPL. This was part of the reason why the GPLv3 was created, and also why Linus rejected the GPLv3 claiming that it goes against the spirit of the GPL.
https://youtu.be/PaKIZ7gJlRU
He was also right about how Open Source misses the point of Free Software. Open Source is all about making collaboration and sharing (and free (gratis) labor) attractive to companies. There is nothing wrong in itself with that, but none of this protected the freedom of the user. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.en.html
Left_Security8678@reddit
Reason more we should have pushed for GPL3 in the Linux Kernel. But Linus thinks somehow tivoization a good thing.
ScratchHistorical507@reddit
Please stop spreading misinformation. GPLv2 already gives every user the right to demand to receive and use all source code Google uses in their modified Linux Kernel under the GPLv2, basically for free by definition. If the Kernel would have went GPLv3, it would have simply been abandoned by every one. Not a single company would have ever touched Linux and Android would most likely have been closed source just like iOS.
kansetsupanikku@reddit
Companies would just fork the last GPL-2 version. Probably even cooperate on its development on GPL-2 terms. Perhaps giving it better funding and more engineers than GPL-3-Linux would be able to keep.
ScratchHistorical507@reddit
No, they wouldn't have. That might be what would happen now if Linux was to switch to GPLv3 now, but it's basically impossible to do that now, as for all I know you'd have to get every single developer that ever contributed code to the Kernel that's still in use in some way or another to agree to this license change. An absolutely impossible task. After all, it's GPLv2 licensed, not GPLv2+.
And back when this was an actual discussion, Linux was in a very different place than it is today. That was almost 20 years ago. So it would be very questionable if any companies would have invested in forking the last GPLv2 version of the source code, and thus being forced to keep every change ever made to it GPLv2.
Guillaume-Francois@reddit
The inevitably declining rate of profit ensures that everything produced commercially will eventually be made worse in the interest of squeezing out of it every last dime possible.
It's shocking (but not really) that there still isn't a decent hardware platform for a FOSS phone. The best the Replicant project managed was the Samsung S3, which is no longer a realistic option due the old networks being retired. Even outside the fully FOSS space, our best option is the Pine Phone, and I'm not sure if it's actually going well or not.
I dream that some day we'll all be running RISC-V smartphones with which we can communicate to one another in real time to fight about whether GNOME's latest batch of feature removals is justified.
spiteful_fly@reddit
Sony has their Xperia Open Devices and they embrace the community. Fairphone also supports their phones pretty well.
FullOnBeliever@reddit
Why would you want a FOSS phone as opposed to any other type of whatever FOSS is? I’m a learner not a pith.
Guillaume-Francois@reddit
FOSS stands for Free and Open-Source Software (i.e. it meets the Free Software Foundation's definition of free software).
So a FOSS phone would have hardware in which an operating system could run without requiring any proprietary software.
FullOnBeliever@reddit
Oh! lol. My bad. I thought it was like Debian or FreeBSD or something. Actually now that I type that out I see I’m really fucking ignorant. Geeeez, computers are hard.
Guillaume-Francois@reddit
Nah dude, don't sweat it. I've asked some real bangers in my day too, it's just part of learning.
spiteful_fly@reddit
You know, I was hoping to continue to upgrade my Pixel's version of Android well after the EOL date with LineageOS as a gaming device after I eventually decide to upgrade to another Pixel in a year or two.
Now that I know that my plans for long term supported Pixels are out the window, I'm going to be keeping an eye out on which manufacturers are still custom OS friendly. If there aren't any, I'm going to be open to the idea of getting iPhones.
S7relok@reddit
"If the system I use is going closed, I'll buy devices with the most closed one"
spiteful_fly@reddit
You're not wrong in paraphrasing things in that way. The way I see it is that I'm also weighing the performance and experience of using the device. If I can't really game on an up-to-date Android (performant) device well after the EOL date, then I don't see a strong enough distinction to just be looking at Android devices. I'm just saying, depending on what I feeling like doing at the time, I'm open to all options.
