| ▲ | paxys 5 hours ago |
| The fundamental problem is that we are relying on the good graces of Google to keep Android open, despite the fact that it often runs run contrary to their goals as a $4T for-profit behemoth. This may have worked in the past, but the "don't be evil" days are very far behind us. I don't see a real future for Andrioid as an open platform unless the community comes together and does a hard fork. Google can continue to develop their version and go the Apple way (which, funny enough, no one has a problem with). Development of AOSP can be controlled by a software foundation, like tons of other successful projects. |
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| ▲ | handity 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| A hard fork doesn't matter when the vast majority of phones have a locked bootloader. |
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| ▲ | cogman10 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Yeah, that's the biggest issue. And it all originally stemed from phone carriers wanting to lock customers into their services. We need some pro-consumer regulations on hardware which mandate open platforms. Fat chance of that happening, though, as the likes of both the EU and US want these locked down systems so they put in mandatory backdoors. | | |
| ▲ | notorandit 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | The other big issue is the closed source binary only drivers for almost everything. |
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| ▲ | paxys 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Google's own phones do not have a locked booloader. You can buy a Pixel and put GrapheneOS on it in like 10 minutes. But basically no one does this, because no matter what people say in online forums they actually value ease of use and shiny features over privacy and software freedom. | | |
| ▲ | gonzalohm 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | That's probably their next target once android is fully locked down | |
| ▲ | catlikesshrimp 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | A google tax which google's grace bestows upon us for as long as its whim want. |
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| ▲ | gary_0 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Even if locked bootloaders weren't a thing, not being able to just buy a phone with an open Android pre-installed means it would get relegated to the Linux Zone, with a whole lot of "security alert" and "device not supported". Also, low popularity leads to fewer development resources, so it would probably suffer from lack of polish. | |
| ▲ | emsign 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | People will keep using the OS their phone comes with and that would be Google's Android. It's worse than with Windows PCs and Windows to be honest because phones have a locked bootloader. | |
| ▲ | jszymborski 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | People give a lot of flack to the EU, but this is the sort of thing they would regulate. | | | |
| ▲ | g947o 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Or the fact that you need device drivers for every piece of hardware in a phone. |
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| ▲ | microtonal 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| A hard fork is not needed. Non-Google Android do not have to enforce this requirement. It's more important to get as many people on alternatives like GrapheneOS as possible. And fund them by donating to them. If every ~0.5 million GrapheneOS users donated 10 Euro per month, they would be very well-funded. |
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| ▲ | paxys 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | There is no such thing as non-Google Android. At most you have people applying tiny patches on top of AOSP, but 100% of the code in the underlying project is still Google-approved, and none of the alternatives have control over that. It's the same as the situation with Chrome/Chromium. There are a million "de-Googled"/"privacy focused" alternatives to Chrome all using the same engine, and when Google pushed manifest v3 changes to block ad-blockers every single one of them was affected. | | |
| ▲ | microtonal 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | At most you have people applying tiny patches on top of AOSP, but 100% of the code in the underlying project is still Google-approved, and none of the alternatives have control over that. You are making an orthogonal point. Yes, Google maintains AOSP. No, that does not mean that AOSP OSes that are not in Google's Android program (calling it that to avoid semantics games) have to adopt this change. If you want to hear it from the experts: https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/116103732687045013 | | |
| ▲ | paxys 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Unless these different Android flavors all have the resources to indefinitely rewrite AOSP and remove all Google code they don't agree with - no, they pretty much have to adopt the changes (see the earlier Chromium example). And if they do somehow manage this after a point all the patching basically becomes a fork, which is exactly what I started the conversation with. | | |
| ▲ | microtonal 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | I see your point, but it all hinges on when you consider the changes to be a patch set and when a fork. I don't think there is a very clear definition, except I don't think most of these projects would call themselves AOSP forks. At any rate, this particular Google anti-feature does not require a large patch (or maybe none at all). |
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| ▲ | Tharre 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > and when Google pushed manifest v3 changes to block ad-blockers every single one of them was affected. That's just objectively wrong, both Brave and Opera still support manifest v2 and are committed to continue doing so for the foreseeable future. Even Edge apparently still has it, funnily enough. | | |
| ▲ | paxys 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Nope, actually "both Brave and Opera still support manifest v2" is objectively wrong. Brave does NOT support manifest v2. They have instead hand picked exactly 4 manifest v2 extensions (AdGuard, NoScript, uBlock Origin, and uMatrix) and have hard-coded special support for them. They quite literally say in https://brave.com/blog/brave-shields-manifest-v3/ that all other v2 extensions will go away from Brave once Google fully removes support for them (which may have happened already, since it was posted a while ago). As for Opera (https://blogs.opera.com/news/2025/09/mv2-extensions-opera/): > MV3 extensions are the new standard and will offer a more stable and secure experience. Opera itself will shift to an MV3-only extension store. | | |
