Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 121 posts

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

#81

Post by _bxg1 »

0815test wrote: post #80
_bxg1 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, perhaps even more importantly, you'd be starting from scratch in terms of app ecosystem, which is even more important today (and especially on mobile) than it used to be in the PC era. You could get some mileage out of the web- but first you'd have to build or port a browser. Chromium certainly won't target your open OS, and with its 75% market share, it now strongarms the direction that web standards take. And…

> Also, perhaps even more importantly, you'd be starting from scratch in terms of app ecosystem The "app ecosystem" on a free mobile OS would be shared with the "ecosystem" of free PC apps. Chromium does target, e.g. Debian GNU/Linux, as do quite a few proprietary apps relying on Flatpack. There's no reason why we shouldn't be able to piggiback on this work for the mobile platform. Yes, UI is different, but not that…

Assuming the free mobile OS was Linux-based. And if it's going to be, I don't see why one wouldn't just start with an Android OSP fork. Even if Google stopped maintaining the latter, it's a huge head start compared to the alternative.

That said, because of the way Google APIs have extended their tentacles into non-Google Android apps, many of them cease to function without Google Services installed. So you'd still have most of the app ecosystem problem.

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

#82

Post by Yetanfou »

burtonator2011 wrote: post #74
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.

> Being beholden to corporations for our operating systems is antithetical to freedom. This may be an unpopular statement here but where do you think Linux comes from? Corporations. It's Open Source but the vast vast vast majority of funding comes from IBM, Google, etc.

Linux was started by a student and brought into the limelight by volunteers. While the current development is largely paid for by corporations the essence of the thing is still the same, Linux-the-kernel is free software and can be forked by anyone who so pleases. If those corporations all were to loose interest, go bankrupt or suddenly decide they want to change Linux into a DRM-infested monster which only listens to its corporate master it would be a simple thing to fork the thing and ditch the corporate version. What would be less simple is the answer to the question who would pay for future development and how drivers would be written if and when hardware manufacturers started acting up but it would not be impossible to go that way. OpenBSD is a good example of a system which is developed without too much corporate funding, the concept has been tried and tested and is known to work.

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

#83

Post by _bxg1 »

viraptor wrote: post #59
_bxg1 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah- this is the only reason there's any openness at all in the mobile space right now. Android forks couldn't exist at all - much less postmarketOS - if the underlying hardware and drivers weren't open and available.

The underlay hardware and drivers are currently mostly closed and unavailable. Especially the radios. That doesn't stop postmarketOS.

Surely it still relies on some of the same mechanisms that allow you to flash custom bootloaders and ROMs?

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

#84

Post by _bxg1 »

Yetanfou wrote: post #82
burtonator2011 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Being beholden to corporations for our operating systems is antithetical to freedom. This may be an unpopular statement here but where do you think Linux comes from? Corporations. It's Open Source but the vast vast vast majority of funding comes from IBM, Google, etc.

Linux was started by a student and brought into the limelight by volunteers. While the current development is largely paid for by corporations the essence of the thing is still the same, Linux-the-kernel is free software and can be forked by anyone who so pleases. If those corporations all were to loose interest, go bankrupt or suddenly decide they want to change Linux into a DRM-infested monster which only listens t…

This theoretical situation is precisely the one Android is in. The only difference is that Google is the only corporate stakeholder, so as they lose interest in various open-source Android components, those components simply die. Maybe the answer is to get more corporations invested in AOSP.

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

#85

Post by viraptor »

_bxg1 wrote: post #83
viraptor wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The underlay hardware and drivers are currently mostly closed and unavailable. Especially the radios. That doesn't stop postmarketOS.

Surely it still relies on some of the same mechanisms that allow you to flash custom bootloaders and ROMs?

A lot of bootloading / unlocking has been figured out by reverse engineering closed systems. It turns out Google is one of the few ones providing easy tools to do this on nexus / pixel phones, even though they didn't have to.

They still provide the binary drivers/firmware from upstream because there's no replacement for those.

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

#87

Post by fmajid »

marc3842h wrote: post #50

I don't see how Fuchsia can pull this off without having at least compatibility with existing Android apps. Even if they do: I could see a ton of smartphone brands continuing to maintain it for their own smart phones (the Chinese have been big on that front!) or even making their own OS like Samsung with their Tizen OS.

Fuchsia is just a kernel, if Google reimplements the Android stack on top of it as a replacement for Linux, the only apps that would be impacted would be those few that use NDK native code.

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

#89

Post by ac29 »

Someone1234 wrote: post #46
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't believe she works at Google. Someone correct me if I'm wrong. Edit more: From my research she is someone who has legitimately worked on an Android OS derivative, but it was at another company (Sky TV?). So she's both an Android OS Dev and a non-Google employee. Her source for Android's EOL is the articles she links in the twitter conversation. She has done nothing wrong but many people seem to have misinterpr…

She doesn't work at Google, she "know[s] a lot of people from Google and/or OEMs" [0]. I'm going to have to file this under "my uncle who works at Nintendo".

[0] https://twitter.com/DroidAlexandra/status/111934958407192985...

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

#90

Post by tacomonstrous »

Waterluvian wrote: post #3

What'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.

>ah an Android OS dev

She is in the wide sense of the term: she has made some contributions to AOSP. But only Google has actual knowledge of the future of their OS, and she doesn't work for them.

Post reply on HN