Android has always been a fairly open platform, especially if you were deliberate about getting it that way, but we’ve seen in recent months an extremely rapid devolution of the Android ecosystem:
- The closing of development of an increasing number of components in AOSP.
- Samsung, Xiaomi and OnePlus have removed the option of bootloader unlocking on all of their devices. I suspect Google is not far behind.
- Google implementing Play Integrity API and encouraging developers to implement it. Notably the EU’s own identity verification wallet requires this, in stark contrast to their own laws and policies, despite the protest of hundreds on Github.
- And finally, the mandatory implementation of developer verification across Android systems. Yes, if you’re running a 3rd-party OS like GOS you won’t be directly affected by this, but it will impact 99.9% of devices, and I foresee many open source developers just opting out of developing apps for Android entirely as a result. We’ve already seen SyncThing simply discontinue development for this reason, citing issues with Google Play Store. They’ve also repeatedly denied updates for NextCloud. And we’ve already seen Google targeting any software intended to circumvent ads, labeling them in the system as “dangerous” and “untrusted”. This will most certainly carry into their new “verification” system.
Google once competed with Apple for customers. But in a world where Google walks away from the biggest antitrust trial since 1998 with yet another slap on the wrist, competition is dead, and Google is taking notes from Apple about what they can legally get away with.
Android as we know it is dead. And/or will be dead very soon. We need an open replacement.
I mean open source is that. The only reason open source exist is to be able to close some parts of its source (i.e. compatibility with privative software). Google promoted open source because it allowed them to close it whenever they want it. The Trojan Horse was always there, at plain sight.
That’s why it’s important to distinguish free software from open software. In most cases open source is just a label that companies can use to look friendlier.
Wait… they opened it so they can close it?
Yeah, it depends on the specific licence clauses. AOSP uses Apache Licence 2.0 which is normally regarded as a free software licence but it also could be regarded as Open software as by the OSS definition.
The problem with this licence is that it allows distribution of binaries based on the original source code without having to share the source or even changing the licence.
This means that Google could effectively take the entire (some part of Google Android is already close sources) AOSP in the current state (with the contributions of thousand of individual developers) and use it to start developing a close source Android OS project. Since Google are the main developers of Android and they could shift OG Android into a closed environment that could be no longer compatible with the old one. Google also is the main provider of security fixes. Since phone manufacturera want to able to run Google Android (stock Android) this could make old Android versions (before privatization) incompatible with phones.
For example let’s say that Google Android changes the main OS ABI or API. Then programs made for Google Android wouldn’t be compatible with other Android versions.
This would basically make users decide or you stay with Google Android (close sourced) and you trust use because “do no evil ;)”. Or you stay with your free software versions of Android that are no longer compatible with current Android programs basically forcing you to have an OS that’s not able to run “common” programs, basically isolating you from the mainstream smart phone use cases like having banking apps, mainstream chat apps, etc.
You think if they used another licence it would be any different? Countless open source projects have a GPLv3 + proprietary licence which is way more evil than Apache - they poison the open source with GPLv3 so no competitor can contribute without revealing their changes while they themselves can use the proprietary licence. e.g. Trolltech and QT for example but there are many others.
And frankly you should be blessed that you have a fully fledged, open source phone OS you may fork and build from. The OP wants a Linux phone OS and AOSP is a Linux phone OS. There are many forks of Android, closed and open that wouldn’t exist if Google had just decided to be proprietary from the get go. They were under no compulsion to do this but they did. If you have used LineageOS, or GrapheneOS for example then you are a beneficiary of this. You are completely at liberty to have a de-Googled modern phone OS powered by Linux right now.
QT uses one or another, either GPLv3/LGPLv3/GPLv2 or privative. Poisoning open source? If you refer to the fact that they allow a closed source licence, yes I also dislike that. But how is GPLv3 poisoning anything? If you want to use and modify/contribute to the QT project then you have to maintain user freedoms unless you pay QT for their rights. In the end term, the user is always respected since contributions to base qt are always free software. With only a GPL licence then the developers would need to share source code for their distributions. The Multiple-Licence allows third party developers to gain “fully-paid-ownership” which allows them to close source it.
Also since QT it’s allowed to be shiped with LGPL third party devs can close source their parts of code that link against QT.
So it’s basically an interesting way of having a permissible licence while keeping the QT base fully libre.
Probably you refer to the availability that open source philosophy gives. Yeah, that is the principal difference between libre software and open software. Open software advocates for fully openness for the sake of the developers no matter what they want to make later with it, libre software advocates for the source code of the end user.