S7relok@reddit
Main android devices have now from 5 to 7 years of update support. Especially if you mobile game, you'll need to change the device before that timespan
spiteful_fly@reddit
I'm doing pretty good with my current Pixel. A week ago, I could still see it being used to play one of my favorite mobile games when I decided to upgrade to a new phone. Today, I don't see myself being able to use this same Pixel for as long as I personally would have wanted regardless of whether you believe my phone would last that long.
Here's a specific case for you now. The Pixel 5 support is EOL and now imagine there being no LineageOS support for Android 16+. In a few years, your app requirements will eventually be over Android 16, and now you can't do what you could do before with the device. I don't particularly like that kind of outcome.
S7relok@reddit
TBH even if you're the most caring pixel owner on earth, you'll have plenty of time when your game will still run on your old device. Except if the market decide that suddenly a new architecture (I heard good stuff about RISC V) is the way to go.
spiteful_fly@reddit
I hear what you're saying and owning a RISC-V device is a major plus in my mind, but can we just accept and mourn over the fact that things are changing and that we may not walk down the same path? I don't know what I will end up deciding to do.
KarinAppreciator@reddit
Your concerns are objectively a little silly. You'll stop buying android phones altogether because you may lose the ability to play games on your 10 year old phone? If this is really your deal breaker then so be it, but I also wouldn't be surprised when people gave you this kind of response.
spiteful_fly@reddit
Hey, I appreciate you sharing your thoughts, but I never mentioned anything about a 10 year old phone. Also, it's a grand total of 2 people who gave me "this kind of response" with you being the other person.
So why are you replying on an open source kernel subreddit about about users voicing concerns of losing support for their devices? For context, the upstream kernel support devices for decades and the maintainers go out of their way to ask if there are still users before deprecating and removing support.
Google is already doing the work to create and maintain the DeviceTree and drivers. So why was it necessary to close source those on devices you're still making releases for?
WelpIamoutofideas@reddit
That logic of support has never been the priority of Google or the Android Open Source Project.
With 6 to 8 years of software being up to date, Your phone will be unable to play any of the games you want to play before then. If playing games on your phone is really that big of a priority to you, you will swap your phone before it expires, Just because the game won't launch anymore in 3 to 5 years.
They very much do not have the same decades of software development and backwards compatibility views as upstream Linux does. They never did and they never will.
Because Google is entirely possibly about to lose control of the Android ecosystem, because of that they are panicking and wanting to remove the code. That is their special sauce before they do.
spiteful_fly@reddit
I think my point was kinda missed though. What Google stopped publishing was the DeviceTree configuration and the binary drivers. They stopped releasing them before the actual end of life support for existing devices that they are making releases for. Had Google just kept doing that till the very last build they released before EOL, no one would be concerned about anything. Why? Because for 7 years, people can rebuild Android without their secret sauce (Pixel-specific features) and they would be able to adapt the devices more easily to newer versions of Android because the DeviceTree and binary drivers would be newer.
You guys keep focusing on the life of the device, but that's not really the point. This is also only Google and Samsung that support their devices for 7 years. As far as I am aware, no other manufacturer are as open for their devices and the community support is not healthy. The Pixel lineup may end up following that trend as well.
WelpIamoutofideas@reddit
Correct, what's the issue? We have the old one, and port it to newer versions, it will be harder but it's not a deal breaker.
Also, so what? There isn't any better, focusing on something that isn't going to change and complaining is going to get you nowhere.
spiteful_fly@reddit
So when the Pixel 10 is released and they don't release a DeviceTree and binary drivers, what are you going to be porting?
I believe I already said that I'll be looking at my options when it comes time to buy a new phone, and why I would be doing that. The real question is, why are you here?
S7relok@reddit
In the end you're the boss of your choices, bro.
It's just a internet tech discussion.
Flakmaster92@reddit
If someone’s going to be in a closed off ecosystem either way, then the value proposition (not just $, whatever pros/cons they see) shifts towards everything else. Maybe the apps they care about have better iOS versions, maybe they like the iOS UX better but openness beat that out, maybe they already have other Apple devices so there’s a unifying factor.
