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“Android is reaching EOL in the next 4-5 years”

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Re: “Android is reaching EOL in the next 4-5 years”

#31

Post by _bxg1 »

rocky1138 wrote: post #11

As a tech community, we should really rally around a libre/free mobile OS and soon. Being beholden to corporations for our operating systems is antithetical to freedom.

It's so much harder to do on mobile, for multiple reasons:

- Hardware is not very modular (mainly because of size constraints), meaning you have to purpose-build libre hardware if you can't/don't want to run on tech-giant devices (you can right now if you're forking Android; you probably won't be able to once it's replaced with Fuschia).

- Developers' needs have always been a bastion for keeping desktop OSes flexible and open. No matter how closed-down software gets, someone somewhere has to be able to muck with it so as to build and improve it in the first place. This doesn't apply to mobile OSes; people don't use them for development.

Not that it's impossible for these things to be overcome, but it's a much steeper uphill battle.

Re: “Android is reaching EOL in the next 4-5 years”

#33

Post by warkdarrior »

holtalanm wrote: post #8
EGreg wrote: post #5

Why would Google abandon it?

it is going to be replaced with Fuschia OS (i'm sure i probably butchered the name) My understanding is that it will be a pretty much transparent switch for users going from an Android phone to a Fuschia phone -- not sure though.

It's Google Fuchsia, as in GOOGLE-FUCKS-YA.

Re: “Android is reaching EOL in the next 4-5 years”

#34

Post by ocdtrekkie »

m0zg wrote: post #16

This is lunacy. Nothing is going to replace Android but the next version of Android, for the same reason why Microsoft will forever continue developing Windows: there are (hunrders of?) billions of lines of code written for it, and: 1. Users just want to run their software, 2. Developers just want to sell their software, and nobody is going to give a shit about principled OS design or whatever. If Google doesn't unde…

Google has already made Android apps run on Chrome OS, and I think are at least planning to do with Fuchsia. Which is to say, Google could kill the Android OS as long as they preserve the Android app platform.

See also: Windows has actually replaced their Win32 app model with UWP which is nearly a whole different app platform, but they still support Win32 apps and have made it increasingly easier to deploy Win32 apps on UWP-based platforms.

Re: “Android is reaching EOL in the next 4-5 years”

#35

Post by afandian »

m0zg wrote: post #16

This is lunacy. Nothing is going to replace Android but the next version of Android, for the same reason why Microsoft will forever continue developing Windows: there are (hunrders of?) billions of lines of code written for it, and: 1. Users just want to run their software, 2. Developers just want to sell their software, and nobody is going to give a shit about principled OS design or whatever. If Google doesn't unde…

If BlackBerry cam figure out how to run Android apps on BBOS 10 (which is QNX under the hood) I'm sure Google can get the Android runtime working on Fuchsia.

Re: “Android is reaching EOL in the next 4-5 years”

#36

Post by contingencies »

intuitionist wrote: post #23
holtalanm wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it is going to be replaced with Fuschia OS (i'm sure i probably butchered the name) My understanding is that it will be a pretty much transparent switch for users going from an Android phone to a Fuschia phone -- not sure though.

The mnemonic I use for “fuchsia” is that it’s a flower named after a guy named Fuchs. It is a bit strange that a search engine company would choose a name that’s so difficult to spell!

In Chinese, the language of the largest mobile market in the world, it's a good opening phoneme: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu_(character)

According to Wikipedia total Alphabet assets are around $232B, and Xiaomi's are around $21.6B (ie. ~10% of Google's total net worth). Xiaomi was founded in 2010. Google was founded in 1998.

Re: “Android is reaching EOL in the next 4-5 years”

#37

Post by robotbikes »

josteink wrote: post #4
robotbikes wrote: post #2

Android will lose its corporate sponsor but it being an open source project will continue as long as people continue to develop it.

But it’s mostly shipped on corporately made, marketed and sold phones. Without shipments, it’s just yet another obsolete mobile OS.

Well I'm not aware of any nonprofit phone development cooperatives so without Google driving it is is likely to become less popular but there will probably also be other corporations that continue to develop an ecosystem for it. There are still OS/2 derivatives being developed. I'm also just saying people will continue to use it and something along the lines of LineageOS will be even more important for people to be able to use their existing phones. For most people who continuously discard their phones after a few years to get the latest greatest it may end up being supplanted by whatever fuschia based phones are developed. I'm convinced that fuschia is partially driven by a desire to escape the GPL so with a MIT based licensed manufacturers won't even need to pretend to release the source code for their hackish drivers and kernel mods.

Re: “Android is reaching EOL in the next 4-5 years”

#39

Post by e12e »

brianpgordon wrote: post #19
stupidthrottle wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is eradicating all GPL from their mobile offering. Fuschia will let them release a fully closed down platform.

Fuchsia is permissively licensed. I swear, copyleft people have the weirdest definition of freedom. How does using a license that lets you do anything with the code, including using it to compete commercially with Google, automatically indicate some nefarious plan to lock down the new platform? If they wanted to do that, why would they release Fuchsia under a permissive license in the first place?

Isn't parts of ios bsd licenced too? Does that help if the phone vendor only hands out blobs?

Re: “Android is reaching EOL in the next 4-5 years”

#40

Post by yongjik »

holtalanm wrote: post #8
EGreg wrote: post #5

Why would Google abandon it?

it is going to be replaced with Fuschia OS (i'm sure i probably butchered the name) My understanding is that it will be a pretty much transparent switch for users going from an Android phone to a Fuschia phone -- not sure though.

> ... Fuschia OS (i'm sure i probably butchered the name)

This is an excellent reason why Google shouldn't ditch the name "Android". It's easy to pronounce and globally recognized. Every time I see the word "fuschia" I have to think "wait how is it pronounced again?"

I don't care if they change the OS under the hood, but if anybody in Google is planning to sell a "Fuschia-based phone", they're pissing on their own brand.

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