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Google has stopped pushing Git tags for some Android source code

grapheneos.social

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Re: Google has stopped pushing Git tags for some Android source code

#171

Post by pizzaiolo »

spaqin wrote: post #135
TheMiddleMan wrote: post #47

Relevant: https://keepandroidopen.org/ > Starting in 2027*, a silent update, nonconsensually pushed by Google, will block every Android app whose developer hasn't registered with Google, signed their contract, paid up, and handed over government ID.

Man, all of these little steps Google is taking to take the control away from the users, not to take over the world or anything else, but to force on you more accurate advertisements. What are we even doing?

Any inconveniences with Linux phones are less annoying to me than what Google is doing to AOSP. My next phone will run postmarketOS.

Re: Google has stopped pushing Git tags for some Android source code

#172

Post by Gud »

geokon wrote: post #160
grapheneos wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and we do mirror their source code on GitLab. We put the upstream 17 code in the 17-base branch and our code on top of it in the 17 branch: https://gitlab.com/grapheneos/kernel_pixel/-/tree/17-base https://gitlab.com/grapheneos/kernel_pixel_muzel/-/tree/17-b... We also have mirrors of the QPR1 Beta and QPR2 Beta code there too. It's not meant to be distributed as a tarball or a single Git repository. The build s…

Maybe a naiive question, but couldn't you request the source code from phone companies? Say you request it from Xiaomi - sure they're not the original writers of the code, but they too "distributing GPL code" and therefore must release the code on request. They may be more amenable to your request since they have leverage with Google and are in an adversarial relationship

“Couldn’t you just” couldn’t fucking GOOGLE, the don’t do evil corporation, support one of the few alternative mobile phone OSs use standard development tools, instead of being little shits?

Re: Google has stopped pushing Git tags for some Android source code

#173

Post by khimaros »

grapheneos wrote: post #114

They stopped pushing tags for any of the Pixel kernel or userspace driver repositories to AOSP. They also stopped pushing AOSP releases specific to Pixels which is why AOSP now only gets yearly releases, QPR2 releases and security backports to both of those. Other OEMs use the yearly and theoretically also the QPR2 releases. Both the yearly and QPR2 releases get monthly security backports. Since they dropped Pixel su…

i have owned nearly every Google phone since the G1. i will not be purchasing any future devices from them unless they change course.

Re: Google has stopped pushing Git tags for some Android source code

#174

Post by klardotsh »

phire wrote: post #133
klardotsh wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly this. Once the writing was on the wall that deGoogled / FOSS Android was on borrowed time (at best), a ton of the argument against iOS dissolved overnight. We can argue that Apple's anti-repair policies and anti-user-customization policies are their own evils, sure, but at least my phone works for its core tasks, and works phenomenally well at that. My deGoogled Android phones were mostly hobbled together pil…

Yeah, I was a loyal Android user for 15 years. For the first half, custom ROMs were a massive boost to the experience, but I never really bothered after 2018; You had to install so much of google's stuff to get anywhere near proper experience that it just wasn't worth it, and even then many apps were starting to throw a fit when they detected a rooted device. And at the same time, the stock android experience from mo…

For me it's the data-hoovering. I don't want Samsung (or Google, or Xiaomi, or whoever) background services phoning home my location every few seconds, or being able to uniquely track my device across apps, etc.

Once my ability to run a "background spyware-less" Android device went away, so did my willingness to put up with the negative sides of the usability tradeoff.

Apple probably sends some telemetry home, but at least their business model doesn't depend on knowing the exact Pantone color of the food I ate for dinner to market a matching wall paint to me.

Edit to add: oh, yeah, you mentioning 3P apps complaining if they detected root or MicroG reminds me of many a horrible night of debugging. Ugh. What a mess.

Re: Google has stopped pushing Git tags for some Android source code

#175

Post by voakbasda »

petre wrote: post #163
urbnspacecowboy wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it's not, because "one person" has to keep sitting up and begging for access, every time there's a new release, over and over and over and over and over.

Maybe we colld getan AI agent to pester them with forms?

What consequences do you imagine if they (rightfully) choose to ignore it?

Re: Google has stopped pushing Git tags for some Android source code

#176

Post by jezek2 »

phire wrote: post #138
flotzam wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you had included the previous word, it would be blindly obvious that “on a medium“ is only talking about the transport layer, not the format of the data. I can see your point. But OTOH if providing the "preferred form of the work for making modifications" requires not squashing commits into a big mess to frustrate someone trying to make sense of the code (I'm sure the Google engineers making modifications prefer…

Yeah, that argument is much better; Maybe google are violating the GPL. What that part of the GPL does absolutely forbid is stripping out the comments from the source code, or only shipping generated source files (but not the code which generated it). And arguably, git history is much of the same thing as comments. Especially when we have IDEs that can be configured to give us easy access to blame to help us understa…

It's clear to me: the request is about sending a particular version of the source code. No other versions, so no history.

Re: Google has stopped pushing Git tags for some Android source code

#177

Post by anonzzzies »

buzer wrote: post #98
mjg59 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The license requires that it be distributed on a medium customarily used for software interchange, and I don't think you'd stand a good chance of arguing that paper satisfies that.

Google Drive is customarily used for software interchange?

Unfortunately, I know more than a few companies who do that. The same kind of developer who used SourceSafe to just checkout the entire project (thus locking it) while busy with it. And then pop a intranetcrm_200826_0713.zip on SharePoint. Enough of them around still unfortunately.

Re: Google has stopped pushing Git tags for some Android source code

#178

Post by JasonHarrison »

khimaros wrote: post #173
grapheneos wrote: post #114

They stopped pushing tags for any of the Pixel kernel or userspace driver repositories to AOSP. They also stopped pushing AOSP releases specific to Pixels which is why AOSP now only gets yearly releases, QPR2 releases and security backports to both of those. Other OEMs use the yearly and theoretically also the QPR2 releases. Both the yearly and QPR2 releases get monthly security backports. Since they dropped Pixel su…

i have owned nearly every Google phone since the G1. i will not be purchasing any future devices from them unless they change course.

What will you purchase instead? It sucks that the modern smartphone OS market is a duopoly.

Re: Google has stopped pushing Git tags for some Android source code

#180

Post by steve1977 »

grapheneos wrote: post #114

They stopped pushing tags for any of the Pixel kernel or userspace driver repositories to AOSP. They also stopped pushing AOSP releases specific to Pixels which is why AOSP now only gets yearly releases, QPR2 releases and security backports to both of those. Other OEMs use the yearly and theoretically also the QPR2 releases. Both the yearly and QPR2 releases get monthly security backports. Since they dropped Pixel su…

> GPL doesn't set a standard time limit for providing the sources, but that doesn't mean they can delay it indefinitely.

I wonder actually what a court would say here and if "doesn't set a time limit" could mean "the source needs to be made available immediately". IANAL.

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