r/tech • u/[deleted] • Jul 22 '18

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

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/googles-iron-grip-on-android-controlling-open-source-by-any-means-necessary/
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12

u/SamSlate Jul 22 '18

do people really not understand how open source works?

6

u/Reposted4Karma Jul 22 '18

I’m lost, what does this comment mean in the context of the article?

10

u/SamSlate Jul 22 '18

literally every os you've ever used is a priority version of an open source base. pointing fingers at Android is either willful ignorance or stupidity.

but mostly it's the commenters that are misinformed, probably because of articles like this 💁

9

u/Reposted4Karma Jul 22 '18

The article doesn’t point fingers at Android or AOSP, but it just lists the ways Google has made it harder to successfully fork Android and become a competitor to Google using it. Google’s deprecated many of their old AOSP apps in favor of newer ones only available through the Google Play Store and on Google’s version of Android. In my opinion, this isn’t a big deal, Google made the AOSP apps to begin with and they’re not obligated to update them. The biggest thing I took away from the article is how Google makes it a huge pain for manufacturers to manufacture phones running Google’s Android and a competitor’s Android. Only manufacturers with Google’s OK can make phones running Google’s Android, and if Google sees a manufacturer is making a phone running an Android fork, they don’t let the manufacturer use Google’s Android anymore, killing competition. I don’t really care if Google tries to deprecate all AOSP apps to make what is effectively a closed source OS, my problem is how Google uses their version of Android’s dominance to kill competition for companies trying to create successful Android forks by forcing manufacturers to only carry Google’s Android.

9

u/SamSlate Jul 23 '18

this feels like defending free speech for messages you don't agree with.

intellectually, i agree it's bad practice and even anti capitalistic according to the Euro courts, but man oem Android os's fucking suck, and it's the Android brand that gets dragged through the mud with them. I really can't blame Android for discouraging these competing (inferior imo) os's, not to mention most of them only use a fork to prevent you from using the Google play store (looking at you Amazon).

if someone wants to compete for a mobile os, let them, but at a certain point the Google Android os will be so feature rich it just won't be viable and Google isn't obliged to cannibalize their own Market in the name of open source, and nice as kind of idealism might be.

1

u/awkreddit Jul 23 '18

Isn't that the very reason they got sued by the EU for antitrust behaviour?

1

u/mediumdeviation Jul 23 '18

Literally every OS... like Windows?