yesterday at 7:45 PM
The amount of roadblocks Google is putting up for GrapheneOS is just ridiculous. None of their decisions make any sense, from the delayed source patches upstream, to the embargos, attestation issues, etc. Google simply regrets android being open source.
yesterday at 8:32 PM
I hope people remember this when advocating for chromium. Just because it is open source doesn't mean they don't control it. We need to start the long process of hard forking now or turn to alternatives like Firefox as a new foundation.
> Google simply regrets android being open source.
But they won't learn that on their own. They are breaking the deals. So we move. We force their hand
yesterday at 9:32 PM
> But they won't learn that on their own
I think they're fully aware of this. They just don't care, because the goal of "get market share super high" has been reached, so now they have no need for it to continue being open.
I don't disagree about what that means we should do; I just don't think we should assume they're being naive here. It's like writing a program to play chess; you should select your move assuming the opponent is smart and will make the optimal counterplay rather than assuming weakness, and then if they end up being less smart than that, you're still in a good place.
today at 3:12 AM
Tbh I don't think fighting open source is Google's best play. I think it is in their own best interest to keep it fully open. It is free labor by those who are most passionate. It gives strong signals at what people want, this direction you develop. It strengthens security as more people try to test it. It means people work on forks rather than alternatives. All this is true even with a monopolistic market share.
So yes, I do think they are being naïve. The stance is myopic. It is only a good move in the short term, and barely even that. It is under the false belief that we operate in a zero sum game.
today at 3:35 AM
Most successful open source projects have devs being paid by big corporations, including Linux itself, which only really took off in the 2000's when companies like IBM started caring.
Also in the last century most software was commercial, and thanks to business friendly licenses we are back to demos, PD, Shareware and co, only with new names for a younger generation.
Google will do just fine.
today at 6:33 AM
I don’t get the hate for business licenses.
I’ve seen many open source contributors deflated because they wanted to share their code/solutions with other individuals and the world to learn from only to have their work sold as a service by a big cloud vendor without seeing something back for it. Or maybe even getting more work back to support the cloud vendor for free.
So I’m not surprised at all that licenses that allow commercial use up to a point and above that require seperate license or contributions back. It is still open source in a lot of ways. Can still be part of other open source distributions that themselves make no profit etc. And only companies that are more than able to pay must pay something.
today at 7:13 AM
Google learned that it's exactly not in in their best interest when they lost their court case against Epic a few years ago which is why they are shifting focus away from open source and moving towards Apple's walled garden approach. If they had locked down their platform similarly as Apple did, Epic would probably have lost it's case for similar reasons.
Granted, we know Android would not be where it is today without open source contributions.
today at 1:19 AM
I think this is true, but I also believe the original people who built it are not the people in charge now.
today at 3:36 AM
Like most projects, anyone that thinks Linux or Steam will stay as they are when the generation that started it all is gone, is in for a surprise.
today at 2:42 AM
We haven't had antitrust enforcement for 25 years. It's high time we did.
Google needs to be broken up.
today at 4:41 AM
MS was never broken up.
today at 7:39 AM
So do M$ as well ?
yesterday at 9:19 PM
Hard forking doesn't solve the problem of closed source.
If the goal of a hard fork is "the community will invest equal resources that Google does today" then you wildly underestimate how many engineers work on Chrome.
today at 1:38 AM
Not denying than many engineers work on Chrome just wondering how many of them work on Chrome features that are anti pattern, reducing privacy, improving information collection or tracking or against users interest in broad.
today at 2:49 AM
You can just look at the commit stream and see for yourself. Despite community pearl-clutching, 99% of the work is just good old fashioned software engineering.
today at 4:50 AM
Can anyone actually share 1 - 3 examples where a hard fork of a living os project has actually succeeded ?
If AMZN couldnt make their fire whatever it was called fork of Android really grow, what chance has the community got ?
today at 5:36 AM
OwnCloud -> Nextcloud, OpenOffice -> LibreOffice, Elasicsearch -> OpenSearch, privacyIDEA -> eduMFA
today at 7:45 AM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_OpenOffice
Difficulties maintaining a sufficient number of contributors to keep the project viable have persisted for several years. In January 2015, the project reported a lack of active developers and code contributions.[49] There have been continual problems providing timely fixes to security vulnerabilities since 2015.[50][51][52][53] In September 2016, OpenOffice's project management committee chair Dennis Hamilton began a discussion of possibly discontinuing the project, after the Apache board had put them on monthly reporting due to the project's ongoing problems handling security issues.[54][55][56]
Sounds like AOO is effectively dead, so this example is a fail to my challenge.
OpenSearch & ElasticSearch both seem alive, as well as OC & NC.
Neither https://github.com/privacyidea/privacyidea or https://github.com/eduMFA/eduMFA say either is a fork of the other.
I think you failed to share 3, 2 seem to valid examples of my challenge but the other 2 are questionable.
today at 8:01 AM
AOO became a thing after LibreOffice essentially won. Before that it was OpenOffice.org owned by oracle, forked into LibreOffice in 2010, with LibreOffice getting significant traction and Oracle throwing in the towel and donating OO to Apache Foundation in 2011.
today at 1:31 AM
>wildly underestimate how many engineers work on Chrome.
It is completely insane how many people work on Chrome. It seems like it is time to deprecate web browsers and do something different. Like you get a frame-buffer to draw on with something like a wasm vm. Web pages get replaced by programs (which they essentially are anyway). Get rid of 99.9% of the cruft that has accumulated over the decades in browsers. If you want to have some of that cruft, that is a library you have to send.
today at 1:54 AM
Or go the other way and make web pages not programs at all, like they originally were. Unfortunately, just communicating information isn't cool, doesn't monetize, and certainly doesn't get clicks.
today at 5:13 AM
The biggest mistake the web ever made was leaving it up to to the website to choose how content renders.
It should be the users choice how their browser renders, it's their damn browser. Instead, browsers are built to follow standards that mostly favor the developers preferences above those of the person who actually own the device rendering it.
The modern web is user hostile by design.
today at 8:39 AM
If a web browser allows images, then the website always has full control over how content renders. It's the default. HTML and related standards are trying to persuade developers to cede some of that control in the name of accessibility, user choice, searchability, device compatibility etc. that all-image websites lack. But this can only succeed if the developers still can do everything they want to. If they can't, then they'll fall back to images and everyone loses.
today at 3:33 AM
> Like you get a frame-buffer to draw on with something like a wasm vm. Web pages get replaced by programs (which they essentially are anyway).
The biggest thing standing in the way of this is actually Apple, since they don't allow competing browser engines or equivalent so you can't make something like this for iOS whatsoever.
today at 5:13 AM
Apple can create a clone for their wall-garden when they want to catch up to the times.
today at 7:58 AM
Those times will never happen.
yesterday at 9:35 PM
But the open source project wouldn’t need to invest as much as Google does. There are all kinds of features and things they are working on that the general public really does not care about.
yesterday at 11:06 PM
> But the open source project wouldn’t need to invest as much as Google does.
Not at first. Yet over time the work increases as one must differ more and more from Chrome. I believe that's why so many forks are giving up on Manifest V2.
today at 1:08 AM
Forks are giving up on mv2 because it's not as important as the people online say it is. If mv2 was what would cause a browser to gain market share they would keep maintaining it, but if the market is not rewarding browsers with mv2 then it does not make sense to maintain.
today at 2:08 AM
Seriously. The average person in real life has no idea what MV2 or MV3 is. And despite what people here would have you believe uBlock Origin Lite works nearly as good as uBO and is generally indistinguishable from its MV2 counterpart. A casual user wold not be able to tell the difference, nor do they care.
yesterday at 11:23 PM
Differentiating isn’t as important as not engaging in Google‘s heinous practices
yesterday at 9:52 PM
[dead]
today at 12:40 AM
The bigger problem is wasting developer effort contributing to Google's platform. The real secret behind Android being "open" (sorta) is that while almost nobody runs AOSP, Google has tricked a bunch of fools into working on Android forks instead of building a real competitor.
Playing at their table is a losing game, the house always wins.
today at 12:52 AM
Windows only isn't still 90% market share because of Wine, then Proton.
today at 3:39 AM
More like thanks to Apple, in what concerns desktop computing.
today at 1:24 AM
Neither Wine nor Proton run on Windows. Building Android emulators for Linux: Worth your time. Building Android knockoffs which claim to remove the Google from Google's operating system? Foolishness.
today at 1:45 AM
Valve is working on supporting apks for their new VR operating system. If this goes anything like Proton then I'm hopeful for the future of Android without Google.
today at 3:40 AM
Gamedevs would still target Android, just like they target Windows, letting Valve run after them.
Android is even more of tragedy, given how all relevant NDK game development APIs are also available on GNU/Linux.
today at 2:33 AM
Reimplementing Windows was a huge task. If the windows source code was available, why wouldn't you begin with a copy-paste?
today at 1:30 AM
ReactOS was also a good idea.
today at 1:12 AM
The developer effort is not wasted because it's open source. Anyone can fork it at any time. None of it can be thrown away from humanity, wasting it.
The reason why no one runs AOSP is because the phone market rewards differentiation. Each phone manufacture wants to build their own experience and building on top of AOSP is how they do so.
Is it really a losing game? Building a new OS from scratch is not worth it. Why throw away an entire app catalog for your device? Consumers want access to existing app catalogs when buying a phone. If anything is a losing game it's building a new mobile operating system over forking Android as a base.
today at 4:03 AM
> The reason why no one runs AOSP is because the phone market rewards differentiation.
This is what empire-building middle managers say to rationalize their boondoggles, but in actual fact most customers can't even tell the difference between two different vendors' Android skins, definitely can't tell the difference before they buy one, and the way they actually differentiate phones is on real hardware differences that show up in the specs like the camera or performance.
The hardware company's idiosyncratic fork of the software is irrelevant at best and annoyingly irregular in the common case.
today at 2:44 AM
> The reason why no one runs AOSP is because the phone market rewards differentiation.
No, the reason is that AOSP doesn't even include a functional keyboard nor a functional call manager nowadays.
AOSP apps were abandonned around Android 11, you can't just keep them as is for real users, it looks amateur.
Even the open-source ROMs came to the same conclusion eventually and developed their own.
today at 5:14 AM
>the reason is that AOSP doesn't even include a functional keyboard nor a functional call manager nowadays
No one was using those apps so it didn't make sense to spend time on them.
today at 6:02 AM
So.. The market didn't actually support differentiation?
today at 1:26 AM
If you are not working to destroy Android, you are supporting it. You might feel happy about your custom ROM nonsense and how it protects your privacy, but that just means you're selfish, because nearly everyone will still be trapped on Google's version.
Technologists need to aggressively reject solutions which don't spread freedom to ordinary users as well.
today at 1:34 AM
It wasn't worth it, but it's 2026, not 1991, when Linus first released Linux. AI can shit out a new OS, given enough tokens, and a VM/compatibility layer would let you run Android apps until native ports became available. The question is why would you want to do that? Computers are vastly more capable than they were when the Linux kernel was originally designed, and the needs of programs and their permissions have changed as well. https://xkcd.com/1200/ While throwing away all the learnings and starting from scratch are usually not justified, sometimes it is the right choice, if enough things have changed. Should GPS location, fine grained or coarse, and related permissions, be a part of the OS kernel or a user space daemon that other processes can query or some other thing? That wasn't a question when Linux was created but should be a core consideration for a replacement system that was created today, along with a myriad of other modern day questions that didn't exist back then. I don't think it's a loosing game, and I don't have the resources to make one myself, but I do think that the world's materially changed enough to justify building a new one from scratch.
