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Google is defragging Android

arstechnica.com

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Re: Google is defragging Android

#141

Post by ZeroGravitas »

wtracy wrote: post #85
laureny wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nonsense. You can certainly argue that "less" of Android is being open sourced than a few years ago, but it's still orders of magnitude more open than any of the other mobile OS available on the market. Especially OS X and iOS, which are both 0% open source. Open source fanatics are impossible to satisfy, they will always find a reason why the flavor of open source that a company or an organization picked is not the…

> it's still orders of magnitude more open than any of > the other mobile OS available on the market. Symbian? OpenMoko? The upcoming SailfishOS, Tizen, Firefox OS, and Ubuntu phone? Oh, you meant in the U.S., I guess. (Yes, I know that all the above have either already largely failed or have sketchy futures. That's an entirely different kettle of fish.) > Open source fanatics are impossible to satisfy All I want is…

Firefox and Ubuntu phone both run on top of an Android layer so they're not great argument against the openess of Android.

Re: Google is defragging Android

#142

Post by ZeroGravitas »

blinkingled wrote: post #63
antrix wrote: post #50

The headline made me think Android 4.3's fstrim feature (defragging flash storage) is delivered via Play too!

That only really benefited the Nexus Devices. Far as I know no other popular device has had issues due to lack of fstrim. And all recent Nexus devices already got the 4.3 update. But since Play Services has system level access I am wondering if they could've technically been able to stuff the fstrim daemon along with the app updates. All it does is wakes up on idle and issues trim ioctls - Linux kernel proper has had…

You can get an app that does it already, but it requires root:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.grilledmon...

And I think this affected more than Nexus devices, HTC One gets mentioned in the app description.

Re: Google is defragging Android

#143

Post by ZeroGravitas »

gaadd33 wrote: post #107
csixty4 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Especially OS X and iOS, which are both 0% open source http://opensource.apple.com/release/mac-os-x-1084/ http://opensource.apple.com/release/ios-61/ (and a lot is shared with OS X, such as the xnu kernel) http://www.cups.org

To be fair, CUPS was around before Apple's involvement and they purchased the source + hired the developer.

It's always fun to remember a time when Mac OS X's printer support was so bad (mostly due to low marketshare) that they had to adopt the Linux printing solution, and it was an immediate and massive improvement.

And you try and tell the young people of today that ..... they won't believe you.

Re: Google is defragging Android

#144

Post by simias »

fleitz wrote: post #140
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple talking point # 3124: we never claimed our platform was open so we can be more hardline than RMS when critiquing Android. Yeah, that one never gets boring.

Apple requested Google call it GNU/Android? Must have missed that one.

What are you talking about? The android userland is not provided by GNU (and is not even GPL to begin with).

Re: Google is defragging Android

#145

Post by estel »

some_guy_there wrote: post #103
estel wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Normal apps can't install any APK without explicit user consent. The Play Store auto-updates in a similar way.

There are various other Android app store apart from the official play Store (Amazon, F-droid, etc). Any app can request permission to install other apps silently, or may be even a newer version of itself. Play Store uses no private API which is not available to other Android developer. Ask your users to download the apk from your website, if Google Play store won't carry your app, and then built-in a mechanism to au…

Yes, there's a permission to install apps silently (android.permission.INSTALL_PACKAGES), but this isn't a permission that can be granted to a third party app. Other bundled app stores can if they're signed appropriately, or if the device is rooted.

Re: Google is defragging Android

#146

Post by zobzu »

andrewfong wrote: post #115
fleitz wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like most things open source is a continuum of subtle differences rather than a category. In my opinion the following software is much more open than Android: Linux, Apache, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, GCC, clang, and generally most open source products developed by the community. In my opinion the following software is less open than Android: C#, OSX, iOS, and generally most software developed by major corporations. The real…

> The real keys are that your Android device is locked down, fixing it voids your warranty As it should. There's nothing in open source that requires a warranty. Here's a snippet from the MIT license, generally considered open: "THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINF…

anyone can make a license that is both open source and providing warranty btw.

open source licenses generally don't provide warranty because they don't have to and devs, providing free stuff, certainly do not want to bother with warranties. Companies could.

Re: Google is defragging Android

#147

Post by ZeroGravitas »

Google/Android really can't win now that this "fragmentation" frame has stuck.

Google's been updating core parts of the system like this from day one. The Android Market/Play Store, Maps, Youtube and many other things have received massive updates and been pushed out to millions of people. However, the dominant storyline at the time was that "Android devices don't get upgrades, because fragmentation".

Then suddenly, for no obvious reason, the tech bloggers all noticed at once that this was happening (possibly because they had started actually using Android?) and it was portrayed as sudden U-turn by Google. A weapon in their "war" against Samsung (don't get me started on that one).

Re: Google is defragging Android

#148

Post by makomk »

turing wrote: post #74
engrenage wrote: post #6

Notably, Play services is totally closed. So Google has abandoned the open source part of Android and is now developing the operating system as a completely closed product. Edit: downvotes don't change the truth of the observation. Android is no longer meaningfully open, other than a years old core of basic functions. Just like OSX and Darwin.

downvotes don't change the truth of the observation. Android is no longer meaningfully open, other than a years old core of basic functions. The problem is that your observation isn't true. Here are some of the under-the-hood changes in just the most recent releases of Android: -OpenGL ES 3.0 -Bluetooth low energy/Bluetooth AVRCP -restricted profiles -VP8 encoder -new DRM framework -SELinux -various other optimizatio…

Well, the new DRM framework definitely isn't open, and essentially all the things you list are stuff that's too low-level to be implemented as part of Google Play Services. Basically, if they could put it in the closed source Google Play Services, they have - including relatively core functionality like improvements to the location APIs and push notifications.

Re: Google is defragging Android

#149

Post by makomk »

Someone wrote: post #125
jaegerpicker wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? It absolutely helps 3rd party app developers. Need a new and better video/gps/network/etc.. api? Right now you stuck depending on a new OS Version. if they start tying api's to play store updates, as they have with things like geolocation/gps functions, they worrying which OS and about fragmentation mostly goes away for 3rd party developers of apps.

I'm not sure about the extent of the 'mostly' part. You still have the huge differences in CPU speed, GPU capabilities, screen sizes and amount of memory to cater with. That 5 year old phone may have the latest Play Services, but what good is that if that leaves only 10 kilobytes of RAM for your app?

You have the same problem with, for example, iOS devices though - there are games out there that don't run on older devices even though they're all nominally running the same OS because the older devices are too slow.

Re: Google is defragging Android

#150

Post by makomk »

blinkingled wrote: post #63
antrix wrote: post #50

The headline made me think Android 4.3's fstrim feature (defragging flash storage) is delivered via Play too!

That only really benefited the Nexus Devices. Far as I know no other popular device has had issues due to lack of fstrim. And all recent Nexus devices already got the 4.3 update. But since Play Services has system level access I am wondering if they could've technically been able to stuff the fstrim daemon along with the app updates. All it does is wakes up on idle and issues trim ioctls - Linux kernel proper has had…

They could, but I seem to recall issuing TRIM commands can brick the onboard eMMC Flash chip on some Samsung devices.
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