| ▲ | Tharre 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > They have instead hand picked exactly 4 manifest v2 extensions (AdGuard, NoScript, uBlock Origin, and uMatrix) and have hard-coded special support for them. They quite literally say in https://brave.com/blog/brave-shields-manifest-v3/ You're misreading that page, they have special cased the hosting of those 4 extensions, because they do not have their own addon web store and are relying on Chrome's instead. You can still install any manifest v2 addon manually, not that there are going to be many outside of those 4 that care about v2. As for Opera: "Today, we reiterate what we said back in October 2024: MV2 extensions are still available to use on Opera, and we are actively working to keep it that way for as long as it’s technically reasonable." | | |
| ▲ | paxys 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | > for as long as it’s technically reasonable Read: for as long as Chromium allows this via a flag. |
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| ▲ | iririririr 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | which begs the question, why ublock origin is not native on all browser yet? addons for firefox were at first a way to test features. we only have devtookls because one person wrote an addon copying ie6 dev tool. next Firefox release it was part of the core browser. |
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| ▲ | anonzzzies 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Get a large phone vendor to get a flagship phone with Graphene or so on the market. Otherwise nothing will happen. Even starting with the smaller ones like Blackview would do something. But almost no one will do that because users are said to want android; like my parents care... But they will care of course when their banking app stops working... That is the real issue imho. |
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| ▲ | apitman 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Google's moat with Android is the same as it's moat with Chrome: complexity. There are very few entities that could fork Android. |
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| ▲ | palata 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| What about the Android SDK? I don't think that this is open source, is it? As a developer, when you download an Android SDK you have accept a licence that is not open source, right? |
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| ▲ | realusername 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The answer has to come from anti trust legislation. Android is too big for Google to control. |
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| ▲ | Tharre 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Who else is going to maintain and develop it? It's the same issue as with Chrome, even if you force Google to give it to some other company, they're all just as bad. And it's too big and too costly to maintain for anyone else but tech giants. The only other options would be convincing users to pay 5 bucks a month for their software, or have some Government fork over the tens of millions required to pay open source developers. And good luck with that. | | |
| ▲ | Balinares 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I'm thinking with ever increasing seriousness: let's split any company that grows past a certain size. Each side gets a copy of the codebase and half the assets, no one who's been on the board on one side can be on the other side's board, and neither side can buy off the other. They can use the existing branding for a limited time and with a qualifier (say Google Turnip vs Google Potato) but after that it's on the strength of the new brand which they're each building and for which they're competing against each other and the rest of the market. This is not happening in my lifetime, of course it isn't. But by god does it need to happen. | | |
| ▲ | troyvit 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Right? We need a "You won capitalism!" award where everybody in the org gets a huge bonus and then the company is split into small pieces and then they start over. On top of it we do what you describe and enforce the split so they can't collude. |
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| ▲ | iririririr 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I welcome feature stagnation on mobile! Every single release is a step backwards. Android 15 cannot hold a candle to what cynogenmod did on top of android 2.3. And that's objective. | | |
| ▲ | Tharre 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > And that's objective. I don't think you understand what that word means. Regardless, your opinion (and mine) is irrelevant. People want at least some of the features of modern android, and any alternative lacking those is not going to be adopted by most people. Just look at how many people try GrapheneOS and find the minor things to be dealbreakers for them. And as long as that's the case you can't expect people to vote for a scenario where they'll end up with a, in their eyes, worse product. | |
| ▲ | jajuuka 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Historical meaning is pretty worthless though. It's like saying CPU's are going backwards because the 386 was a bigger jump. Technology matures eventually and that's not a bad thing. | | |
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| ▲ | surajrmal 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Under what law is that a legal or ethical thing to do? Why not suggest ios be taken away from Apple as well and windows from Microsoft? | | |
| ▲ | Terr_ 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Can you be more specific on exactly what "that" you are thinking of which would be illegal or unethical? Parent-poster just referenced past/future legislation in general. | |
| ▲ | rezonant 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I'd be fine with that too |
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| ▲ | chistev 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| What is stopping a hard fork? |
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| ▲ | g947o 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The same reason nobody is doing a hard fork of Chromium. | |
| ▲ | microtonal 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | The gigantic task of maintaining and developing a mobile OS that needs to retain compatibility with AOSP/GPS anyway to tap into the huge amount of applications that are available? It will cost a lot of money and as long as Google is still doing regular AOSP code drops, what's the point? |
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