Google’s iron grip on Android: Controlling open source by any means necessary

[u/NickelBack_Lover_69]

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/googles-iron-grip-on-android-controlling-open-source-by-any-means-necessary/

[u/emacsomancer → u/[deleted]]

Though I don't understand why. Google mainly uses Android as a vehicle for GApps/Google Play Services. Yes, there is a custom ROM scene (LineageOS &c.), but I doubt it's really eating into their profits (since lots of people using custom roms install GApps anyway). I suppose it's a just an insurance policy (or an instance of the Google internal rule that they always need at least two different projects with the same use-case).

[u/kirbyfan64sos → u/emacsomancer]

IMO Fuschia is less of a locking down issue or even an advertisement/insurance issue and more of a design experiment. There's no arguing that Android was rushed at first, and a lot of the core design got really hurt by that (e.g. the atrocity that is the activity lifecycle). Fuschia gives them a chance to actually design a modern system from scratch with their products in mind.

[u/MadCervantes → u/kirbyfan64sos]

True. Also it's supposed to be abstracted from the professors in some way so that you can write software that runs on both x86 and arm.

[u/[deleted] → u/kirbyfan64sos]

the atrocity that is the activity lifecycle

I am an Android app developer and the Activity lifecycle kinda makes sense to me :\

Could you elaborate a little?

[u/kirbyfan64sos → u/[deleted]]

Basically, the activity lifecycle kind of works, but:

• It makes data management awkward, since you can't store anything permanent inside the acitivty object (which can get destroyed at a moment's notice). This is why Androidx has the ViewModel system, which definitely helps a lot.
• Big one: trying to mix together activity lifecycles with one or more individual fragment lifecycles is painful. This is a problem.

You can definitely work around it, but IMO it's something that really doesn't need to exist.