- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
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So they’ll find some inane bug as a justification to skip a release and then just never release the source ever again
Google does not respect the users and developers.
It’s time for [email protected] to topple their marketshare!
I want a full Linux installation on all phones. Dockable.
A spokesperson for Google offered some additional context on this decision, stating that it helps simplify development, eliminates the complexity of managing multiple code branches, and allows them to deliver more stable and secure code to Android platform developers.
I am not a developer, but this sounds like bullshit. Google does have the ability to manage multiple code branches, they are one of the largest and richest software services companies on the planet.
The “deliver stable and secure code” also sounds like generic copytext that you would without any real context.
Large american technology companies cannot be trusted by definition.
The “deliver stable and secure code” also sounds like generic copytext that you would without any real context.
Sounds more like “we’re trying to close it off completely without saying it out loud and hope everyone forgets about our numerous GPL violations”.
Could people ask them for the code constantly.
“do no evil”… right?
That’s in the past.
To their credit: when they changed their motto, they clearly announced that they will do evil.
There are not many companies who announce their switch to the dark side.
Apparently all Sundar heard when he took over was “Do mumblemumble evil”
There was a whole term called “branching strategy” to handle things way more complex than a quarterly release - this is about nothing more than control. Bet it will be one to zero releases next year. They’re speed-running enshittification before a worthy open replacement can be written.
Cutting a release (and publishing) does cost significant time and effort. You effectively need to code-freeze, get all code merged into main, run all tests and QA, fix any breaking bugs, compete signoffs etc. On some of our small projects, doing a release could burn up to 2 weeks of real time, which on a monthly release cycle was killing us.
So I can almost buy their reasoning. But otherwise, agree that they can’t be trusted, and releasing once a quarter doesnt seem that hard.
They are still doing that work for select OEMs, just not pushing it to the public server.
Do you have a source for that? I can believe that select OEMs are getting preview internal access, but I strongly doubt they are releasing with ROMs cooked from those internal branches. That would open the OEMs to GPL requests/violations. And internal access doesnt mean doing the release processes that chew up time.
Giving preferential treatment to certain OEMs is its own issue though, but its a anti-competitive behaviour issue rather than a licencing issue.
I was overly vague, and “Android” means different things in different places. I usually say “AOSP” for Open Source Android and “Google Android” for open core Android. This also isn’t quite accurate.
AOSP is basically a repo, not a ROM, not an OS, not even code (technicaly). This has always been pushed to on “release”, not during development.
Google has it’s own (private) repos for development. I suspect some OEMs have access to HEAD.
Google used to publish device code for Nexus/Pixel devices. This stopped in 2025. This was separate to AOSP, but would build with AOSP for “Android Android” or “Open Source Android”. Some people would “add gapps” to get closer to “Google Android”.
Kernal code from Google for Pixel devices is still publically available as is required by the GPL. Basically no other part of Android is GPL and has this requirement.
A “release” pushed to AOSP used to basically line up with a Nexus/Pixel update. At the end of 2025 they changed it to 4 times a year, now they are changing it to twice a year.
“Android Security Bulletin” is a different thing, OEMs get early access to it. Everyone else gets delayed releases by about a quarter. This delay was new in 2025, this will continue to happen.
Google isn’t giving built ROMs to OEMs, even if it was, assuming it’s internal only, it wouldn’t be a GPL violation. AOSP has never distributed built ROMs.
You could just have less releases but still develop everything openly…
Of course. Although I can kinda see why they dont want to do that either. All the fly-by-night OEMs would be using dev and shipping half-baked ROMs (which I guess they do anyway, but it would be worse).
So just push everything to open source then, not only releases but branches? Nobody forces you to have fast release schedule, but you either open source or you are not. Releasing sources 2 times a year is not an open source.
Actually, it is open source. There is nothing wrong with developing in private and pushing public when its done. Every developer works that way to some degree or another. And there are good reasons not to push every commit public.
Yeah, every dev does that to a degree of one ticket, which shouldn’t take more that 2 days on average. So no, hiding code for half a year isn’t ok. I don’t know why you try to normalize it.
I’m not, it is normal, even in OSS development. Pushing every ticket is fine, but so is holding back until the work is done or until release. It is, and always has been, up to the project on when and how code goes public.
