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.
“Android is reaching EOL in the next 4-5 years”
11–20 of 121 posts
Re: “Android is reaching EOL in the next 4-5 years”
#12Why 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.
Android was associated with the GPL via Linux, forcing them to keep it partially open source.
Fuschia is the OS and kernel nobody asked for which is licensed so that Google and partners can make locked down, closed source phones.
Re: “Android is reaching EOL in the next 4-5 years”
#13What's the context? Maybe knowing who this individual is would help me? Edit: ah an Android OS dev. I imagine that's a primary party to Android and therefore this individual is kind of an authority.
Google is eradicating all GPL from their mobile offering. Fuschia will let them release a fully closed down platform.
So, closed source with tracking enabled. Can it get worse?
Re: “Android is reaching EOL in the next 4-5 years”
#14does this mean Android won't be trademarked anymore by Google? I really hate that such a wonderful word was ruined by Google.
Kind of like how Apple ruined "apple".
Re: “Android is reaching EOL in the next 4-5 years”
#15Would be bizarre if Google went proprietary with Android and Microsoft were the ones to carry the AOSP torch.
Re: “Android is reaching EOL in the next 4-5 years”
#16This 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 understand this, they're about to learn a hard, and expensive, lesson.
Re: “Android is reaching EOL in the next 4-5 years”
#17Earlier 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.
Android was associated with the GPL via Linux, forcing them to keep it partially open source. Fuschia is the OS and kernel nobody asked for which is licensed so that Google and partners can make locked down, closed source phones.
The reason is more that the binary blobs that make every modern phone work couldn't be updated to the kernel ABIs every time they changed. The whole point is to make it easier to deploy new hardware with custom bits.
Re: “Android is reaching EOL in the next 4-5 years”
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google is eradicating all GPL from their mobile offering. Fuschia will let them release a fully closed down platform.
So, closed source with tracking enabled. Can it get worse?
Google Play Services is already closed-source and that’s where the tracking happens. The fact that the base OS is technically open source is usually irrelevant if you have any proprietary Google junk on top of it. But your baseband is allowing you to be tracked too (regardless of the software on the application processor), so it’s hardly possible (certainly not easy) to have any privacy with a cell phone in your possession.
Re: “Android is reaching EOL in the next 4-5 years”
#19What's the context? Maybe knowing who this individual is would help me? Edit: ah an Android OS dev. I imagine that's a primary party to Android and therefore this individual is kind of an authority.
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?
Re: “Android is reaching EOL in the next 4-5 years”
#20They've said this before https://twitter.com/DroidAlexandra/status/111934411027040665...
They've never made an official statement or confirmation of what Fuchsia is intended to be used for, if anything. An Android OS dev making this statement is, in fact, significant news.