this post was submitted on 27 Mar 2025
51 points (85.9% liked)

Android

29863 readers
273 users here now

DROID DOES

Welcome to the droidymcdroidface-iest, Lemmyest (Lemmiest), test, bestest, phoniest, pluckiest, snarkiest, and spiciest Android community on Lemmy (Do not respond)! Here you can participate in amazing discussions and events relating to all things Android.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules

1. All posts must be relevant to Android devices/operating system.

2. Posts cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

3. No spam, self promotion, or upvote farming. Sources engaging in these behavior will be added to the Blacklist.

4. Non-whitelisted bots will be banned.

5. Engage respectfully: Harassment, flamebaiting, bad faith engagement, or agenda posting will result in your posts being removed. Excessive violations will result in temporary or permanent ban, depending on severity.

6. Memes are not allowed to be posts, but are allowed in the comments.

7. Posts from clickbait sources are heavily discouraged. Please de-clickbait titles if it needs to be submitted.

8. Submission statements of any length composed of your own thoughts inside the post text field are mandatory for any microblog posts, and are optional but recommended for article/image/video posts.

Community Resources:

We are Android girls*,

In our Lemmy.world.

The back is plastic,

It's fantastic.

*Well, not just girls: people of all gender identities are welcomed here.

Our Partner Communities:

!android@lemmy.ml

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
MargotRobbie@lemmy.world
Rooki@lemmy.world
Thekingoflorda@lemmy.world
L3s@lemmy.world
_MoveSwiftly@lemmy.world
51
If Android Goes Closed Source, what happens to Alternative Android-Based OSes, such as Graphene OS? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
submitted 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) by IDKWhatUsernametoPutHereLolol@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/android@lemmy.world
19 comments fedilink hide all child comments
top 19 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] pinball_wizard@lemmy.zip 12 points 2 days ago

What happens? (If, because again, that's not what has happened, so far.)

  • GrapheneOS would continue, but probably not manage compatibility with the next Pixel phone.
  • Various forks of Android Open Source get created, with mixed success. Existing phones will keep working, new phones with proprietary servers drivers are much less likely to work.
  • We create something like ndiswrapper to help us extract weird new phone hardware drivers and make them work with open operating systems.
  • The fully open phone hardware projects suddenly get a bunch of new customers.

The last point is the only thing I'm confident is preventing Google from taking their fork of AOSP fully closed. (Yes, I know it wouldn't be legal. But I'm not sure their lawyers think they would be held accountable. Most people don't understand the existing laws Google already breaks daily since purchasing YouTube.)

[–] lordnikon@lemmy.world 45 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Also it's not going closed source it just doing closed development with pushing the code over the wall at release time.

[–] InFerNo@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

No more input until it's already released?

[–] lordnikon@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

Yep i think they are looking to reduce down stream of releasing features before they do. It's shitty but it's not going closed source. They would have to rewrite the whole thing to go close source. They could do that but the version we have is ours they can't take it away.

[–] Xanza@lemm.ee 42 points 3 days ago
  1. They wouldn't get updates from base, anymore
  2. That's not what's happening
[–] henfredemars@infosec.pub 23 points 3 days ago (2 children)

They cannot take back the open license code. Only the future work is closed.

[–] davidgro@lemmy.world 19 points 3 days ago

And they aren't (for now) changing the license of future work either - just not releasing source until the same time they release binaries, which is totally allowed in the open source licenses.

[–] marauding_gibberish142@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

I.E. they would have to change the license of Android. Not sure how they are going to do that when the Linux kernel is GPL

[–] Vash63@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

They could close everything except the kernel and maybe a few libraries here and there. The Linux kernel alone does not exactly get you close to having an Android distribution.

[–] pathos@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 days ago

Pretty much nothing, because 99% of what everybody uses is proprietary blobs on top of Android anyway. The Andriod open source is absolute minimum barebones, with MS Paint like UI and basically no UX.

[–] MoreZombies@lemm.ee 3 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I think it would still be a good question to ponder, even though that isn't what has happened yet.

What IF Google decided future versions were closed source? How would that not affect our open source alternatives?

[–] Virkkunen@fedia.io 3 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Google can decide all they want, but they can't close source Android due to the GPL.

[–] CosmicGiraffe@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

https://source.android.com/docs/setup/contribute/licenses says most of the Android userspace is Apache 2 licensed. While they can't close source the Android branch of the kernel, they could close-source new userspace code and it would probably diverge from the last open source release quite quickly.

Realistically, that would probably be sufficent to make Android functionally closed-source, even if the GPL bits were still available.

[–] 0x0@programming.dev 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Google Play Services is GPL? I see...

[–] Virkkunen@fedia.io 2 points 2 days ago

Google Play Services is not Android.

[–] Engywuck@lemm.ee 3 points 2 days ago

Well, you get an iOS. So, Google shooting themselves in the foot.

[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 3 points 3 days ago

Please read the article.

[–] SolidShake@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago

Nothing