AI generating code changes the game significantly, though there are issues with that. A new OS would have taken several millions and multiple teams, but can now be done for far less. The problem is hardware to run it on. Who'd pay $2,000 for a shittier phone with less features when a $500 used one with GrapheneOS is right there? So the market, (in)efficiently, hasn't come up with a new phone OS. Not because it isn't warranted, but because the free market isn't a perfect system.
today at 3:42 AM
You mean proprietary AI can do that, running on big corp servers.
today at 4:51 AM
LLMs can't even get much simpler programs right without humans holding their hand, let alone an OS. The odds of an LLM just banging out an OS are nil.
today at 5:17 AM
Why bother building a compatibility layer when you can just start with Android and start promoting your LLM from there?
today at 1:32 AM
It wasn't worth it, but it's 2026, not 1991, when Linus first released Linux. AI can shit out a new OS, given enough tokens, and a VM/compatibility layer would let you run Android apps until native ports became available. The question is why would you want to do that? Computers are vastly more capable than they were when the Linux kernel was originally designed, and the needs of programs and their permissions have changed as well. https://xkcd.com/1200/ While throwing away all the learnings and starting from scratch are usually not justified, sometimes it is the right choice, if enough things have changed. Should GPS location, fine grained or coarse, and related permissions, be a part of the OS kernel or a user space daemon that other processes can query or some other thing? That wasn't a question when Linux was created but should be a core consideration for a replacement system that was created today, along with a myriad of other modern day questions that didn't exist back then. I don't think it's a loosing game, and I don't have the resources to make one myself, but I do think that the world's materially changed enough to justify it.
yesterday at 10:49 PM
but perhaps we dont need several gigabytes compressed code to have a browser. perhaps what google have been doing is an utter abomination?
yesterday at 11:03 PM
This is cool until Google doesn't load in your free browser.
yesterday at 11:07 PM
Then, you use this: https://duckduckgo.com/
Actually, use it now.
today at 4:11 AM
This. Also, use OSM for maps and run your own SMTP server, if you can. Nobody should need Google.
today at 5:00 AM
This works for nerds, but not for grandma who can't even describe what she's doing without using the word "google".
today at 6:58 AM
Nerds with grandmas can manage grandma's DNS or better yet set up MDM (I'm serious).
yesterday at 11:14 PM
Actually it is still cool if they don't.
Because of their enshitification we do have alternatives that were developed.
At this point the their only services I'm using are Maps, Translate and Keep Notes and it is mostly due to lazyiness as all of those already have alternatives.
Edit: forgot about YouTube, which is ironic, because that one is a toughest one because the value comes from creators, but I'm doing my part and using GrayJay[1] so I can follow them if they switch their platform.
yesterday at 10:15 PM
> Android wouldn't be what it is if it wasn't open source.
Yes, and now that they've achieved market saturation, it's time to pull up the ladder.
Thanks for all the free work, suckers!
today at 1:12 AM
Don't worry, we will fork and just repeat the pattern with new names! See you next time!
today at 3:45 AM
GNU generation is over 50 nowadays, and newer don't really get open source as we used to.
I mean, FOSDEM full of Apple laptops on the corridors, the message was really lost.
today at 7:31 AM
I would say its even more proactive than support other projects. It is becoming clearer that every single technically competent member of the friends or family is now required to educate and proactively change devices.
Remember this upcoming Christmas that the ye oldie tradition of fixing PCs clearing awful exploiting phone apps (and cancelling subscriptions) should also include the "fix my browser" again, instead of Internet Explorer being replaced by Chrome, our collective duties is to replace Chrome with Firefox, plus its useful extensions to block ads and improve the web experience removing trackers etc.
Your call to arms today is to ensure all your tech colleagues join the movement, and then we can see Google's management views on "market growth"; they forget they made Chrome, we sold it - its our fault we forgot the "infinite growth of shareholder value"...
today at 3:34 AM
> or turn to alternatives like Firefox
Implying I ever left Firefox in the first place.
yesterday at 9:43 PM
> or turn to alternatives like Firefox as a new foundation.
With the way Firefox is heading, that might not be the best idea. Nowadays Mozilla seem more focused on riding the AI-hype wave than actually making an excellent browser people want to actually use.
yesterday at 11:00 PM
Is Firefox or Mozilla perfect? Heck no. But we're not comparing Mozilla against pre-IBM Red Hat or Ben & Jerry's or whatever your concept of the ideal corporate citizen is. We're comparing Mozilla against Google. That's a very low bar that Mozilla clears with ease, especially if you're criteria includes shoving AI down your throat.
today at 12:53 AM
I'm not sure Mozilla clears it. Zen or Librewolf or PaleMoon clears it.
today at 3:47 AM
Firefox is no longer part of most browser compatibility matrices, what ease?
today at 4:04 AM
> Firefox is no longer part of most browser compatibility matrices, what ease?
What would be the point of a browser compatibility matrix then?
today at 4:48 AM
Compatibility between market relevant browsers.
Which for the large majority of companies means Chrome and Safari nowadays.
Thanks to Apple's stance on iOS, otherwise it would be only Chrome, as younger generations apparently never got the IE history lesson.
today at 4:03 AM
Either way we're still stuck with it.
yesterday at 10:36 PM
Mozilla definitely wastes a bunch of money building features I don’t want. But underneath it all, Firefox is still an excellent web browser. You just occasionally have to disable “pocket” or “gadgets” or something.
yesterday at 10:13 PM
It is sad to see Firefox riding various hype trains over the years, but I can't really blame them. Miss the wrong train, and you fall behind and may not be able to catch up. Miss the train to nowhere, and you are only wasting resources.
As for the excellent browser that people want, that raises the question of what people want. There are likely as many answers as people.
today at 4:18 AM
I don't understand this - what is wrong with Firefox these days? It does everything I need, and very few things I don't want.
Very puzzled why there isn't more love for Firefox, even on HN.
yesterday at 10:25 PM
Yeah. It’s a tough balance to achieve but that’s the situation we’re in right now so Mozilla really ought to step up (and I totally wish they would).
My biggest pain point at the moment (entirely subjective mind you) is not even the AI nonsense, but how disjointed and alien the Firefox UX and general feel is to Apple platforms (what I use, at the moment). I don’t want Firefox to mirror Safari 1:1 but I do want the Firefox UI and UX to feel polished, well thought out and thoroughly in line with system HIG specs—given that I spend a lot of time in a browser, it shouldn’t feel like a stranger in a strange land amidst my other desktop applications.
Aggressive UI improvements would go a long way to restore some faith in the incandescent fox‘ mission—at least for me.
today at 1:55 AM
Behaving like a native application also has tradeoffs. If you're only working on one platform, then sure you will want it to behave like a native application. If you're working on multiple platforms, chances are that you're going to value consistency. And while macOS users prefer their UI, the same can be said of Linux and Windows users. Guess which one is going to win out there.
yesterday at 11:25 PM
Maybe I'm not enough of an Apple fanboy but using work provided mac with firefox for 15 years I never noticed UI being disjointed from the system any more than Chrome.
today at 8:33 AM
> Maybe I'm not enough of an Apple fanboy
Maybe you’re too preoccupied trying to discredit valid criticism as “fanboyism” to realise how important UI and UX are for products such as browsers.
Besides, Chrome itself is already an absolute mess of conflicting and downright distasteful UX choices and patterns. Firefox seems to be stuck in the past but Chrome seems to actively DESPISE being available on Mac.
yesterday at 10:37 PM
What aspects feel foreign on macOS? The Firefox preferences for sure. Anything else?
yesterday at 11:48 PM
Tab close buttons are on the right (windows style) instead of on the left (macOS style), for one.
today at 8:11 AM
Not only that, but general colours are system-like but offputtingly different (dark theme is different from Mac dark theme just enough to be unsettling). Spacing (padding, margins, etc) is uneven on a lot of options, toggles and fields. Swipe back/forth being a simple arrow on the corner of the screen instead of full page swipe (like Safari) in the year of our lord 2026 is a complete disgrace (yes, chrome does this too, yes chrome also sucks). Press CMD+F and just watch as a search bar that hasn’t been updated to modern visuals in about 20 years pops up at the bottom. Pretty much everything around Firefox feels like a random collection of Windows and Linux behavioural patterns mashed together like a digital Frankenstein monster.
And despite what many people here like to think: these things matter. UX improvements compound exponentially, and so do UX problems. Firefox has an opportunity here to be a first-class citizen on every OS it runs on. It has the opportunity to be the browser that respects your OS choices no matter what, but alas, Firefox seems rather content carrying its “ah yeah I remember using it back in ‘06” reputation.
Firefox is not a bad browser by any means, but it feels like Firefox is the browser equivalent of the “how do you do fellow kids” meme. An out-of-time experience pretending to blend in under the guise of “AI”.
today at 1:26 AM
I mean, it’s the same on every browser except Safari
today at 6:15 AM
Orion also does it right.
Every other browser aren’t using macOS native UI therefore are wrong in this environment. But right on their own in being the same everywhere.
today at 8:23 AM
Unfortunately “being the same everywhere” only works if your application is distinctive enough in functionality that it can’t be anything else but itself. Firefox is just a browser. Safari is also a browser. Chrome is also a browser. And none of these apps are more important or relevant than the operating system they are working under.
If my OS says windows and tabs close on the left, then I expect every single app to be a good platform citizen and not make me relearn default controls just to operate simple functions. Windows and tabs close on the left. End of story.
today at 5:21 AM
Just because everybody does it wrong doesn’t make it right.
today at 12:39 AM
Mozilla gets 100M a year from Google ??? No fucking way they are biting the hand that feeds.
today at 5:04 AM
Closer to 500M, actually.
today at 8:04 AM
~$585 million in 2024 (86% of total revenue) https://stateof.mozilla.org/pdf/Mozilla%20Fdn%202024%20-%20A...
Mentioned as "one customer" in the PDF.
today at 8:18 AM
Lol yeah off by a factor of 6 but yeah no fucking way still stands
Edit: spelling
yesterday at 9:45 PM
It's not really a "both sides" thing given the scale difference between what Google is up to and that.
yesterday at 9:49 PM
No one is forcing Mozilla’s hand (afaik) and no one is actually thinking “if Firefox had a chatbot that might convince me to move over”. Youre right that it is not a “both sides” thing, its a “Mozilla thing”. Through and through.
today at 12:54 AM
Some people are thinking "Firefox doesn't have a chatbot so I'll use chrome" though
today at 3:03 AM
Are any of those people not investors?
today at 2:50 AM
Really? How many people can that possibly be, and how many of those would a reasonably sane developer actually want?
If your competition is attracting the worst kind of users, do you really want to get in their way?
today at 3:23 AM
Yes you want more users not less. This is business 101. Even business 000. Customers good.
today at 3:44 AM
Business 101 is to make sales! Users sometimes represent sales, but not always. That may be business 201 though.
today at 1:35 AM
Where is the form, forum or spot in general where one can tell Mozilla?
today at 3:36 AM
The next board meeting, after buying at least 51% of the shares.
today at 6:58 AM
So we move. We force their hand
today at 1:34 AM
Google is starting to turn into early 2000s / late 90s Oracle.
yesterday at 9:42 PM
The “we” in your post is interesting to me. Who do you mean? Individuals?
today at 4:02 AM
> advocating for chromium.
Advocating for chromium to do what?
yesterday at 8:34 PM
> So we move. We force their hand
What do you have in mind?
yesterday at 8:37 PM
> We need to start the long process of hard forking now or turn to alternatives like Firefox as a new foundation.
yesterday at 10:04 PM
yesterday at 8:40 PM
[dead]
yesterday at 9:22 PM
oh yes sure. just like we can shift the population into installing Debian into their machines so we also deter M$ and Apple abuse /s
yesterday at 11:17 PM
We did it before. Thanks to Firefox we broke the IE6 monopoly even on Windows.
today at 12:54 AM
How did that happen, anyway? Tabs? What's the next killer feature after tabs? Maybe sync?
today at 4:24 AM
Adblock, I would have thought. And Google can't compete in this space, by their very nature.
