This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
ITT: People making assumptions based off the tagline without reading the article
Basically not much changes, they're just gonna wait to post their code until it's done instead of letting it be viewed in progress
~~That’s a huge change. Reviewing one years’ worth of code at once is practically impossible, this significantly reduces the chances of a third party spotting malicious changes in the code.~~
That's already how it functionally worked for each major release
Here's their previous strategy: https://web.archive.org/web/20220917195332/source.android.com/docs/setup/about/codelines
Google works internally on the next version of the Android platform and framework according to the product's needs and goals
When the n+1th version is ready, it's published to the public source tree
The source management strategy above includes a codeline that Google keeps private to focus attention on the current public version of Android.
We recognize that many contributors disagree with this approach and we respect their points of view. However, this is the approach we feel is best and the one we've chosen to implement for Android.
As far as I can tell, this would really only affect QPRs, since the public experimental branches that get made after they throw the next release over the wall is going away
oh, got it, thanks. feel so bad about people having read my incorrect comment haha
Meh, reasonable. Thanks for posting the clarification.
How does this affect custom ROMs like lineageOS?
Platform developers, including those who build custom ROMs, will largely also see little change, since they typically base their work on specific tags or release branches, not the main AOSP branch. Similarly, companies that release forked AOSP products rarely use the main AOSP branch due to its inherent instability.
Wondering the same about GrapheneOS
Depends on how much they contribute back. Graphene has a history of contributing to AOSP, so it will make things more difficult for that, but not really for the ROM development itself. I'm not sure how Lineage is structured these days.
Wack. Was planning on using post market OS again soon anyways
Wow never would have I tought that a company releasing an Open Source project was only to privatized a few years later, how strange. Not like this has happened long ago and we already have a licence specifically made to counter this bullshit...
People does not understand why we specifically denote Free Software by their name and we do not aggregate them in the Open Source term. Companies always try to change the concepts of change to their own interests, they will always do. Adapting the free software to a much more controllable Open Source, not using GNU when has GNU, etc.
Small details that with time change the whole meaning of concepts.
Now we have a whole community of individual developers that have helped with Android development and which work will be wasted. Just because some intrinsic concepts about software freedom. Wasted resources that cannot be used anymore. Just as what happened with BSD and UNIX with the whole AT&T litigation and stuff. But with Android we already had the Free Software movement. I guess companies are so smart in making concepts for the most of the population.
Sounds like good news for mobile linux!
Right after Linux on desktop takes off, which is sure to happen any day now.
Haven't you heard? It's the year of the Linux desktop.
I don't need desktop linux to "take off", I've happily used it for a decade. I don't need mobile linux to become mainstream. I just need it to be a bit better than it currently is.
User base size dictates development resources. If you want Linux mobile to be daily driveable, you do need widespread adoption.
Exactly. I'm not using mainstream Linux on my phone (I use Android) despite using Linux on my other devices (phone, laptop, desktop, servers), because it's not daily driveable for me. I really want to switch, but I need some base level of compatibility, and it's not there yet.
I thought Ubuntu Touch was dang near useable years ago, what someone considers "daily drivable" is probably subjective. If dumb phones had a web browser I'd probably settle for that as I self host and every service has a WebUI.
It's honestly not the feature set of Linux on Mobile that holds me back from the permanent switch, it's consistent availability of compatible hardware.
And there's great strides happening towards fully open mobile hardware platforms.
The year of Linux on Mobile is steadily approaching. I predict it'll be similarly disruptive as Android's meteoric rise.
You're quite right, I've forgotten how frustrating it was not knowing if I could get a hold of a replacement if my daily driver custom ROM Android gave up the ghost back when custom ROMs weren't as widely supported as now.
I personally finished deleting windows off of all of my machines recently. One by one we will add up over time
For every person switching from Windows to Linux, how many people got a new Chromebook or a Mac, or just do everything on their phones or a tablet?
I have a Linux machine myself, and I love having it, but I don't think the user base is growing particularly quickly as a percentage of PC OS installations.
It's but growing quickly (well, SteamDeck is), but it's growing consistently. We'l recently passed an important milestone where people are being charged for no additional features in their commercial operating systems.
That's why the commercial OS vendors are so keen to add AI. They know they need a new differentiator, because the free options just work.
It's the year of the Linux desktop, today. Next year it's the year of Linux on Mobile.
(I'm not going to clarify how much of this post is fanaticism and how much is humor. Even I'm not sure.)
No way! Now I'm afraid for the future of #Android. Never trust these companies.
It's not like Android is especially open to drive-by contributions anyway. I don't think really changes much for the downstream consumers of the releases.
It means my GrapheneOS updates will probably be a little slower.
How so? If Graphene is based off a release branch, there shouldn't be change in timing. Sure, maybe a little for inspection, but as far as I know Graphene isn't based off main anyway.
How so?
At minimum, this will slow down GrapheneOS releases and increase bugs in GrapheneOS.
At worst this could cause a new malicious anti-privacy "feature" to ship with GrapheneOS because there's no time to analyze to discover and remove it.
It's almost like Google hates Privacy or something...
They currently get early access in some capacity, and I wonder if this would impact that.
And yet Graphene will still probably need more private and secure
This is terrible news. I don't think anyone can replace Google's contributions.
We've had this fear about Unix and various database engines, in the past. But we managed.
time to switch to graphene or e/os?
graphene is a fork of stock android, so wouldn't this affect them?
Yes. This hurts the GrapheneOS project. It won't stop the project, but it makes their work harder.
now I'm less worried about goggle being required to sell android. this way it does not matter anymore
Why would you think it doesn't matter?
we were worried about android being sold off because of what bad things the new owner would do with it
