Gist: “Evidently, starting next month, all external code contributions to AOSP will require approval from two Google reviewers before they can be submitted.”
Before anyone raises their pitchforks: Google already has to accept changes made to Android, like any project ever created. The change is only that there now has to be two people instead of one.
Yes, Android is moving in bad direction in user freedom perspective, but please don’t react hostile to every single news about Android, because then you show community caring about this stuff as being crazy.
I’m actually surprised this wasn’t the case before.
Great, first they strip away Foss features and then they lock down code contributions.
You’re honestly turning this into a weird negative thing? Better security by having two people review the code vs just one is a bad thing to you?
Alright.
what about this? https://kbin.social/m/android@lemdro.id/t/467656/To-improve-security-Google-s-making-it-slightly-harder-to-contribute#entry-comment-2442599
Google is not making Android for users, but itself as its advertising platform. Ever wonder why custom ROMs and even other manufacturers have a permission to block internet access for specific apps in their Android forks but Google does not? hmm… Alright
Google isn’t looking out for anyone but itself. These kind of restrictions and excuses are exactly what Apple calls “security”.
Yes, Google sucks, but what does this have to do with requiring additional approvals for code contributions?
What is Google going to restrict now with 2 required approval, which they couldn’t with 1?
You are free to fork AOSP and maintain your own fork if you have the resources.
Unfortunately not many people / organizations do or have the stomach to commit to doing that, and that’s how Google is able to maintain a tight grip on what is supposed to be an open source project.
Well…lets pretend that with SafetyNet they don’t enforce people to stay away from Foss android. I mean, yes, I am running DivestOS, but a lot of APS are not working because they need Google Play Services. Some other they don’t even want you to have an unlocked bootloader. Most of Android devices do not support relocking your bootloader…
Goes to show you the importance of lineage os
Google’s tight grip is because of Google play services, not AOSP. Without Google play services AOSP is useless for 99% of people.
Not quite: Google is quietly but very definitely busy gutting AOSP of anything nice and up to date. The dialer for example is becoming hopelessly outdated. And the reason for that is because they’re trying to transition as many nice, free default AOSP services to their non-free, functionally better but Google Play Service-tied equivalents.
The problem with that is that nobody really has the resources to counter their efforts and come up with good open-source alternatives to what Google is slowly removing or letting rot in AOSP. As a result, AOSP is slowly becoming more and more unappealing.
Of course that’s exactly what Google wants: they milked open-source for all it was worth to drive the wide adoption of Android, and now it’s in their way. They would like nothing better than to kill off AOSP tomorrow but they can’t do that. So instead, they’re boiling the frog slowly until it’s too late to do anything about it by the time it notices that the water is too hot.
The good thing about open source is that anyone can contribute.
Yeah, you won’t make any money out of it, but if your goal isn’t to make money, then you can team up with others to create your own Android dialer from scratch and that will be adopted.
There’s no vendor lockins possible
I don’t think that this is a control move.