This is the message that Firefox needs to push: Hate ads? Use Firefox.
today at 5:07 AM
Considering that Firefox by itself doesn't block anything without extensions, that seemingly less than 10% of users use extensions and that tgere5are already quite a few snappier browsers that block ads by default...
today at 1:33 AM
Haven't all the major browsers had sync for ages? I've been using Firefox's built-in sync for so long I don't even remember what it was like without it.
today at 1:06 AM
[dead]
today at 3:18 AM
You act like it hasn't been done before.
Also, switching browsers is trivial. I do it on my parents' machines and they don't notice
yesterday at 10:14 PM
It's so much easier to switch browsers than platform/OS. Unless you have an iPhone or iPad.
yesterday at 9:33 PM
I'm reading your comment on Firefox. You can probably read mine and write a reply on it too!
today at 3:19 AM
That's crazy! I'm commenting from Firefox! What a crazy world! How is this even possible?!
yesterday at 9:08 PM
Donate to Ladybird https://ladybird.org/
today at 3:21 AM
Handing even a slight control over the web to an all-out white replacement theorist is somehow even worse than the status quo. Ladybird is run by the kind of person I'd never want to financially contribute to.
- https://nitter.example/awesomekling/status/19693500085383702... (archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20250920103645/https://twitter.c...)
- https://nitter.example/awesomekling/status/18745182953508374... (archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20250101180923/https://twitter.c...)
- https://nitter.example/awesomekling/status/19712877382689095... (archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20250925185636/https://twitter.c...)
- https://nitter.example/awesomekling/status/19671787088520972... (archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20250914104847/https://twitter.c...)
today at 7:53 AM
I don't think he said anything factually incorrect though?
today at 8:29 AM
And yet again comes someone pretending as if unhinged far right rants embracing racism and white victimhood is some sort of objective truth seeking. It's unfortunate that this has become so normalized here.
yesterday at 9:19 PM
They have their own problems. They may be "open source", but they don't accept contributions. I'm skeptical it will ever become more than a hobby project.
yesterday at 9:33 PM
Commit activity actually increased after they blocked external contributions in June: https://github.com/LadybirdBrowser/ladybird/graphs/commit-ac...
yesterday at 10:03 PM
Is not accepting contributions the only/biggest issue you have with the project? I'm honestly becoming more and more okay with the "cathedral" style of open source. Depending on the project, catering to "the community" can lead a loss of focus, lack of a cohesive "vision" or scope, and just generally trying to be everything to everyone without the resources to maintain a giant beast.
With something like a browser (engine), I'm totally okay with someone saying "I'm an expert and I'm trying something with my own vision/priorities. I don't want input from random people that I have to spend time evaluating."
yesterday at 11:26 PM
Yes I can relate to this. Picking good, valuable feedback out of the noise has become a chore.
yesterday at 11:31 PM
It's on BSD license, Google or someone else can again Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.
today at 4:49 AM
That is not possible. Google, or anyone else, can make a fork of the project. But they can't take away the original from the commons.
yesterday at 8:40 PM
Well, it is time to realise that GPL and similar variants, are better in the long term. I like MIT too, but GPL worked so much better for the linux kernel. Google and others abuse the ecosystem of open source contributors here.
yesterday at 8:48 PM
You mean the Linux kernel that the GrapheneOS project has to request every update for and then has to wait up to weeks to get a Google Drive link?
The GPL is worth nothing if nobody is enforcing it aggressively.
yesterday at 9:42 PM
The GPL is the only reason they even get that. More enforcement would certainly be good, but it's not like the GPL is worthless without a legal team backing you up.
yesterday at 9:47 PM
Could you quote the part of the GPL that they're not adhering to (which you seem to be implying), in this situation?
today at 5:36 AM
There has been a long discussion about this a while ago on HN when these delays came up. The relevant blurb:
Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,
Many people argued that 'customarily used for software interchange' is worded-as is to always be relevant to the times when the license is applied and that providing access to a Git repository is customary nowadays. In fact:
- The upstream Linux tree is distributed through Git.
- The relevant Pixel kernel sources used to be distributed through Git.
IANAL, so I am not sure how this part of the license will hold up in court, but the spirit is clear. Providing a Google Drive link is not customarily used for software interchange.
Also, I think it is fairly clear that the procedure is put in place to make everyone's life difficult, given that the relevant source used to be distributed through Git.
today at 12:55 AM
Yes, as opposed to the Fuchsia kernel where they wouldn't even get that. We're lucky Google is institutionally incapable of creating things.
today at 1:04 AM
There are already several different forks of Chromium and they are able to make their own decisions on points where they want to differentiate from upstream or other browsers in the market.
today at 3:59 AM
> Just because it is open source doesn't mean they don't control it
Just point out how that hurts security or privacy and we’re with you!
today at 6:41 AM
Who's we?
yesterday at 8:56 PM
LOL "start" using Firefox. I've been using Firefox for half a decade. There's zero I miss about Chrome.
yesterday at 11:51 PM
Rather than being smug, I’ll say awesome! The best time to start using Firefox is yesterday. The second best time is now.
IOW:
Don’t threaten to stop using Google Chrome if they do one more evil thing. Start now.
yesterday at 9:32 PM
Some of us have been using it for two decades more or less.
yesterday at 9:03 PM
LOL half a decade.
I've been using it for more than 20 years.
I don't know why either of use loled though
yesterday at 9:11 PM
LOL, I've been using it since Netscape Navigator 3.0 Gold, via Mozilla M3 (SeaMonkey tech preview), Phoenix, Firebird, and then finally Firefox :D
yesterday at 9:48 PM
Me too. Too bad I had to abandon it because Mozilla seem more focused on making AI-nonsense than a browser nowadays. No, Firefox, you don’t need AI features. You do need a better UI. You do need smoother scrolling. You do need privacy focus (which automatically means you do not need AI features). You do need to feel like you belong on the platform you’re installed on and not wish everything were Linux. You do need better designers that understand UX is not just “add controls everywhere”.
yesterday at 11:36 PM
I'm assuming you use Lynx now then? Because I don't think you would be using Chrome or its clone if that's where you draw the line?
yesterday at 10:44 PM
Huh? What ai features? Firefox seems largely the same as it did a few years ago.
I’m not doubting they added some ai junk somewhere. But whatever they did seems very easy to ignore.
yesterday at 11:18 PM
Its just an excuse people use to keep using thier beloved shiny brand.
today at 4:26 AM
Oh, those great days when the competition was NCSA Mosaic.
A simpler, better time. I miss it :(
yesterday at 9:36 PM
Mosaic :P
yesterday at 9:11 PM
I've been using it since the time it was called Netscape Navigator. Just sayin'
yesterday at 9:36 PM
Loved netscape navigator! That entire suite with mail, website builder (composer?)
yesterday at 9:23 PM
Shit, remember Mosaic? Gopher?
yesterday at 9:38 PM
Any fellow CompuServe users around???
today at 1:18 AM
Ahem. Ladybird.
yesterday at 10:29 PM
It's sad we lost ChromeOS. They got Linux, they got open source, they didn't make so so so many unforced errors.
Now that the chromebooks are also Android, it feels like the slide is only going to grow ever more fearsome.
today at 8:39 AM
> Google simply regrets android being open source.
yesterday at 7:58 PM
Google is also seriously dropping the ball in terms of security. The CVE-2026-43499 root LPE (aka ghostlock) is still unpatched across all Pixel devices, on the latest """security""" update, despite weaponized exploits being public for months.
yesterday at 8:33 PM
Pixels used to have far better updates than any other Android devices but they stopped improving it years ago. It should have kept improving because it's not at all adequate. They need to be able to release OS updates more than once per month and it shouldn't take months for patches to make it into the OS. It currently takes them at least around 2 months to get even the most urgent patches into the OS. They could fix emergency calls being broken if the patch was made around 3 weeks before an OS release, but that's about as quick as they can go. It's not at all adequate for security and is a complete joke compared to Chromium's release cycle. They can get an emergency Chrome update released within a couple days. They should at least be able to do it for the Pixel OS in a week.
GrapheneOS is often around 4 to 6 months ahead on merging Linux kernel LTS releases. We used to handle this ourselves but switched to the Android GKI LTS branch maintained by Greg KH. Unfortunately, it was often struggling to keep up even before the absolutely massive increase in Linux kernel security patches this year. AI models have rapidly accelerated vulnerability discovery and it's an ongoing crisis for the Linux kernel. We want to be on the latest LTS revision within days and want to be using the latest LTS branch within months of it being released. We're not at all happy with how Android is handling things and plan to fix that ourselves. We'll get things back to how they should be.
We also ship all the AOSP userspace patches months before Pixels due to shipping all of the security preview patches as soon as possible. There are sometimes minor regressions but we find and fix them ourselves downstream. The security preview system has a terrible design especially considering that frontier AI models can reverse engineer the patches. There should at least only be a source embargo for around 24 to 72 hours rather than pretending as if it can work with the patches available 2 to 6 months in advance.
yesterday at 9:14 PM
I'd love to use GrapheneOS on less secure devices, just for the sake of Google autonomy rather than privacy.
yesterday at 9:47 PM
GrapheneOS will be available on Motorola devices meeting all of our requirements for updates and security features in 2027. It will be starting out on a high end flagship and expanding down from there as devices improve to meet our requirements. We aren't going to support devices unable to provide a reasonable level of security.
yesterday at 9:31 PM
GrapheneOS's goal is privacy for the world and that's achieved through secure devices. You can get a phone specifically for GrapheneOS just as you choose a new device when you're buying a new one. Soon there will be two different phone brands which you can install it on. There's already an estimated 500,000 users with Pixel exclusivity.
https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/117249893761790371
yesterday at 10:56 PM
> GrapheneOS's goal is privacy for the world and that's achieved through secure devices.
Perfect is the enemy of good. What's better for privacy, an old but inexpensive smartphone running Android 11, or the same smartphone running an up-to-date third-party rebuild of Android 16 or newer with as many privacy-improving bells and whistles as the hardware can support?
> Soon there will be two different phone brands which you can install it on.
...will they be available in my country (Brazil)? I don't think I've ever seen a Google Pixel phone in person.
today at 5:45 AM
What's better for privacy, an old but inexpensive smartphone running Android 11, or the same smartphone running an up-to-date third-party rebuild of Android 16 or newer
I see your point, but it would be very misleading, since the phone would still have a lot of known holes. Only the OS would get updated, typically not the drivers, driver firmware, possibly not the kernel. The phone would still be easily compromised through all the known RCEs. So you tie up non-profit projects in a lot of extra work to get an improvement that does not really matter.
This is a mess created by the OEMs and they will continue to create this mess until people will stop buying from OEMs that only give lip service to security updates (roll out Android Security Bulletins to show a high patch level, while in reality the phone the phone has many known CVEs).
yesterday at 11:22 PM
Are all of these unsuitable [0]?
Not sure if you have any experience with eBay. I looked it up and people had problems selling to Brazil [1] but there are various listings that offer to ship. So maybe not a great option.
KaBuM!, Intec Store, Performance Solutions all charge significantly more with a 10a being more than double than from Google.
Motorola officially sells the Signature in Brazil [2] at the same price or cheaper than in the UK. It will be supported by GrapheneOS in 2027 on the 2027 version. From then on, hopefully Qualcomm brings MTE to the non-flagship chips and Motorola and GrapheneOS support budget or midrange devices.
>perfect is the enemy of good
I don't consider that relevant when users deserve ≥ security than an iPhone. GrapheneOS is not purpose-built to avoid big-tech's services although it does that more completely than any other alternative mobile operating system, the focus is privacy.
GrapheneOS on the state of privacy and security for their ethos: https://x.com/GrapheneOS/status/2044440381803069778
[0] https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=google+pixel+9
[1] https://reddit.com/r/Ebay/comments/1d92pyn/
https://community.ebay.com/forum/shipping-57923/topic/diffic...