No there aren’t. All users (interested) need to know what their software is doing and be able to contribute to it.
Its not their software until its released. They aren’t users until its actually released and actually deployed to a phone.
Development being private until release is NORMAL. I do it, every developer does it. All the changes live on my box until I’m ready for the world to see them.
I think that’s true, but it’s a different moral imperative than either open source (understood as just being able to get the code for the software you have) or Free Software (which was conceived when software came on tapes in the mail and completely fails to address project governance in the era of forges).
I don’t mind it since Android doesn’t change much these days
Do you mean visually or under the hood?
Writing code for a website and writing code for a platform that supports many hardware devices with different architectures are very very very different software engineering tasks. And this is before discussing BSP’s.
Your assertion about the difficulty of this process is not tethered to reality nor informed by experience with OS or hardware support. I make no claims about any other points you made.
Have a good day, friend.
They might not, but I do have experience as a developer for the operating system for a manufacturing robotics company, which had a large array of different hardware configurations to support, some stretching back to 1982. I actually managed the build system for the company (with branch management handled through Perforce, though I’ve done plenty in GIT since).
It’s absolutely not as hard as you’re making it sound and they’ve shown for years they can manage it just fine. This follows on the back of several other anti-consumer announcements such as the side loading lockdown and their removal of entire chunks of AOSP like device trees and such. This is absolutely just to lock out custom ROMs and they’re giving the most thin veneer of an excuse.
They’re still managing all those branches internally. Absolutely nothing is stopping them from doing, I dunno, a preview branch or whatever. Other large open source projects, including complex operating systems, manage it just fine.
I agree that I have minimal experience with this. :)
I simply don’t trust what Google says and I assume that their being less than honest by default.
You know I used to think Google actually had some legitimate arguments against being a monopoly by keeping Chromium, Android, and other things open source, while also allowing users to install apps outside the Google Play Store. Since then, they have essentially said they intend to make it harder for users to install third party apps, they’ve closed Android in many ways & they’ve added Gemini & more spyware into Chrome. I think there is a much stronger argument now that Google has monopolized & should be broken up. Either way, they definitely need to get rid of Pichai. He has done nothing but make terrible decisions at every turn.
Google and Facebook – ahem, Meta – are both society-harming monopolies. Microsoft (who is certainly no saint) seems like a tame monopolist circa the late 1990s in comparison.
Alphabet
Trueché.
Google could easily take market share from Microsoft. The problem is that there stuff sucks really bad.
I don’t ever want to have deal with the horrors of Google admin center ever again
They are going to go back to releasing security fixes monthly which is much better for security.
“Going back”? Aren’t they explicitly saying nothing will change?
Finally, Google told us that its process for security patch releases will not change and that the company will keep publishing security patches each month on a dedicated security-only branch for relevant OS releases just as it does today.
In the past, Google would release the source code for every quarterly Android release, of which there are four each year. Thus, the company is now reducing its source code releases from four times a year to twice a year, focusing its efforts on the Q2 major update and Q4 minor update which both bring developer-facing changes.
A spokesperson for Google offered some additional context on this decision, stating that it helps simplify development, eliminates the complexity of managing multiple code branches, and allows them to deliver more stable and secure code to Android platform developers. The spokesperson also reiterated that Google’s commitment to AOSP is unchanged and that this new release schedule helps the company build a more robust and secure foundation for the Android ecosystem. Finally, Google told us that its process for security patch releases will not change and that the company will keep publishing security patches each month on a dedicated security-only branch for relevant OS releases just as it does today. (For more context on Google’s security patch release process, check out this article.)
Sounds like the main impact is quarterly feature updates, which will now be every 6 months. Curious if any AOSP ROM devs have any hot takes on this.
Grapheneos has been bitten recently with some code releases snafus. I’m sure they’ll say something shortly.
That is really great for the whole ecosystem. Other manufacturers won’t have much time to prepare for new releases. Well done, Google.
Other manufacturers get sources immediately, so no it only harms open-source part of andeoid.
I’m pretty sure big OEMs like Samsung do not rely on the public AOSP release.
OEMs of course aren’t held to this half a year of wait.
