Google’s iron grip on Android: Controlling open source by any means necessary | Hacker News Reader

Google’s iron grip on Android: Controlling open source by any means necessary

arstechnica.com

41 pointsTehnix15 comments

Previous discussion from 11 hours ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17581988 (38 comments)

Also discussed 5 years ago (when the article first came out)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6582494

Not to worry. If history is any guide, Google will eventually miss a disruptive innovation and some other company will become the dominant player in the next new range of computing devices. It could be augmented reality headsets, but who knows, another form factory always eventually arrives.

Right, even Rome did eventually fall, but it might not be in your lifetime.

In my lifetime there have already been 3+ major platform shifts where the dominant player lost control. I'm in good health so I expect to live through a couple more.

Google's "iron grip" seems to consist of making APIs in their open-source product so that as many user-facing parts of the operating system as possible are provided by user-installable and interchangeable apps, instead of something baked deep into the operating system.

I'm not following how that counts as an "iron grip" or monopolistic behaviour.

It's so weird to me that Google gets all this flack when they made Android open source, while Apple gets none of it and kept iOS closed source and super locked down.

Given that, it's somewhat understandable that they're moving to a more closed model, sad as it is.

I think I’d rather have a closed source operating system that is sold for profit than an open source one funded by advertising.

I don’t think either situation is ideal however, but the iOS motivation seems better aligned with my interests.

How is Android funded by advertising? The google services running on it are funded by advertising, but you don't have to use those.

Android is funded as a vehicle for those services.

Last time I checked, the license fees Google receives did not fully cover the development of Android.

I think it's because the more restrictive license of the Linux kernel (GPL) vs the more permissive BSD License. What Google is doing technically doesn't violate the GPL but it kinda gets away doing the sort of thing copyleft licenses were intended to prevent. People have been upset at Ubuntu forever too since they started including closed source drivers.

I don't really understand the argument here. Google once provided more OSS with Android, so they are obligated to do so forever? That's not really how OSS works. If you decide you don't want to give away quite as much of your code for free, that might be unfortunate (depending on your perspective), but it's not wrong.

A more correct formulation of the title would be "Google's Totally Normal Grip on Google Apps: How Google Decided It Was in Their Best Interest To Give Away A Lot But Not Quite As Much As Before Free Value."

> While Android remains free for anyone to use as they would like, only Android compatible devices benefit from the full Android ecosystem. By joining the Open Handset Alliance, each member contributes to and builds one Android platform—not a bunch of incompatible versions.

If you use an Android fork, as enabled and allowed by Open Source, you aren't allowed to use Google anything anymore. That's the deal.

>If you use an Android fork

Specifically, if you use an android form that doesn't pass the compatibility test suite. There is no vendor that distributes stock android, not even google. Every OEM maintains a fork from the base android distributed by the android open source project.

The thing you aren't allowed to do is fork android in a way that prevents users from installing android apps.

Someone said:

> What you describe is kind of bait and switch. Sure, Google is absolute legal here, doesn’t mean however that is ethically in the right.

If you provide something initially as open source, are you ethically bound to provide future versions of that thing as open source for all of eternity?

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