[2] https://www.motorola.com.br/smartphone-motorola-signature/p?...
today at 2:28 AM
> Are all of these unsuitable [0]? [...] I looked it up and people had problems selling to Brazil [1] but there are various listings that offer to ship.
Do these phones have ANATEL certification? Because if they don't, they will be rejected by customs. It's not simply a case of the item being held until you pay a 60% import tax.
yesterday at 9:39 PM
Same thing here, I use Graphene for the sake of user control. All the security features and hardening of the Pixel phones and of the OS are good to have, but they not the main reason.
today at 1:00 AM
You can dot his but it won't be Graphene but something else, like LineageOS. As long as Graphene's selling point is extreme privacy and not just more privacy, it will be this way.
today at 6:15 AM
There is no such thing as extreme privacy; it isn't something any phone can provide, especially if you are going to rely on third party software and services like email and instant messengers where the likes of Google and Facebook are dominant players. Even behind a VPN, Vanadium is fingerprintable by commercial trackers like fingerprint.com. Short of disabling Javascript, browsers leak enough information to basically follow anyone around the internet.
yesterday at 8:54 PM
yesterday at 8:10 PM
I just ran https://github.com/CakesTwix/Android-CVE-2026-43499 on my Pixel 9 Pro and it seems to have been patched. I did get a system update not long ago, though.
yesterday at 8:25 PM
Try https://github.com/alex193a/Root-My-Pixel, worked on my 9a as of a few days ago (the version table in the readme is stale). I haven't checked the September update yet though (installing it now, to check).
Edit: September update for 8a has a kernel build from July. I believe it's still vulnerable but the exploit will need its offsets adjusting etc.
yesterday at 8:01 PM
yesterday at 8:11 PM
There's "dropping the ball" and then there's "not reaching out your glove to catch it to begin with".
It'd be interesting to see which one is happening here.
yesterday at 7:54 PM
It's not a regret. Android would never have been popular in the first place if it had not been open source. If phone makers had been able to anticipate how much the demons at Google would be able to lock down the Android then they would never had used the OS back in ~2009.
yesterday at 8:03 PM
I don't think this is actually true. Phone makers seem happy to have the platform locked down even further. They're putting even more roadblocks, as evidenced by most of them making bootloaders unlockable.
yesterday at 8:12 PM
They're happy that it is locked down. They're not happy that they're not the ones doing the locking down.
today at 3:50 AM
They can easily go back 30 years ago, when each one had their own proprietary in-house OS, using current Android as baseline, or something BSD like PlayStation.
yesterday at 8:40 PM
Any discussion about this is shut down. I just read an article https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckqxvy98x578o In the UK according to the BBC, politicians are pressing Samsung and apple to make stolen phones bricks. Samsung in response said that they have implemented several security features for this purpose. I think Samsung considers removing OEM unlocking a security feature according to the bootloader unlock hall of shame.
Intel used to do the same with their anti theft technology aka Intel theft deterrent on their classmate PCs, so students had to enter unlock codes from an IT admin every 3 months or every say 200 boots to prevent the computer from being locked at the bios level preventing it from booting an OS, and there was an update which disabled that functionality permanently. And you would be warned when you had around 50 boots left to get the unlock code.
today at 3:19 AM
Normally the codes would be downloaded automatically from a server but sometimes the server would go down due to negligence because it would be owned by the school and well, student's laptops would start getting locked and they would have to go to a specific office somewhere in the city to get an unlock code from the it admin
yesterday at 11:01 PM
It could be disabled from the bios somehow if you knew the bios password or the bios could be reflashed with a programming Clip directly on the bios flash chip itself.
today at 12:57 AM
Normally you have to unlock the phone before unlocking the bootloader, and that is the protection.
today at 3:04 AM
I would think they are guessing most people's passwords are weak or something. Like a screen pattern is weak, can be broken in just 300k attempts or maybe less because people use the same patterns and people can't be bothered to use passphrases.
today at 3:30 AM
A screen pattern is a different way to enter a PIN with no duplicate digits. Both PINs and patterns rely upon the security processor to resist bruteforces.
yesterday at 8:48 PM
Making the bootloaders unlockable is a good thing.
yesterday at 8:52 PM
I think OP misspoke. He probably meant that they're not able to be unlocked by the consumers, usually.
yesterday at 8:21 PM
This is what lots of people forget.
Android is not a Linux desktop or server distro. It is not about you getting to put what you want on the hardware you bought for free.
Operating systems are hellaciously expensive to maintain and that only gets worse in markets with rapid hardware improvements, as the smartphone market was up until maybe the late 2010s. Google is not a charity. SV did not come into national prominence for making investors $0. There is no money in giving maybe one in one-hundred smartphone users (and that's being generous) a bunch of code, for free, so that they can put it on their gizmo and talk to their nerd friends at their hacker meetup.
When they pitched Android as "open", they meant that carriers and device makers could load it up with all of the revenue-enhancing bloat that they wanted. In return, Google got a device that would let them hoover up all of the data they could ever want in order to build better ad service profiles for those using the devices. That is, after all, their business.
For a while, this could coexist with us screwing around with a real-life tricorder. At some point, though, the free stuff turned into a revenue opportunity that had to be exploited. And so, it will be.
yesterday at 11:11 PM
> For a while, this could coexist with us screwing around with a real-life tricorder.
Wish I could upvote you twice for that line alone. It perfectly sums up what I always wanted Android to be. Alas, the closer we are to this in hardware, the further away we are getting in software.
today at 12:58 AM
Especially Android, which is an ever-growing pile of spaghetti almost as bad as Windows.
today at 2:51 AM
I'd say Android is already worse. It uses more ram and resources to run smoothly than Windows does. Especially now that Microsoft is actively trying to speed up Windows 11 and make it use less resources.
today at 4:24 AM
Haha and not true. You would need to provide objectively more than your experience. And for an example clicking on Android Contacts would be instant vs load time in Windows 11 (the one i have).
today at 3:22 AM
That's a different axis from spaghettiness.
yesterday at 8:00 PM
That’s possible (never underestimate the bad decision-making of phone makers), but what would they have done instead? Windows Mobile 6 was the only licensable alternative, but it was a known quantity and obviously a generation behind Android and iOS.
yesterday at 8:35 PM
Symbian and LiMo were both available at the time. It is hard to say they were good alternatives though. Windows 7 - even with the weight of Microsoft behind it - wasn't able to attract enough hardware manufacturers.
yesterday at 8:23 PM
Windows Phone was pretty nice, too bad Microsoft didn't follow their DOS and Windows strategy of getting it preinstalled on every consumer PC sold. There was really only the Nokia Lumia line that I recall, but everyone I knew who had one loved it.
yesterday at 8:51 PM
Windows Phone 7 didn’t ship until 2 years after Android. 2 more years later Windows Phone 8 was released and it was a legitimate option but just too late.
Pre-7 was just not an operating system that anyone except the geekiest of geeks wanted to use.
today at 8:19 AM
Not doing any OS upgrades from 7 to 8 and only very few from 8.x to 10 certainly didn't help either.
yesterday at 9:23 PM
Yeah I guess Apple set too high a bar and MS was caught flatfooted (again) and was too far behind.
yesterday at 10:09 PM
I don’t have visibility into what happened with the Windows Phone team, but Android from what I understand saw immediately that they needed to follow Apple’s lead and pivoted (originally they were building something closer to a BlackBerry). The Windows Phone team either didn’t believe they need to pivot initially or they just took too long to do so.
Windows Phone is a case study of missed opportunity.
yesterday at 8:50 PM
yesterday at 8:05 PM
Maemo.
yesterday at 8:09 PM
I remember using a Maemo device circa 2009. I recall overall really liking the OS.
yesterday at 8:28 PM
WebOS was pretty cool (Palm). But I’m not sure if Palm would have licensed it. Lg ended up with it.
yesterday at 8:12 PM
Also Bada
yesterday at 9:12 PM
There were several credible competitors: WebOS, Symbian, Maemo/MeeGo, Palm OS 6, and of course Windows Mobile. But they required cooperating with a single vendor and/or a lot of work to adapt.
Android won because it was available "right now" and easy to hack. Vendors could get a BSP (Board Support Package) from a chip manufacturer, slap Android userspace on top of it, and ship a phone within half a year. It was a glorious mess for a while.
Google then slowly tightened the reins and made the ecosystem more ordered.
today at 4:47 AM
Not even wearing rose tinted glasses right now, for having daily driven them back in the days, maemo and then WebOS had touch ergonomics and multitasking abilities which took Android/iOS decades to incompletely mimic. Maemo/Nokia N900's design principle seems to have been "let's provide the user with desktop-level productivity tools, and shrink the desktop into their pocket", the package was massive for the era's standards, but is tiny for today's, and those dumb-down/low density ergonomics we have now give us less capabilities for more screen estate and weight (even something like an iPod pro is a "dumb" content consumption device in comparison). WebOS on the other hand was not about "producing/delivering on the go" so much as it was about getting your digital must haves (booking an appointment, updating a contact details, moving a meeting, ...) done and out of the way with just a couple key presses and finger flips as so distract as little as possible from the present. Only some advanced Android launchers get close, but it's never the focused, well polished and distraction-free experience it was back then (and for the same reason, Android/iOS are addictive content delivery vehicules meant to sink your eyeballs and time as to sell you stuff or collect and merchandise your data).
I'm interested and wishing to see a future mobile OS that does not pander to the "attention economy" like Android/iOS are, but with billions now addicted and trapped by it, I'm realistic that it won't be an overnight success.
today at 7:55 AM
Sailfish OS exists as a continuation of the Maemo project, even shipped their own phone recently.
today at 8:07 AM
Yup, I would love to try it in-hands (I looked it up on emulator many years ago, and that was frankly underwhelming). I'm also not sure about their open source situation, which was the premise of this thread.
yesterday at 8:09 PM
No, everyone knew what they were getting into with Android. It wasn't taken lightly by the power users of the time either. I still have a phone somewhere with Ubuntu Touch on it. I really was hoping that would be my phone OS by now. Not that Canonical isn't capable of similar, but that it would bring about acceptance of Linux phones.
I think we're all more surprised by how long it took for Google to make these bad moves. For a period of time in the 2010s we actually started thinking maybe Google was alright.
yesterday at 8:30 PM
It wasn't Canonical's limitation. Mozilla can confirm: the barriers to enter the phone manufacturing market are immense. Samsung, Ericsson, Sony, LG, etc, all had solid control of the deals with the network operators worldwide. It's a highly regulated market, you can't get in without Verizon, att, Vodafone etc to let you in. Canonical, Open Moko, Mozilla... Didn't have the strength to push through. Google and Apple did.
yesterday at 9:46 PM
It's operators that have grips on manufacturers. Phone OEMs don't make any without the sales networks and financing structures of cellular carriers.
This is to extent that some carriers still insist that they design phones and phone manufacturers are just factories. People need to understand that power dynamic before blaming those "mere factories" for not making Linux phones.
There has to be like an SVP of SoandSo Wireless pushing like three pillar approach of iOS, Android and Linux. Otherwise the pitch decks for any alternative phones just go straight to trash(or into a motorized shredder if it is still physical).
today at 12:52 AM
>It's operators that have grips on manufacturers
Only in the USA.
today at 5:12 AM
In quite many more countries than just USA. A lot of people would still buy phones through carriers even where they come unlocked.
today at 12:59 AM
Worst case we can buy phones and physically replace their Application Processors with liberated ones.
yesterday at 8:37 PM
Phone manufacturers had Symbian which became open source
today at 4:05 AM
It didn't become a major regret really until the antitrust treated android as a competitive space and iphone separate. That decision led to a lot of wtf and tactics changing. Because the platform had been made open it was then an issue of tying vs if it had just been closed like apple there wouldn't have been an issue was a pretty stupid take if you ever want to see an open platform again.
today at 2:11 AM
I'm convinced Android being open source is just an accident of history. It's been somewhat useful for Google to be able to ride on that goodwill, but they're not actually invested in open source beyond the ways it directly benefits them (or at least they haven't been in the last 10 years). Thus they're happy to throw the baby out with the bathwater if they believe they need the bathtub for anything that will earn them 0.1 cent more than that baby would.
today at 2:27 AM
It's like PC parts being modular. IBMs greatest mistake and the industry wants to make sure it never happens again.
today at 8:06 AM
When IBM tried that with PS/2 it didn’t go so well.
today at 3:58 AM
Its more a reflection of the vastly different internal culture of the time (and different executive leadership).
