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Comment by noptd | Hacker News Reader

With Google's eventual transition to Fuschia OS, the skeptic in me sees this as little more than an easy PR win before they begin to wind down new Android development.

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> With Google's eventual transition to Fuschia OS

I still have yet to see even the most remotely reliable source that indicates Fuschia is actually going to replace Android.

Reminds me of when people were so absolutely sure that Android and ChromeOS were going to be merged.

Never happened.

I really wish people would stop repeating hare brained tech blog gossip and speculation as confirmed roadmaps.

> I still have yet to see even the most remotely reliable source that indicates Fuschia is actually going to replace Android.

Let’s come back in at least 8 years or a decade and we will see if ‘Fuchsia’ actually replaces Android and even ChromeOS then.

I won’t be surprised if they do, given that is where they are heading.

Maybe some Gerrit commits will help,

https://android-review.googlesource.com/q/fuchsia

Also in case you missed, Android apps now run on ChromeOS.

Code gets shared between projects all the time. Nothing in there specifically says that Fuchsia will replace Android.

In case you had problems comprehending it the first time, ChromeOS and Android were not *merged.*

The rumor has been around since 2015.

https://www.theverge.com/2015/10/29/9639950/google-combining...

Running ones' apps on another OS is not merging the two.

The ChromeOS/Android merger claims are still unsubstantiated. Pretty sure you'd find a fair number of AOSP/Android commits in the ChromeOS repos.

Still not convinced there's any actual evidence of Fuchsia replacing Android here.

Believe what makes you happy.

"RFC-0082: Runnning unmodified Linux programs on Fuchsia"

https://fuchsia.dev/fuchsia-src/contribute/governance/rfcs/0...

Again, nothing there specifically puts weight into the argument that "Fuchsia is replacing Android."

And also, Fuchsia's license is more permissive than Android's.

Lets put it this way, GCC is already kicked out of Android NDK, just like it has been from Apple platforms, and the Linux kernel is the last GPL piece standing on Android.

Meanwhile, Fuchsia is actually slowly testing the waters in production.

https://techlog360.com/fuchsia-os-on-first-generation-nest-h...

It is no accident that Project Treble follows a similar architecture to Fuchsia drivers.

Fuchsia's license being more permissive than Android is exactly the end goal.

It might not come tomorrow, but it will come.

That is exactly the problem. Fuchsia's license is more free only for developers in the short term, as lacks provisions to force developers to keep it free, in the end this will significantly reduce users' freedom. If Linux never had copyleft, it would never have had this success.

that's how rumors work, what rumormongers considered merging of the two OSes, were in fact attempts to make chrome os able to run Android apps, and that's exactly what happend.

In other words, rumors are started because people imagined cross-code commits to be something more than it really was.

>Maybe some Gerrit commits will help

These commits don't show that they're replacing Linux with Fuchsia, they show that they haven't killed Fuchsia.

Indeed,

"RFC-0082: Runnning unmodified Linux programs on Fuchsia"

https://fuchsia.dev/fuchsia-src/contribute/governance/rfcs/0...

If it's PR, seems like a lot of effort for a very limited audience

While no one can predict the future, I don't think the success of Fuschia is a given. The transition might open Google up to the usual potential missteps and allow a new competitor(s) to enter the space (hopefully).

Why is it that nobody seems to be able to spell the word "fuchsia"?

Because it's an unusual spelling. It's a latinisation of the German surname Fuchs (after the botanist Leonhart Fuchs) and is neither pronounced consistently with the surname (Fooks) nor spelled consistently with other words containing the same "sh" phoneme rendered as "sch".

People will never reliably spell it right, so you have to wonder whether it's a great choice of name for an OS.

It isn't only a German surname but the German word for fox.

Even Google misspells it: https://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/03/color-survey-results/

I checked the other day and it's still true.

But finally this happened. The issue has been around for years. I think (hope) this will dramatically improve the update situation on Android. I wonder though how close Fuchsia is for day-to-day use on current phones

I'm afraid vendor BSPs will be a shit situation for until the end of time, since they are still allowed to ship custom kernel modules - which means when Google updates the kernel, the modules will also have to be reworked (since they live outside of the kernel, they don't benefit from upstream rework effort), and most vendors will take their sorry sweet time to do so or do nothing at all.

Really, I don't get why Google with all its financial and legal power hasn't made sure from the beginning that all manufacturers should open source their kernel code, datasheets etc. - this would have prevented so much e-waste...

Whilst I completely agree with you (alas) and frankly I am not sure I want to see Fuscia succeed (entirely for ideological reasons -- I believe in the value of the GPL) -- this part of you statement has a very clear answer:

> this would have prevented so much e-waste...

E-waste is effectively profit for the device manufacturer. Discarded phones mean that the whole portable computer that is still more powerful than what we had in universities 20 years ago has become worthless and needs to be bought again. It's created an income stream for the manufacturers -- and that's why they're not incentivised to fix these problems. I'm using a OnePlus 5 -- officially EOL and Obsolete! -- with modern LineageOS Rom and it flies. Of course, "official" apps don't like that at all (which is downright stupid of its own reasons), but I have got around that.

I'm sure OnePlus would rather that I threw the thing away and bought another shiny model to get Android 11. Frankly, I'll use it until it breaks and hope that the FairPhone people have caught up by then...

On the other hand I'm much more comfortable buying a 500$+ phone from OnePlus that gets updated for 5 years. Maybe it can turn out to be good for both sides with manufacturers selling more high-end devices. (Rather than designing and selling cheaper but many low-end throwaway devices)

I would imagine it'd be a win for phone SoC-based SBC makers.

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