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Comment by dminor | Hacker News Reader

I'm hoping this leads to Android being developed completely in the open, with open-source drivers as well.

How would this have that effect?

As to drivers, what reason does Goggle have to not release the driver code? This would be helpful to us that still want to use the latest Android more than 2 years after we spend $800 on a nexus phone.

Sadly, the binary that is always locked down is the modem. That might not have anything to do with the manufacture. Who knows what code carriers and requiring manufacturers I hide in there.

I wouldn't hold your breath--in his recent State of AOSP post, about getting companies to support AOSP, JBQ wrote: "I've given up on HTC, Motorola and Qualcomm, as it's clear at this point that they're not going to help in that area"

This was just before the CDMA/LTE (Qualcomm) devices were eradicated from AOSP.

https://plus.google.com/112218872649456413744/posts/75aLL1dW...

Now that Motorola IS Google, it'd be safe to say google is interested in helping google?

As to drivers, what reason does Goggle have to not release the driver code?

What say does Google have over Infineon/Imagination/TI/Qualcomm/NVidia drivers?

I could see this working to that effect to alleviate the concern many manufacturers have about playing second fiddle to Motorola. If they develop completely in the open every manufacturer can keep up with the latest updates as if they were a 'halo' device, even if Google only works directly with one or two manufacturers.

What stops them from developing in the open as things are?

From outside appearances the manufacturers don't want to aid their competition by working in the open, and Google needs a next gen device to target. Now that Google is a manufacturer, they could publicly develop on a Google/Moto device.

It's probably more complex than that, but one can always hope.

If you're right, that would be a major positive advance. If the open source community at large could build off an up-to-date Android base that was trivially compatible with top-notch hardware, I think some interesting possibilities might emerge.

Sadly, I think that it's unlikely that Google will really risk enabling this kind of freedom, because of the concern that it would just make life too easy for Amazon and Facebook.

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