When Patrick Pichette left and Sundar became CEO both led to massive culture shifts.
today at 5:08 AM
They want to be like Apple here and lock things down. Remember SMS? The ubiquitous text messaging protocol that had an API that developers could access? Now, the latest standard, RCS, is locked down with no API and behaves just like iMessage. Ring any bells?
today at 3:34 AM
There was a split world for a long time even before the more recent changes because of the need to hide secret new features or products from the general public. It was always a tricky arrangement. They just decided one day that there wasn't a lot of folks contributing that lacked access to the private repos, so they might as well just switch all development to occur in that place. Honestly, it's somewhat rationale. If there was a significant number of folks contributing to Android without such access I'm sure that wouldn't have happened. We didn't lose as much as folks think we did given the code drops from the private repos still happened even previously.
yesterday at 7:50 PM
There's a non-zero chance that three-letter agencies are lobbying for at least some of this.
yesterday at 11:06 PM
Yeah. Which doesn't mean Google isn't happy to comply for its own profit motivations.
today at 8:05 AM
> None of their decisions make any sense ..
What? Google is advertisement business. Not a software house. They sell ads. It all makes sense to build a walled garden. They are effectively a monopoly for half of the personal devices _in the world_. And they _will_ return their investments into the opensource. By locking Android and Chrome and showing ads to everyone.
Like the old days shitty TV, full of ads.
yesterday at 9:07 PM
It makes perfect sense when you apply the Friedman doctrine to their actions. [0]
Google is a lawn mower, stop anthropologizing them. This goes the same with Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, ...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_doctrine
yesterday at 9:33 PM
Agree. The only time a company does something in the public interest is when it believes doing so would ultimately benefit the shareholders. Everything is a business decision.
today at 5:33 AM
As an outsider in a hyper competitive commercial space like mobile os (apple, android) which part makes you think it's active obstruction and not just moving fast and trying to keep up, get ahead, etc and they want the open source side but it's a lower priority?
today at 3:36 AM
> Google simply regrets android being open source.
Could Google backtrack on this if they wanted? If they suddenly decided to stop releasing public code updates, what would they be violating? I can guess: Anti-trust maybe. probable at least contractual commitments Or is there some stronger forcing function?
yesterday at 8:17 PM
The thread states that Google is putting out patches that affect other Android vendors too.
They're not treating GrapheneOS very differently from other vendors, except that Graphene isn't relevant enough to sign a contract with because they don't make phones (or money, really).
Google should be putting out the code and patches like they used to, but the constant badgering of Google on this issue feels off. I don't see anyone complaining that Samsung isn't supporting their security-focused fork enough, or complain that Apple is delaying the bootloader unlock process by a day.
Despite their very worst, selfish intentions, Google is the very best vendor of commercial open source software. While Google's open source project collapses, there's plenty of space for other vendors to step in.
We should bemoan Google's fall from grace, but only because they're on the way to becoming just as bad as every vendor but Librem if they keep this up another decade.
today at 5:51 AM
Librem seems as bad as a typical Android OEM. Maybe I'm looking at the wrong repository, but the barely seem to update driver firmware?
https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/fw/firmware-librem5-nonfree
https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/arm-trusted-firmware
I hope I'm looking in the wrong place.
yesterday at 11:26 PM
Yeah I have trouble accepting it's pure coincidence this occurs just as GrapheneOS is starting to gain some noticeable traction.
today at 12:51 AM
When you realize that keeping people on proprietary mobile OSes is a matter of national security it makes more sense. The USA spares no expense for national security.
yesterday at 8:22 PM
It's a net loss. Less data and in their view makes development harder.
yesterday at 8:40 PM
And don't forget about Manifest V2/uBlock Origin removal!
yesterday at 8:44 PM
today at 1:09 AM
It's not that it doesn't make sense, you just said it, they regret - well maybe not regret since they'd never made it without, but they now want to reverse a decision they feel needs to be overhauled. I always thought they'll replace Linux with Fuchsia but that hasn't happened and it's not like they couldn't have done it.
today at 12:44 AM
> None of their decisions make any sense
It only doesn’t make sense if you’re assuming conspiracy.
It makes a lot more sense if you assume they just don’t give a shit.
yesterday at 11:06 PM
> None of their decisions make any sense,
Of course, it does. Google is no longer afraid to spit on open source. People happy to use Chromium features better remember this. You are renting everything and your landlord will soon come demanding it back.
today at 2:23 AM
If someone’s (or some company’s) decisions don’t make sense to you, you don’t understand their motivations.
yesterday at 9:25 PM
[dead]
yesterday at 8:30 PM
Can we just stop saying "Google" as if it's same faceless org? No, it's not Google, one or two asshole execs are behind this policy.
today at 12:04 AM
The org takes responsibility. If you want to additionally name & blame an exec feel free.
yesterday at 7:53 PM
GrapheneOS does not even register on Google scale! It does not even manufacture its own devices!
Bigger problem is HarmonyOS and similar devices, compatible with Android. Opensource threat from china!
And no NSA backdoors or honeypots!
yesterday at 8:09 PM
If the hardware security is on par with iPhone / pixel 8+, then sure.
Otherwise there's no need for NSA backdoors (as Cellebrite matrix shows) :)
today at 1:03 AM
GrapheneOS does, however, register on the FBI's radar because a lot of criminals know to use it, and the FBI can't crack it.
yesterday at 8:15 PM
Sure, let's just trade the NSA for the CCP, no issues there.
yesterday at 8:35 PM
One poses an active, unchecked threat to the constitutional rights of US citizens, has a chartered mission to subvert and undermine the very field of cryptography itself - going so far as to bribe standards bodies to adopt backdoored algorithms (using taxpayer funds to do so), has plotted to mass-violate the constitutional rights of their own citizens and lie about it to the national legislature (which they carried out successfully, committing perjury in the process and facing zero consequences for it), secretly cooperates with the criminal justice system via parallel construction to target nonviolent, law-abiding political activists with fabricated criminal charges as retaliation for politically disfavored speech, while the other is about 6500 miles away, has negligible presence in / reach into the US, and is generally unconcerned with the domestic political activities of US citizens.
yesterday at 11:34 PM
I agree–it's absurd to be more concerned about spying of China on American citizens than the spying of our own government. While allies of the US are problematic because of however many eyes.
Not particularly relevant but the lawful spying implemented in the telecommunications system by our own government has been abused by Chinese hackers as well.
yesterday at 10:29 PM
+ 3 social credits, comrade
yesterday at 9:33 PM
> has negligible presence in / reach into the US, and is generally unconcerned with the domestic political activities of US citizens.
lmao
yesterday at 8:34 PM
So, the real thing that's happening here is:
* Google drop "real" Android source-code updates to OEMs _and_ the public every half.
* But they ship four Pixel updates, including documentation + SDKs.
* Now they added new APIs in a Pixel-only update.
* Google also drop security update backports to "trusted" OEMs monthly (which GrapheneOS have had access to for years).
So, there are now Pixel-exclusive app features on the Pixel SDK version which isn't available to OEMs - but, it's highly unlikely any app developer would actually depend on these new APIs, since Pixel marketshare is tiny to begin with. This in essence just makes Pixels a weird beta-testing device for what will come out a quarter later to "normal" devices, which is sort of an odd business decision, but also a weird thing to get really mad about, in my opinion (I do see what GrapheneOS are trying to do, with having OEMs saber-rattle about not getting features on the same cadence as Pixels, it just doesn't resonate very loudly for me).
However, the API headline seems to bury a deeper lede; in the thread, GrapheneOS also claim that the quarterly Pixel releases contain security content which is not appearing in the monthly backports. This is quite bad and very sloppy if true, since the Pixel releases can easily be patch-diffed and exploits backed out of them. I'd be interested in seeing this enumerated in more depth.
yesterday at 10:25 PM
> * Google drop "real" Android source-code updates to OEMs _and_ the public every half.
All of the major OEM shave access to the internal source with a _very_ small delay. OEMs don't ship these intermediate releases because they choose not to, not because Google witholds the source for them.
yesterday at 10:58 PM
Oh! I had thought they stopped at the same time they closed off AOSP commits - that makes this entire rabble-rousing effort _exceptionally_ silly, then; I can't see the angle GrapheneOS are trying to push at all in that case (like, I get their side of the _concern_, but "Google are shipping features to Pixels that you don't get" becomes... quite a poor argument indeed in that scenario).
today at 5:56 AM
The whole security embargo things seems incredibly stupid. OEMs are always too late rolling out security patches. So Google thought, "let's create an embargo of months so that the OEMs have time to integrate the patches". Anyone could see it coming that nothing would change and the OEMs would still wait until the very last moment.
So now everybody is off worse. Not only are OEMs still slow with security updates, while CVEs float around for months among those within the know (or reverse engineering skills) for months.
yesterday at 8:54 PM
I don't really see what the Pixel-only early API releases achieve except for allowing developers to work on Pixels ahead of time, but Pixels are such a small sliver of the universe that it basically just gives Google a leg up, I would assume. And if you're on Graphene why would you care about Google's beta edge apps?
yesterday at 9:22 PM
Exclusive access to QPR1 and QPR3 releases gives Pixels an unfair advantage over other Android OEMs. They get an extra 2 major updates per year. Introducing new APIs for third party app developers as part of these updates means third party apps will now run best on the Pixel OS. Google apps already run best on the Pixel OS due to many exclusive features. It's Google's standard overall approach to propping up parts of their business with their monopolies in other markets. It's not legal.
yesterday at 9:33 PM
I honestly don't think anyone would care. They have a "leg up" for what 3 months every 3 months?
Nobody buys a Pixel because of this minute software advantage.
Maybe get Motorola or Samsung to support security updates for six years and get back to Pixel users.
yesterday at 9:55 PM
Pixel 9a and earlier were officially sold as Android Open Source Project reference devices. Google made a commitment to providing 7 years of updates from launch for 8th/9th gen Pixels. Google then arbitrarily declared they were no longer AOSP reference devices with the release of Android 16 and stopped providing those updates. Many people bought Pixels due to this and it wasn't fulfilled. GrapheneOS has been able to continue support with a massive amount of work including reverse engineering, but other operating systems haven't been as successful and mostly haven't even moved to Android 17 yet or supported 10th gen Pixels.
There are currently around 400k to 600k active Pixels with GrapheneOS. There have been far more than that when including the past devices our users have purchased. Pixels are a small segment of the overall market and that's substantial. If you add in people on other operating systems such as LineageOS then there are even more people using Pixels with another OS. A significant portion of people who bought Pixels did so because they were AOSP reference devices.
Samsung provides 7 years of support with monthly updates for their flagship devices. Unlike the Pixel OS, Samsung ships a lot of the security preview patches early.
Motorola Signature (2026) has 7 years of support. The upcoming successor to it is the first non-Pixel meeting all of the update and hardware security feature requirements for GrapheneOS.
Pixel 11 currently doesn't meet our security requirements due to at least temporary lack of MTE support which may get added in Android 17 QPR2. The upcoming Motorola device is also going to be using a 6.18 kernel at launch rather than 6.12. We would have launched Pixel 11 series support already if they met our security requirements. It's likely they will down the road but it's not clear why they omitted firmware and software support for a major security feature at launch. It's the firmware part which impacts us.
yesterday at 10:08 PM
> Many people bought Pixels due to this and it wasn't fulfilled.