AntLive9218@reddit
I've had this discussion with people, and even those who disliked Apple concluded that with Android sliding further into the same walled garden level, the "just works" option is really starting to become more appealing compared to the less refined option that's still riding the open source and customizable fame from 10+ years ago with not much of it remaining today.
What's shameful is the lack of a good third option. I envy those who can just go back to dumb phones, because more and more companies and even governments are pushing unnecessary apps made mandatory just to use common services.
S7relok@reddit
If closed it should be, the most expensive and interdependent one is a questionable choice
Apple phone, apple tv, apple computer, apple laptop, apple tablet... with that money I can buy a decent car or gift me a trip in the carribean
fractalfocuser@reddit
Bit of a strawman there. Somebody says they'll buy an iPhone and you jump to "DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH IT COSTS TO BUY EVERY APPLE PRODUCT POSSIBLE?!?!"
S7relok@reddit
At least with Android, you can buy products with multiple price range, and still have services and sync. The same in apple can be way more expensive
Flakmaster92@reddit
I don’t disagree but not everyone is “everything Apple” lots of people have an Apple TV and an iPhone and a windows laptop.
Recluse1729@reddit
More like “If the system I use is going to be closed, I’ll buy the best closed one”. I’ve only ever considered Android because of its openness. Who would run a Linux desktop if it were closed source?
nsneerful@reddit
In many ways, Android just sucks. One thing I really really hate about Android is how everything has to be tied to your Google account, how there's virtually nothing that can be done offline.
I buy Android for the freedom of doing whatever I want, flashing and modding it, installing whatever I want. Google is taking that thing away step by step, at this point I'm not viewing Android as an open ecosystem anymore but just another product that sucks worse than the competition and doesn't benefit me in any way. If I have to be in a closed ecosystem, I may as well buy Apple, at least they don't force their online bullshit on you as aggressively as Google does.
al_with_the_hair@reddit
iOS no longer lets you complete the out-of-box setup without an Apple ID. I never thought I'd see the day, but it's actually easier to set up Android devices without an account now. Google Play access isn't required to get a dialer, a camera, a calculator, a web browser, and all the other smartphone stuff that's built-in... but an iPhone will absolutely make you sign in to the App Store where all the third party apps live before letting you have an activated device, and you can forget about making a phone call before that's set up.
iamtheweaseltoo@reddit
On the other hand, if google wants to make a worse version of iOS, i may as well use iOS
S7relok@reddit
What can be worse with an ecosystem that's only running correctly with only the brand devices?
iamtheweaseltoo@reddit
At least there is an ecosystem that works correctly, android is not a very good experiencie if you want to sync it with a desktop, now yes KDE connect exist, but in my experience it can be a hit or miss especially the windows version
oromis95@reddit
Motorola, though you void your warranty. On the plus side, headphone jack, good screen, expandable storage, dual sim, replacement parts.
adkinos@reddit
I always keep a Motorola/Samsung pair of phones, the almost vanilla Android and Moto gestures are a plus, but Motorola phones are usually among the devices with most radiation emissions.
oromis95@reddit
it's non-ionizing
I-Am-Uncreative@reddit
Motorola may be the best option, yes.
ABotelho23@reddit
Pretty sure device trees stop getting published then too.
spiteful_fly@reddit
I did think about that and I think it's much better for manufacturers to publish the device trees up until the point they stop making new releases because if people are interested, they could pick up where the manufacturer last left off. This is an important because people aren't guess how the drivers need to work as new binaries are dropped.
At the moment, most if not all Pixels have at least one version of a device tree published where people can base it off of. The Pixel 10 and newer devices may never have any version released forcing people to reverse engineer a potentially lower quality community version. If the phone isn't popular, you may never end up getting community support or the rom developer doesn't attempt to upstream their implementation to LineageOS.
