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Comment by Paianni | Hacker News Reader

The Pixel 1's kernel and drivers are no longer maintained upstream.

Do you mean there's a Linux tree upstream of Google but downstream from Linus who have stopped work outside of Google control?

Yes, sort of. Google depends on Qualcomm to make updated drivers, as Qualcomm owns the intellectual property. All Pixel phones are based on a Qualcomm platform.

Qualcomm stops supporting their processors after a few years, usually three. They can make more money by selling new chips. Although I say this cynically, Qualcomm is actually the best third party vendor in this regard.

They must have the source code for any chipset vendor kernel drivers due to the GPL so they could keep producing security patches, or require them contractually. Some other Linux vendors keep supporting old ketnel versions for 10+ years after all.

Linux kernel drivers don't have to be GPL though. There exist plenty of closed source drivers for GNU/Linux. The "kernel" on Android devices are a small open source kernel and a huge amount of closed source blobs for wireless connectivity, sensors and the GPU.

That legal interpretation has been contested a lot. In any case that wouldn't be a blocker for providing security patches to the kernel, just like other LTS Linux distributions do.

There is this little legal thing called support contracts that Google could easily make use of for their devices, if they actually cared.

Since Google supports Pixel devices longer than the three years Qualcomm gives or used to give, they're probably already doing that. Not saying they care enough, but they care more than any vendor besides Apple.

Do they? I thought they do max(3 years from launch, 18 months after sales ends in Google store), which usually amounts to 3 years.

Edit: J"ust like their predecessors, they'll get Android security updates for three years, until October 2022." says Android Police.

Considering most people don't buy it at launch, this amounts to 2-ish years of support on average.

It's all dependant on Linus' version being maintained.

which is irrelevant for this userspace-only fix

are you saying google cannot afford to maintain it/them?

Basically they could maintain the Android environment but it wouldn't mean much because the system's still not safe, and won't be unless the device gets a new kernel + rebuilt drivers.

Which they could easily do with support contract requirements.

I assume Google can afford a couple of lawyers.

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