Did they though? Or is this just conjecture? Because, honestly, Pixels are not even available worldwide so a few AOSP enthusiasts dropping off and going to Graphene hardly seems concerning for the mighty G.
AOSP reference was a tagline for a few nerds that still wanted the Nexus devices of yore, but it was clear from day one that Google wanted their Pixel phones to be their iPhones.
today at 5:45 AM
I did
today at 8:02 AM
> a few AOSP enthusiasts dropping off
> I did
Precisely my point.
today at 1:14 AM
I'm pretty sure the commitment has always been is for security updates, not for the latest OS.
My first phone was a Motorola that shipped with Eclair. Froyo had already been released and Motorola had a release date for Froyo scheduled in their website. They changed their mind. I don't trust Motorola one iota. Google has never lied to me they way they Motorola has. Good luck.
today at 5:44 AM
Thats a long time for a critical security patch to land (like this one [0], although it looks like it has been fixed now, at least in their alpha channel, which is annoying (not their fault) because we really need this patch).
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4974151
yesterday at 9:34 PM
The rattling is because of the security patches of course.
today at 12:17 AM
As someone who went through similar challenges with Google making it impossibly hard for BlackBerry to provide an Android runtime on BBOS10, and now running GrapheneOS, I trust Google exactly zero to do the right thing by any open source project it stewards. Combined with their other practices, and lack of ongoing support for their commercial offerings, means that my perception of them is irreparably damaged and I minimise my usage of their products as much as practicably possible.
yesterday at 8:23 PM
Alright AI maximalists, what's the estimated token budget to remove the Google dependency?
GrapheneOS has the bootable AOSP and will have Google-alternative device support.
We probably need an equivalent to Play Services, app signing/porting/publishing tools.
With these in hand could we talk Valve into providing the scalable alternative to the play store?
yesterday at 8:58 PM
GrapheneOS accepts donations and, to my knowledge, they spend it in hiring full time engineers.
They have replacement portions for Play Services already (attestation, an app store, and location), but it'd be interesting if they also offered something for push notifications.
If you have it to give you can spend your budget on a donation and fund the effort directly.
yesterday at 11:58 PM
I believe GrapheneOS talked about hosting their own unifiedpush server and baking it into the OS not long ago
today at 2:34 AM
The trouble is that banking apps will not work if you degoogle your phone. GrapheneOS was an attempt to make this sort of thing work, in a phone OS more secure than stock Android
But to be honest, many banking apps randomly stop working with GrapheneOS anyway. So if you see this...
https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compa...
https://github.com/PrivSec-dev/banking-apps-compat-report
And check the issues, it's unpredictable whether a bank will continue to work with GrapheneOS
So.. if you accept GrapheneOS might not be reliable for this use case, and decide have two phones (one just for banking stuff, another for.. using), then degoogling is fine.
Only thing is that the banking device probably needs to be a phone (or tablet I guess), I don't think you can emulate a real device good enough for it to work on something like Waydroid
today at 5:30 AM
My bank can support my phone or accept that I'm going to come waste their time in person, I'm not backing down here.
today at 5:09 AM
[dead]
yesterday at 8:44 PM
The token budget isn't to remove Google it's to create drivers for individual phone hardware, which phone and chip manufacturers keep closed source. Also it would be used to find exploits to unlock permanently locked bootloaders
today at 12:06 AM
GrapheneOS won't be interested in other hardware support, since the only devices that meet their hardware security standards are Pixels and the upcoming Motorola phone.
today at 3:16 AM
The answer to this is - the real world comes knocking. Govt, banking, investment, grocery, transport, even some mainstream social/communication apps, all stop working - yeah, kinda cold turkey. And if your, or someone else's, answer to them is: ".. well then don't use those apps.. or maybe in mobile or desktop browser.. " (this is usually the tone on those "privacy" guide forums), then yeah it will work and can be done in hours theoretically, or days max :)
yesterday at 8:57 PM
What's the token budget to build a new phone OS?
yesterday at 8:33 PM
exactly
yesterday at 10:16 PM
If only Graphene had a better marketing team. It pains me to say this but it is the absolute truth: the public does not know Graphene and does not care about Graphene. Even it’s name is absolutely awful. This is like the Linux distro hell: “you should use BingaBoingoKonohaOS_v34 or Peppermint_Cinn4monR0ll with the OutOfThisWorld DE, but steer clear of the Pancake package manager, use openMsPacMan with GrassFaceWhazzit frontend instead.” How is anyone (as in not us, the tech nerds) supposed to reason about this?
Things will keep as is for as long as they keep making these OSs FOR the tech nerds.
Downvote me all you want. You know it’s true. An OS made for nerds and by nerds will never reach mainstream and will not, ever, move the needle anywhere. Tech is no longer a hobbyist’s game.
yesterday at 11:30 PM
What's particularly bad about the names of Graphene, Mint and Cinnamon? Especially compared to Android and iOS!!
today at 8:17 AM
On their own? Nothing.
But Graphene doesn’t mean anything to the general public. People aren’t buying “an iOS device”, they are buying iPhones. People aren’t buying “an Android phone”, they are buying “a Samsung/Galaxy” or a “Pixel”.
Mind you, when I say people, I mean the general population. Not those actually interested in these subjects.
My point is: people don’t care about these specifics, people care about having a frictionless experience (or as close to frictionless as possible). Having to explain what Graphene even is is friction enough for most people to not even bother listening to your explanation.
today at 1:06 AM
It's the OS every drug dealer uses and the government can't break it. In privacy circles you can't get better marketing than that.
today at 8:30 AM
If only privacy circles were big enough to matter.
today at 1:52 AM
yesterday at 8:35 PM
A lot. But I don't think you can do it with just tokens. Android without the Play store and Google Play Services is just not very useful (in the West anyway).
today at 1:05 AM
Which is why Grapheme runs them in a sandbox. You can too.
yesterday at 9:03 PM
Buy HarmonyOS device. No google jumk, android compatible os, fdroid works, years of security updates from maker, and 40% lower price.
As a personal device it works pretty well. For ssh terminal and reading markdown, it has by far best display.
yesterday at 9:14 PM
HarmonyOS kernel (HongMeng) is not only closed source but also encrypted. Those devices do not allow you to unlock the bootloader or install apps not signed by them (albeit I don't know how that works for emulator apps, a signed Android emulator could possibly allow arbitrary apks).
Huawei made a big mistake by not fully open sourcing HarmonyOS, you can't flash OpenHarmony so it doesn't count.
yesterday at 9:15 PM
That's Huawei's Android fork, right? Is it available on devices outside of China? I'm not seeing an obvious place to buy a device running it.
yesterday at 9:27 PM
I think it started like this, but it no longer is the case.
I feel like Huawei missed a gigantic opportunity there: forking AOSP may have gotten them traction. I would totally buy a Huawei device if it could run GrapheneOS, and I wouldn't mind if GrapheneOS was based on Huawei's fork rather than Google's.
today at 1:07 AM
Why would China allow the domestic sale of a device that could run GrapheneOS?
yesterday at 9:25 PM
LOL an OS controlled by the Chinese government?
yesterday at 10:11 PM
As long as it's OSS, you could always fork it back l.
today at 1:46 AM
It's not.
today at 3:49 AM
I'm so glad we stopped microsoft from shipping a browser with their OS in the 90s, <sarcasm/>.
Regulate them! that is the only way.
Their should be a path for an AOSP build to be just as privileged as a google signed build.
today at 5:37 AM
They just walked away from an antitrust case with what can only be considered a huge win for them. I don't think regulating them is going to happen any time soon.
yesterday at 7:59 PM
Important details further down: https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/117282129725629495
So it seems like the problem isn't that the new API is Pixel exclusive, but that the first and third quarterly release patches each year are Pixel exclusive?
yesterday at 8:18 PM
No, these are standard Android APIs included since Android 17 QPR1. These will be available through AOSP and other OEMs via Android 17 QPR2 in December 2026. It's currently exclusive to Pixels because it was released as part of Android 17 QPR1 since QPR1 and QPR3 releases are now Pixel exclusive since Android 16.
This is simply the first time they've added APIs in a QPR1 or QPR3 release following no longer releasing QPR1 and QPR3 to AOSP after the release of Android 16.yesterday at 8:11 PM
QPR1 and QPR3 are now Pixel exclusive since Android 16. That means the new APIs for app developers added in Android 17 QPR1 are Pixel exclusive until Android 17 QPR2. There hasn't been a case of new APIs for apps not being open source or not being available to every OEM since Android Honeycomb (3.x).
yesterday at 9:23 PM
Seems like that's anti-competitive behavior, holding back security updates except for Google's own stock users.
https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/117282190165630051
> It would be interesting to know if Google's legal team is aware they're giving Pixels months of early access to new Android features and bug fixes including certain important security patches. Pixels being given this competitive edge over Google's OEM partners is very dubious.
yesterday at 8:15 PM
I'm on GrapheneOS and I will never go back to Google Android or iOS. The amount of control you get is just liberating. I hope Google doesn't crush them.
yesterday at 8:43 PM
yesterday at 8:43 PM
[dead]
yesterday at 8:19 PM
I get the sense Android is going the way of MacOS and Darwin. At some point Google will release something non-free end users experience as an absolutely integral part of OS, and it won't be possible to continue as an equivalent alternative. AOSP will still be free and underlying the whole thing, but slowly rot away as anything more than a code base.
yesterday at 8:29 PM
Installed GrapheneOS on my Pixel 10 yesterday, only used the stock rom to start the installer... Am feeling a little unconfortable due to this situation: [0]. Hope this gets better. Really feeling the dislike for Google on this one.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49741510
yesterday at 8:59 PM
https://grapheneos.org/releases#2026091700
Fixes/updates the modem firmware.
yesterday at 9:09 PM
Ah that's great news! Do you know how to force an upgrade?
yesterday at 9:30 PM
It's in the alpha channel for now, you have to join the alpha channel to get it immediately (at your risk).
today at 1:10 AM
Look at that dev productivity go! The continually softening job market means c-suites everywhere care less than ever about their company’s image among developers. They’re surely thrilled to stop pretending to give a shit about anything beyond the next few quarters’ stock prices and their bonuses.
yesterday at 8:06 PM
The world needs a Steam Phone.
today at 3:21 AM
It sure needs a large enough push from one of few big companies (with their explicit backing) that can bring businesses to support other app store(s). But imho that has to happen in a way that it doesn't create a need to write and publish apps in yet another language to yet another platform. Because if businesses have to do that as well that will be a good way to ensuring it becomes a DoA effort.
I've a feeling companies like Meta, Amazon, Steam are well placed to do this (esp. Meta and Steam). But not sure it will be helpful to them in any way, besides they'd want to ensure their own control and locks.
yesterday at 8:13 PM
If you mean GNU/Linux phones, they already exist and can be used as daily drivers by technical people. Sent from my Librem 5.
yesterday at 8:16 PM
Yes, but a popular one that's usable by regular people and with a very wealthy organization behind it.
today at 5:21 AM
How do you expect things to be popular without a company with self-interest? Producing a linux phone that people want requires immense capital, they're not just spending that and then releasing as open source forever.
By the time the product becomes "popular", it's then just one more platform that needs to follow investor interest and laws.
yesterday at 11:15 PM
Why GNU? I get the appeal of Linux, but Android has that angle covered. What makes GNU a better userspace than Android for phone use? I actually think the Andoid userspace is very good for what it is. If Google's influence were magically removed, Android would be more or less the ideal OS, at least for me.
today at 2:54 AM
It's not GNU itself that's appealing, it's the fact that it's not controlled by a company.
today at 12:44 AM
[dead]
yesterday at 8:23 PM
This can be achieved if more people support the effort. If you expect megacorps to offer you a device respecting your freedom, think again.
yesterday at 8:21 PM
I miss my blackberry
today at 2:21 AM
It's not the same, it does not run BBOS10, and de-Googled LineageOS will have to do for now (for me).