Houndie@reddit
I'm definitely keeping my eyes on Nothing Phone
jzemeocala@reddit
OnePlus is pretty good about custom roms
adamkex@reddit
Maybe fairphone?
spiteful_fly@reddit
Maybe, but I'm going to be carefully considering what kind of hardware I'm getting for what I pay for. I still want the device to be performant and well supported by LineageOS. I'm also keeping an eye on what's going to happen with the Playstore. If I can't play games because of PlayIntegrity, then that's not going to be ok with me either. I'm also concerned about not having some of the Pixel specific additions I'm used to on other devices, like AI assisted call answering. This is a big deal to me.
AnggaSP@reddit
Hey former custom rom developer here! While closing device tree source is very unfortunate, it's not the end of the world.
We're free to bringing up our own device tree, maybe base it on from Android 15. It's just more tedious and more work needs to be done on the dev side but is very much doable.
That's what we did in the past, we made DT from scratch as the manufacturer that we support doesn't provide the source. Some shim and reverse engineering work sometimes needed but that's where the fun lies.
niwia@reddit
Could you say how this will impact the pixel Rom development. As I assumed having the tree etc made the process of making Rom easy and will this impact future pixel Rom development!?
Glitch-v0@reddit
Thank you for your service.
kalzEOS@reddit
Fucking spot on. Thank you for your service is right. Damn I truly miss those days.
spiteful_fly@reddit
I could be wrong, but the way I'm seeing things play out is that we may be ok for now but, I'm wondering how much can I rely on volunteers contributing to LineageOS consistently? It's going to take up a lot of someone's time to maintain the quality support for the unknown masses.
I'm just seeing so many moving factors, such as maintainers reprioritizing their priorities, possibility of a locked bootloader with no ability to unlock, further lockdown of the Playstore/PlayIntegrity, and etc... It doesn't feel as good as it did compared to a few months ago.
4ndril@reddit
I really Phosh would go white box and revive all Android devices
ABotelho23@reddit
This is all so weird to me considering Google wanted to move as much as possible to upstream Linux.
ScratchHistorical507@reddit
The have done so, which is why this is basically meaningless. As the Linux Kernel itself is under GPLv2, Google must publish every single modification they made to the Kernel that is being used on any of their devices.
FullOnBeliever@reddit
Who’s gonna stop them? Seriously, do you think it would be quick or would people have to wait years to gather signatures?
ScratchHistorical507@reddit
Reality
Think decades, not years. The Kernel encompasses multiple millions lines of code. Someone would have to go through every single line and track down who has the rights to sign off on such a change. And that would have to be done by lawyers together with people deeply involved in how the git repo works. Over the past 30 decades, there have been many thousand contributors submitting patches. And some of them may not be alive anymore or they have retired since and are more difficult to track down. And before you can even start you'd have to figure out the legal stuff of who has the rights under what circumstances. Like, you have quite a lot of people that may just have one typo fixed and then never again contribute to anything. Do they have to be asked too or do the rights still reside with the author of the original code? And how far must a piece of code have been altered so that the person authoring the alterations gains full ownership of the code?
Just trying to do this would effectively kill the Kernel. And you wouldn't even be able to allow GPLv3+ code into the Kernel before the Kernel isn't at least GPLv2+ because GPLv3 isn't compatible with GPLv2 in that sense. So no, the license of the Kernel will never be able to change because it's entirely impossible.
ABotelho23@reddit
Doesn't that depend on how it's linked? As far as I know plenty of manufacturers use proprietary blobs. Google's new objective wasn't even just for their own devices, it was to try getting as many manufacturers on board with that too.
ScratchHistorical507@reddit
If you link it to GPL code, it must be at least under a GPL compatible license. The question isn't about linking, just general how the closed source parts are being accessed by the Kernel. If it's like all the proprietary drivers and firmware that are clearly separated from the Kernel itself and all code needed in the Kernel to speak to them is made available, it's not an issue.
markfeathers@reddit
Yes, I'll wager they will keep supporting upstream drivers. To elaborate on a point I think a lot of people here are missing, device trees are often dual licensed and are completely allowed to be proprietary. Many are dual licensed, e.g.
