Android does have a cost. While the OS itself is free, any manufacturer that wants to put Play Store, which is almost every company outside China, needs to pay Google a license fee, which effectively pays for Android. Of course there are also ads everywhere in Android and Android apps that helps pay the bill.

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just6979 15 hours ago | parent | next [-]

There are really any ads in Android itself, even with Google Apps installed. Which, by the way, you don't need to use even if they are installed (except, for example, Chrome to get a different app store or whatnot-, just like a fresh Windows install needing to use Edge to get Firefox or Chrome).

And it's still miles easier to get Android to switch default apps and also respect your choices, than to get Windows to allow you to switch default apps and then shut the fuck about their crap.

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MarsIronPI 20 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Wow, so the only OSs with no money in them are the FOSS ones. Makes sense, though.

(No, at this point Android hardly counts as FOSS anymore.)

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jm4 13 hours ago | parent [-]

Someone has to pay for it because it’s expensive to develop. There’s a ton of money in Linux just like there is in proprietary operating systems. There are like 4000-5000 kernel contributors and most of them are doing this work on some company’s payroll. There’s an enormous amount of resources going into Linux to the point where a proprietary OS couldn’t possibly keep up.

The real genius of Linux is the economic model, getting companies to buy into it and actually delivering value far in excess of what it costs anybody to contribute. It’s winning precisely because the value proposition cannot be matched.

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pjmlp 8 hours ago | parent [-]

Except many of those contributions never land upstream.

Hence why we usually with the cloud provider distros.

Example, what powers DGX OS isn't fully available to GNU/Linux users other than a binary blob.

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MarsIronPI 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> Example, what powers DGX OS isn't fully available to GNU/Linux users other than a binary blob.

What do you mean? Are they violating the GPL by not releasing the modified source?

	▲	pjmlp an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Most of their stuff isn't GPL anyway, hence why drivers are mostly in userspace.