But at least we can get updated internals for the Q20 (and soon the Passport). It'll be the closest we can get to carrying a BlackBerry for some time, if ever, and I'm happy enough with mine that I picked up a spare mainboard
yesterday at 8:21 PM
They exist but they need more polish and support from device vendors to be a viable alternative to the duopoly. It should be just as easy for the average phone buyer to get and use a 'Linux phone' as it is to get an Android or fruit phone. This is more or less true now for Linux distributions no matter what the naysayers keep on repeating, the next step is to make it true for mobile devices. There will still be naysayers but... who cares? Let them listen to themselves in their echo chambers like they've been doing w.r.t. 'Linux on the desktop'.
today at 12:10 AM
Wake me when they get modern hardware.
yesterday at 8:09 PM
yesterday at 8:04 PM
This is confirming my belies that Google is trying to block OEMs that don't pay them to be part of GMS, with the goal of eventually being the only android phone maker.
today at 7:36 AM
Android really going for the gutter recently.
yesterday at 7:52 PM
Does anyone contribute to AOSP besides Google? Does Google actually accept any patches into "upstream" and ultimately into their own commercial distro?
yesterday at 8:00 PM
The phrasing of your first question is ironic given GrapheneOS has upstreamed a ton of their security hardening.
You're probably asking if they're able contribute anymore?
yesterday at 8:24 PM
Can you link to patches or commits they upstteamed? I'm not aware Google ever accepted any.
yesterday at 9:08 PM
https://grapheneos.org/faq#upstream
https://android-review.googlesource.com/q/status:merged+auth...
today at 4:44 AM
Nothing in last 5 years; and if we ignore the last one, Nothing in almost 9-10 years. I am not sure how much weight it holds. Now if that's on Google on not accepting stuff that's different matter
today at 6:59 AM
Most of it is one liner config changes too, not much of actual code.
yesterday at 8:49 PM
quite a few manufacturers do, specifically in the automotive sphere and ofc samsung etc.
in terms of accepting, unless it's stuff like bugfixes to core mechanisms, not really.
today at 8:29 AM
Out of curiosity, do closed APIs mean OEMs can’t fuck them up or at least limit how much they can?
yesterday at 8:30 PM
Someone please make a linux-based, using proper cgroups/containers for app isolation, where programs are one of: regular JVM ByteCode, or WASM. APIs follow a JEP-style Process with multiple incubators until we got it right.
today at 7:55 AM
How surprising.
today at 12:06 AM
AOSP = "Android Open Source Project"
today at 4:54 AM
Feels like the "Pixel = reference implementation of AOSP" relationship is starting to erode.
today at 5:48 AM
Pixel never was a reference aosp. You are thinkin of nexus.
today at 2:29 AM
I would love to know what alternative phone OSes exist. I would happily throw money and my engineering weight behind a promising project.
today at 8:48 AM
Sailfish has a Linux-based OS with some Android compatibility.
Ubuntu Touch has left behind UBPorts which uses Android's hardware layer to provide a usable UI on existing Android devices.
There's the Librem phone with an open source stack, though its hardware doesn't come close to a cheap Android phone these days.
There are projects like PostmarketOS which work to get mainline Linux on phones. From there, you can run Linux on phones through desktop environments such as Phosh and Plasma Mobile which are touch optimized.
FirefoxOS died but was forked into KaiOS, though the modern iteration of KaiOS is an Android fork.
Samsung has TizenOS but I don't think any phones run it anymore. It's probably the closest equivalent to Android in the way it has been developed.
If you want to throw money at something, Sailfish may be the project to keep an eye on. All the other volunteer-run operating systems are worth donating to, of course, but Sailfish is actually trying to be a real third option rather than an open source proof of concept or alternative for shitty vendors stopping updates.
today at 1:14 AM
Android is irrelevant to me, there is only GrapheneOS.
Go bankrupt, Alphabet!
yesterday at 8:19 PM
I'm going to guess that google is afraid of the age of AI, they should be, those API's will be reverse engineered pretty quick. Lots of bad actors will using AI.
We live in a time, if you want to build an android app, you easily can, but installing will be harder due to google concerns.
yesterday at 9:54 PM
I wonder how low Google will sink next time.
Respect for the GrapheneOS for pushing through regardless, even if they have to reverse engineer stuff. Can't wait to buy their phone.
today at 6:00 AM
> Can't wait to buy their phone.
Good phrasing. It's certainly not _your_ phone, you're just an untrusted user who is extended the privilege of using it.
yesterday at 10:15 PM
> I wonder how low Google will sink next time.
Oh, the possibilities are endless and they're just getting started. Besides stopping releases of AOSP completely they could also mandate that any "certified" Android device should not allow bootloader unlocking (albeit OEMs will disallow that anyway)..
yesterday at 7:57 PM
Many developers will likely be developing at Android 16 APIs only. Will rely on Aptoide+AOSP exclusively. This is likely the timeline we'll see a decline in Play Store and Pixel usage.
yesterday at 8:10 PM
You vastly overestimate how many people care (developers included) outside of FOSS and HN circles.
Nothing will happen, as it never does.
yesterday at 8:13 PM
Pixel market share is and always has been absolutely tiny, and the people that care about this are a rounding error.
yesterday at 9:14 PM
Google is increasingly locking down Android. I wouldn't be surprised if they killed off AOSP entirely in a few years...
yesterday at 7:43 PM
Android has been so thoroughly disappointing through the years. Started as a great open free form alternative to iOS, to becoming the very thing it sought to combat.
yesterday at 9:29 PM
I had never considered using lineageos and the like, but honestly the writing is on the wall. Google is going straight into a closed AI device.
I'm going to start donating to a few free android distros I guess, I'm probably going to be trying them sooner rather than later, and without AOSP support the dev burden is going to be much higher, and it probably means they'll end up diverging and incompatible at some point (not in both directions, lineage will probably always have to have Android app support)
yesterday at 7:45 PM
If Android wants to be the inferior not-open-source mobile OS, why would I not just buy an iPhone instead then?
It’s closed too, sure, but at least it’s more consistent.
yesterday at 7:48 PM
Android has free and open artificial pancreas that is still easy to install and keeps us with complex type 1 diabetes alive.
Google may just want to kill us and Apple don't even let this kind of software exist without massive hurdles...
yesterday at 8:05 PM
Because it's much worse (for me).
However at this point, as a GrapheneOS user if I couldn't use it for any reason I'll go to iOS (even though I used it for a couple of years and I've been fed up).
today at 1:08 AM
Because it still allows installing apps with some hoops, and iOS doesn't allow it at all.
yesterday at 8:29 PM
Because (1) you'd be rewarding the entity that originated and normalized the loss of freedom that Google much later adopted, and (2) as Apple restricts more freedoms you'll still be able to enjoy them on Android for a few more years as Google remains (comparatively) more user friendly.
yesterday at 9:20 PM
Google managing to get worse every day.
yesterday at 9:28 PM
Forget Android. The future is Plasma Mobile.
today at 1:29 AM
All FOSS consumer operating systems suck. We only tolerate them because they are FOSS.
today at 12:14 AM
I desperately want to use it, but it runs on precisely no decent hardware as far as I can tell. My attempts to get it working on the fxtec and furiphones failed miserably.
yesterday at 10:00 PM
Agreed. Linux is the future, fk Android. GrapheneOS should stop wasting their efforts on Android, when they could've contributed towards PostmarketOS or similar, or even made their own distro. Working on Android is a complete and utter waste of time and effort.
today at 6:03 AM
Yes, let's abandon a very mature OS that is still open source, has millions of apps, and billions of users by one one that was designed for desktops, with a security posture fitting the 90s, virtually no phone apps unless you emulate said very mature OS, and which will have all the same problems with remote attestation, etc. </s>
today at 3:57 AM
Google is a for profit company. It does what it needs to stay profitable. Are the actions of Google moral? No!
Governments are paid out to not intervene. They should have stepped in decades ago. They should have made Google to release source code and interoperate with public services. They already make profit from their services.
yesterday at 11:22 PM
GrapheneOS scares them.
today at 6:03 AM
There are about 3.9 billion Android phones currently in use globally. I don't think a niche fork with 0.00025 billion users will worry them.
yesterday at 10:28 PM
I mean, even if android is/was open source, it was always fastidious to build a de-googled android image for a phone model.
Of course it's not great for their business model. Not to mention, no more trustworthy app distribution.
I don't see the EU really being able to forcing them to de-google android phones.
I am also curious how much those phones would cost, BTW, since the cost calculation to release such an OS would be a bit complicated.
today at 7:04 AM
EU was very clear that closing down the OS (Apple) is how they avoid fines with their latest rulings. They punished Google for open sourcing the OS and left Apple get away free with explicit explanation that closed OS doesn't need to adhere to same rules.
So yeah, don't expect EU to defend you here.
yesterday at 8:39 PM
One can not simply trust Google. While I personally like the MIT licence more, I think it is time that the GPL or variants of it (Affero etc...) get used a lot more. It worked very well with the Linux kernel. Corporations keep on abusing this.
yesterday at 10:38 PM
Worth reminding folks that the EU DMA Act is forcing Google to start unlocking some of their APIs, such as the AI services AI. Right now a bunch of the apis for digital assistants/chat stuff are kind of proprietary, and this is demanding interoperation. August 1, 2027 is the deadline for most of this (but open access to hotword listening capabilities is slated for Aug 1, 2028).
https://digital-markets-act.ec.europa.eu/developer-portal/in...
Side note, that API here is HID. USB HID is so cool. There's so much stuff in this spec! Chargers and batteries can both communicate all kinds of status, which, well, afaik no one does, there's all kinds of sensors. It's this ancient spec that has so much, and weirdly is just so far ahead of where we are. More HID on Android will be great. Wish they'd played with others to make this so though!
yesterday at 8:15 PM
Fine, whatever but no Android 17-derived Google-free AOSP distribution for me if these APIs are in any way essential to the functioning of the device or required by one or more of the government/bank-mandated applications which are sometimes needed. If they are in any way related to some Google service I don't care since I don't use those anyway.
yesterday at 8:29 PM
So...if you vibe code API shims Google can't sue your right? It would be clean room implementation by definition.
today at 12:15 AM
Oracle enters the chat
yesterday at 8:39 PM
Google is a cancer on humanity.
today at 7:03 AM
Why do you so desperately want to use their software then?
This whole topic is basically people demanding that Google continues giving them their code for free for their operating system.
If it's really such a cancer, why whine and demand the continued work then?
today at 7:21 AM
That's always been the deal: they can build their OS on the work of many volunteers, and we in turn can build our projects on top of the OS.
Google is trying to take from the community potluck without giving anything back.
today at 8:36 AM
The community is providing Google with nothing. A fraction of a sliver of market share running GrapheneOS isn't going to make Google care.
The community potluck has been replaced with a Google Play-shaped stock exchange over a decade ago.
today at 1:09 AM
Google is just one symptom of late stage capitalism.
today at 4:05 AM
100%
Capitalism is transforming to feudalism.
yesterday at 7:39 PM
i despise where Google is going with this. it's a duopoly in the smartphone OS space and we need (for lack of a better analogy, spare the technicals) open-source distros like we have with Linux on desktop.
Graphene is reaching that status for me every day and i'm looking forward to switching to it as my daily driver.
yesterday at 7:44 PM
GrapheneOS is pretty neat, https://postmarketos.org/ is also pretty damn polished out of the box these days. I'd argue the "mobile desktop Linux systems" are actually a bit more polished than Graphene, esp. when it comes to default apps (no AOSP abandonware dialer, contacts etc. apps to fight with, it's all just maintained, responsive GNOME/KDE apps)
yesterday at 7:55 PM
I want to believe this, but it's hard for me to take this at face value. It's been about 4 years since I've run pmOS, so my experience IS very out of date, but I also have a hard time believing that the experience has radically changed in the meantime.