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/arch/arm64/boot/dts/microchip/sparx5_pcb135.dts?h=v6.16-rc1#n1
I don't think this nefarious. Its hard to make a product where you may have 2-3 different parts qualified for a purpose, and the device tree has to describe this. You end up with 2-3 device trees, or some kind of patching / overlay solution. I've seen google talks at ELC where they talk about this complexity. Maybe they are ending up with the bootloader generating these in a more dynamic way or something, which might be harder than just giving up static device trees. This is sort of the way overlays + expansion boards are going in u-boot anyway. Its not required that Linux be the source of the device tree, and Linus has even said he saw the kernel as only an incubator for them initially, hoping they would find another location eventually. Not sure thats still really planned anyway at this point.
ScratchHistorical507@reddit
And all that in a time when Google has big antitrust lawsuits on their ass that have already considered forcing them to sell Android. Not smart.
finbarrgalloway@reddit
This very well might be a sign Google thinks the government will take android away from them. They’ll pull the pixel code out of AOSP and just become “another OEM” to keep their hardware businesses.
ScratchHistorical507@reddit
That's not how the GPL works. It's highly irrelevant if it's part of AOSP or just Pixel only. If it is a modification to the Kernel itself, it must be published under GPLv2. There is no other option.
finbarrgalloway@reddit
I'm not talking about the GPL here, but the US government may force them under antitrust to fully divorce themself from the AOSP project. That would (likely) include them stripping out any of the pixel stuff if they wanted to keep it. Of course, they could always host it elswhere, but who knows.
ScratchHistorical507@reddit
That's just not a thing. That's not how open source works. Even when Google must sell AOSP, only the new owner can forbid Google to keep pushing changes to it, but as you said they can just publish it somehwere else. And they must do so, as long as it falls under the GPL license of the Kernel. No court that acknowledges licenses on code can (or will) overrule that. And just because the Pixel-related stuff was part of AOSP doesn't mean that Google couldn't keep using it, because it already is open source. The court would have to order Google to stop making new Android devices, and even then they wouldn't force Google to drop support for their current devices. So the whole argument just makes no sense whatsoever.
hm___@reddit
in my Opinion Fairphone and e Foundation should make a joint venture and get a shitload of investment money from the EU to completely fork it, making a sustainable open flagship phone compatible with nextcloud.
HiPhish@reddit
I wonder what this means for CalyxOS on Fairphone. Having a repairable phone and the ability to run a custom ROM was the reason for me to buy it.
AaronDewes@reddit
How do you think Google removing code specific to their Pixel hardware could have any impact on Fairphone?
It has 0 impact on Fairphone. It only makes building custom ROMs for Pixel devices harder
Candid_Report955@reddit
iOS will pass them like they're standing still. Apple has a 40 year history of doing closed source software better than anyone else.
adkinos@reddit
Nobody who uses custom ROMs for Android gives a fuck about iOS.
Candid_Report955@reddit
Until there are no more custom ROMs because Google eliminated them.
HiPhish@reddit
Lol, no. Apple is one manufacturer, making one phone line, and an expensive one at that. Android is always going to be more popular by virtue of being on every other phone covering all market segments, from the cheapest to the most expensive one. It's like how Windows comes pre-installed with every PC.
Linux4ever_Leo@reddit
I have a Pixel 6 Pro and the update for Android 16 came across yesterday. I've noticed nothing wrong and everything has been perfect so far.
kansetsupanikku@reddit
Perfect, huh? Do you think that quality of Android, including the official roms, would remain the same without the ecosystem of developers that work on community distros, thus researching possible improvements? Because Google just made it way more difficult for them to operate. Using the method of questionable legality with regards to Linux license, too. You must be happy since you see it as perfect, but some people sadly don't.
aliendude5300@reddit
This is a bummer. I loved having the android ecosystem open source with roms like graphene
omeismm@reddit
AMD needs to save us with open source firmware.