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Comment by aboringusername | Hacker News Reader

It's concerning to hear about the disarray within the internal workings of Android, they've spoken quite a lot about this recently such as getting access to the code and having to make manual requests.

I'm curious if there's any back up plan to an operating system used by billions. One would think, and hope, the EU would have an alternative ready to go at a moment's notice. Android is literally too big to fail, but I doubt the EU would be ready even though you could consider the failing of Android a national security emergency.

I would like to know more about what's going on at Google that are causing these issues.

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The EU Commission at least seems comfortable with requiring that everyone uses Google approved versions of Android, because it makes their authoritarian push for mandatory age verification easier to enforce.

Most national governments in the EU are probably too authoritarian technology-wise to recognize the importance of supporting a project like GrapheneOS as well.

I read a lot of comments like this, saying "we should have an alternative". And I agree that it would be really cool, BUT:

AOSP and the Android SDK are open source. GrapheneOS is exactly an alternative to Google Android. Sure, Google could shut down the Play Store (but alternative stores exist), or destroy the Play Services (but even then, there is microG).

I am happy that Google is still contributing to Android because they have a ton of money and many brilliant engineers, even though as a company it seems like it's somehow trying to burn it to the ground. But I am optimistic: it would be possible to build on top of the open source parts of Android if needed.

AOSP is open-source, but unlike Linux distros, AOSP per se doesn't really support any platform other than the Android emulator. To support real devices you need devicetree/firmware/drivers from a vendor. So it's concerning to see this move from Google, which is also the device vendor for all currently supported GrapheneOS devices.

Well to support real devices you need the device manufacturer to not prevent you from supporting it. Samsung can totally make a smartphone that does not support Android today. But I'm not sure what you are trying to say with that...

> So it's concerning to see this move from Google, which is also the device vendor for all currently supported GrapheneOS devices.

It is, and the solution to that is the partnership with Motorola.

Linux also doesn’t have device trees and firmware for most phones. E.g. many Ubuntu Touch ports just use the device tree, firmware, and kernel tree provided by the manufacturer for Android.

So from that perspective there is not really a difference between AOSP and Linux, you need support from the device vendor. But AOSP is many times more secure than the traditional Linux desktop and has many times more apps available (most of which do not require Play Integrity).

AOSP and its derivatives are linux distros.

The model for Android is that the OS is provided by the OEM. They work in partnership with Google. GrapheneOS tries to work against this model by not partnering with the OEM on supporting their hardware with its OS. Ultimately that's not sustainable given the dynamics of the ecosystem. This is why they are moving to a model where they do work with an OEM directly. These sorts of problems will subside once that happens.

You could argue that the current ecosystem dynamic is not great for the longer term, but it will require a change from the OEMs to enable something different as they are the ones actually in control of the situation.

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