The short is that yes the GNOME/KDE apps do often look more impressive, but they suffer the same sort of malaise which seems to have infected Linux desktops sometime since Eternal September, and between the sporadic crashing and "this doesn't feel right", it's really hard for me to accept "It's more polished than AOSP!".
pmOS's installation page opening with a warning:
Make sure you read state of postmarketOS before installing postmarketOS.
The goal is to make postmarketOS usable for everyone, but we are not there yet. Usability and most importantly stability issues need to be worked out first. If you are looking for an OS that is as usable as iOS or Android, this project is currently not for you.
today at 12:17 AM
PMOS doesn't run with full support and performance on any decent hardware. Would love to be proven wrong.
yesterday at 7:58 PM
I tried getting it to run on a Pixel 3a and struggled for hours, eventually gave up (albeit I tried running it with Wayland and Niri which seems less tried-and-true).
yesterday at 8:14 PM
I recently installed pmos on two 3a's and it was as simple as a Lineage image. Works well too!
today at 1:42 AM
2nd vote for postmarket. have put it on an old tablet i pulled out of ewaste and it is excellent.
there is clearly no future for android for anyone wanting an open and spyware free platform. its time to invest out efforts elsewhere.
yesterday at 7:52 PM
I just wish Graphene had better support for non-Google hardware.
yesterday at 8:00 PM
They can't due to the shortcomings of the hardware (why develop a hardened os to the grossly insecure hardware) or the vendor (no/slow updates, etc).
Anyone is free to fork, add the desired hardware support and flash.
(that's aside of some Moto flagships in 2027)
today at 12:44 AM
they can, but don't want to
today at 2:40 AM
OK, I'm confused, explain how they can deliver comparable security on a hardware that does not offer the same capabilities, from a vendor who doesn't provide patches.
You say they can. How?
today at 4:00 AM
The hardware capability that GrapheneOS loves to use as a shield to deny support for other devices is the ability to use custom AVB keys. Without custom keys you can't relock the bootloader after installing a custom OS on most phones. The consequences of having an unlocked bootloader are that you are susceptible to an evil maid attack.
This is a real threat, but the reality is that the average person is more likely to be hacked/spied on from the software side, which Graphene would protect you from as effectively as it does on Pixel.
yesterday at 7:59 PM
Those Razr phone updates need to start landing sooner ....
yesterday at 7:54 PM
More like OEMs need to take security more seriously and add in the capable hardware and commit to firmware updates long term.
yesterday at 8:28 PM
Unless there is a real market advantage to it, they won't. Consumers prove over and over again they are willing to trade security to save a few dollars. Furthermore, why commit to providing hardware and software support for a device to last 5+ years, when ~25% of Americans report damaging their device each year[0]. Most of a device's population will have been replaced in 3 years.
[0]: https://www.claimsjournal.com/news/national/2024/03/15/32248...
yesterday at 8:41 PM
Yeah unfortunately this is the case. Privacy and security in general are things most average consumers don’t necessarily care for, and especially don’t care for when it provides inconveniences. Even in more tech enthusiast crowds you see this reflected most obviously in people wanting to use Firefox over any Chromium variant of a browser.
Not to mention to reach GOS’ requirements the cost of the phone would have to significantly increase which I imagine only hurts Android phones even more for no real gain since GOS users are minuscule overall.
And the long term support is definitely not the norm yeah. It’s pretty much just Apple and Google doing it for their own devices. Motorola will be a newcomer to this concept with GOS. But we can only wait and see if they actually stick to it, given their track record prior to the collaboration.
Google probably got away with it cause they made the chips and security chips themselves. I read something like Tensor costing $70 vs. a Qualcomm chip with MTE costing $250.
But even with of all this, it wouldn’t make sense for GOS to spend it’s limited resources developing for a less secure platform when appropriate target devices exist (they mentioned something to this effect a few days ago on reddit too): https://www.reddit.com/r/GrapheneOS/comments/1wifsiq/comment...
yesterday at 8:10 PM
Graphene has been my daily driver for the past year or so. The only thing I miss is the ability to do contactless payments. Otherwise, it's been awesome. I don't run any games nor do I care about any of the AI features. YMMV.
yesterday at 8:32 PM
Contactless payments do work on Graphene - but only with the Curve app. It also requires the card-holder to be from the UK or EU.
yesterday at 8:23 PM
for some people contactless payments are essential for their lifes
yesterday at 8:28 PM
That seems a little excessive.
yesterday at 8:07 PM
i so desperately wish we were still in the days of manufacturers making their own OS. It's why I moved to iphone: when the hardware company makes the software and vice-versa the integration is much better and less error-prone/bloated. It never made sense to me for android to be shoehorned into thousands of devices, instead of a fork being made and for thorough OS rework to happen to support the device.
yesterday at 11:53 PM
That is definitely not how I remember the feature phone era. The OS was an afterthought seemingly whipped together a couple months before the device hit the shelves and nothing was ever consistent even across recent models from the same manufacturer.
Back then the primary goal was checkboxes for the carrier to advertise and UI/UX was a distant second priority at most. Sometimes an advertised feature would just flat out be unusable (such as MP3 players), but good luck waiting for any kind of update because by then those developers had already been reassigned to the next handset model they promised to carriers.
Also, Samsung extensively customizes their OneUI fork of Android, with its own UI look and feel that evolves independently from Android based on their own priorities. Plus Samsung's Android maintains hundreds of features that either don't exist at all on AOSP/Pixels or later get folded into mainline Android.
(Including the little known killer app suite "Good Lock" available on Samsung's Galaxy store which gives power users an almost obscene amount of additional niche options and customizations that would give UX minimalist designers at Google or Apple a heart attack)
But despite how different Pixel vs. OneUI look and feel, I can use the exact same apps whether on a Pixel or Galaxy or $100 trash phone. Interoperability is very easy to take for granted and Android app ecosystem is (still) paradise compared to the lowest common denominator J2ME "app" era of the 2000s.
yesterday at 8:11 PM
yesterday at 7:54 PM
If Google doesn't smarten up, it will no longer be in control of Android.
Oracle was a mighty powerhouse when it bought MySQL, StarOffice, and more. It lost defacto control of all of them, due to its stupidity. In the world of open source, the tighter you hold on, the less likely you'll retain control.
And yet, here we are, with Google playing games.
Google, a note: there are far more relying upon Android than you, and now there are forced alternative stores in the mix. If Samsung and everyone else said "sorry Google', or even a large majority, you're out. Gone. Nada.
They can now fork, and force old Android to have their new fancy pants 'Play' store too.
Google is also getting more and more pushy with Chrome. What if everyone depending upon that backend, shrugs and says "Sorry Google, we're hard-forking Chrome and we'll all maintain it".
yesterday at 8:10 PM
> If Samsung and everyone else said "sorry Google', or even a large majority, you're out. Gone. Nada.
The OEMs are incapable of writing a competent operating system, and don't particularly care to.
> Google is also getting more and more pushy with Chrome. What if everyone depending upon that backend, shrugs and says "Sorry Google, we're hard-forking Chrome and we'll all maintain it".
With what maintainers?
https://chrome-commit-tracker.arthursonzogni.com/organizatio...
yesterday at 8:04 PM
> Oracle was a mighty powerhouse
It definitly still is. We run Postgres when we host our banking / financial stuff, but when we talk with banks and say that, they demand Oracle not that 'open source amateur stuff'. We have a version of our software for Oracle (and MSSQL) as well so no biggy, but still, we always try if we know it's not a complete immediate kill (which it will be if we put it in our documentation as only option). Oracle is still everywhere at the big guys.
yesterday at 8:55 PM
as someone who is associated with “the big guys”, I can tell you this is changing.
Our Oracle license licensing went up so dramatically that the team I work with is moving some very large databases to postgres from Oracle because it doesn’t make financial sense anymore.
now, if we could only stop eating at the trough of Broadcom…
yesterday at 9:00 PM
I hope so, I see some changes; far less than many seem to think here though.
yesterday at 8:08 PM
Are they still forbidding benchmarking the Oracle database in their T&Cs? I laugh. Such litigious losers.
Postgres ftw. Long may it eat their lunch.
yesterday at 9:26 PM
I'm advising a startup doing software for banks, and the overall attitude of their clients is: "We want to get away from the #&I$*@&^#$ Oracle, but we're stuck for now".
Oracle used to be a must-have because it was one of the few products that could handle transactions on a scale of a bank, with all the requirements for backups, redundancy, etc.
A fun anecdote. Back in 2000, I was present at negotiations (as a note-taker) where database vendors were bidding for a project for a factory control system. Vendors submitted benchmark results for various DB sizes up to 40Gb, and Oracle's rep hautingly said something like: "Our minimal size for benchmarks is 80Gb, so here are our results for that size".
And this was a _lot_ for that time. Now? It's so ridiculously tiny that you can host it on a smartwatch. So why would you pay Oracle?
today at 8:27 AM
Agreed, I had the same talks around 2000 but at the time it was still very much mssql/db2/oracle for 'real companies'. Yet i'm still surprised how much pushback we get, especially in Asian countries (India) but we do get it, a lot. And we have conversations with financial partners in the US as they advice our VCs; those calls go the same way 'ah, you are using that hipster open source stuff, yeah we don't do that here'.
today at 12:24 AM
Google and Samsung have a closer relationship than ever these days, with cross-branded Google features even featured in advertisements for the last couple Galaxy models which would have been unthinkable back in 2012 or so.
They have their private own agreements with Google to secure whatever access they need to maintain their OneUI fork and are not the one making any public complaints. Samsung did have a love/hate relationship with Google that was openly simmering with resentment during the early years of Android but those days are long past.
Samsung already includes their own Galaxy store alongside the Play Store on all their devices, and have for 10+ years. But during that time have actually moved the opposite direction from your hypothetical fork scenario and both companies clearly view their current relationship as mutually beneficial.
Even though GrapheneOS and Samsung both maintain their own Android fork their views on AOSP/Google are not aligned.
yesterday at 11:57 PM
I don't think so. Google's customers are phone OEMs and as long as they are happy, things will continue as is. The precedents here are Microsoft with Windows and maybe Apple with iOS.
Anything Oracle doesn't have much relevance. They were not really interested in growing any marketshare of those products for anyone.
yesterday at 8:10 PM
> it will no longer be in control of Android
Who will step up to maintain it? Keep in mind that it has to be somebody that every other OEM trust. In other words it would likely have to be an alliance of manufacturers. And they'd inevitably treat OEMs outside the alliance poorly and we'd be back to the current situation, but worse.
yesterday at 8:09 PM
Google's Android customers are phone OEMs. The major ones seem to like how things are going. Until Samsung and whomever start the OpenHandset Foundation or some such and fork Android, there's never going to be the Mariadb of Android.
today at 2:48 AM
today at 12:59 AM
Thank god that AI is progressing well enough that agents can figure out most of the changes and do the reverse engineering to get this stuff, but it's introducing a lot of inefficiency to the ecosystem that doesn't change the final outcome.
today at 4:59 AM
I don't buy into the "good guy" narrative associated with GrapheneOS. The complaint is valid, but the solution isn't to keep using AOSP. GrapheneOS project, for all its merits, limits users' freedom by forcing them to install Google services if they want to use the most common apps (banking apps in Europe, government apps). They absolutely refuse to support microG. That's their choice, but in my opinion, they aren't "good guys." They have other, shady (imo), interests. Let's stop supporting AOSP and Google's proprietary services.
today at 5:10 AM
Which "other, shady (imo)" interests? This feels like innuendo. Just say what you think actually motivates them.
today at 7:02 AM
That's just my perception, therefore "imo". I tried GOS, I've read the forum (about microG, F-Droid) and that's what I've felt: something shady. It is most likely just me, so I stay away from the project. I just wanted to say that people should take a more critical stance on these issues, and not follow GrapheneOS point of view unconditionally.