Not surprisingly, I get slight hints of Claudism in the text.
AI "opening" the source of software is one of the best things I've seen going for it so far.
Google should not be allowed to abuse its duopoly position in this way. I recommend EU citizens to report every case they are (potentially) affected by to the EU DMA team.
Who beside the open source community develops new features if they can be easily copied?
I wouldn't be surprised if large corporations like Apple and Google intentionally use these tactics to pressure regulators through their European users. Siri AI is a prime example. While it's a complicated issue, I certainly wouldn't put such maneuvers past them.
either way if that is true it looks like a very intentional abuse/misinterpretation of existing regulations
Otherwise I would expect Google would also wait with pixel updates
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45911673
[2]: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=OJ%3AJOL...
> Clause 1.2:
> (6) Operating system updates:
> (a)
> from the date of end of placement on the market to at least 5 years after that date, manufacturers, importers or authorised representatives shall, if they provide security updates, corrective updates or functionality updates to an operating system, make such updates available at no cost for all units of a product model with the same operating system;
> (b)
> the requirement referred to in point (a) shall apply both to operating system updates offered voluntarily by manufacturers, importers or authorised representatives and to operating system updates provided to comply with Union law;
> (c)
> security updates or corrective updates mentioned under point (a) need to be available to the user at the latest 4 months after the public release of the source code of an update of the underlying operating system or, if the source code is not publicly released, after an update of the same operating system is released by the operating system provider or on any other product of the same brand;
> (d)
> functionality updates mentioned under point (a) need to be available to the user at the latest 6 months after the public release of the source code of an update of the underlying operating system or, if the source code is not publicly released, after an update of the same operating system is released by the operating system provider or on any other product of the same brand;
> (e) an operating system update may combine security, corrective and functionality updates.
I think that's the one that made a lot of OEMs pull back on opensource publishing, because their legal departments want to batch the CVE monitoring and reporting obligations into smaller batches.
Also, major Android releases and QPR2s have many security fixes (anything not marked high/critical), yet OEMs are not rolling them out (QPR2) or very late (major releases).
Just to say that OEMs were probably violating the act already before Google started withholding source code.
I also think it’s an attempt of Google closing up AOSP more, otherwise they wouldn’t make it so darn hard to get updated Pixel kernel trees.
withholding security updates seems to avoid a law which requires rolling out security updates seems very much like something which needs to be fixed one way or another
As long as they start the process and it is not absurd from an industry standards perspective, they should be good. They can have slow processes, including being a good bit slower than their peers, without running afoul of "without undue delay".
We need an Android alternative, something that respects users' freedom.
I have old Chromebooks and Nexus Tablets that are EoL, but I can install linux on them and give them a second life.
The source code for my old EoL pixel phones is out there, it's just a matter of effort to port Ubuntu or PureOS or one of the other Linux phone distros to them.
It's Apple that is being as evil as possible when it comes to stomping down alternatives, they don't release iOS source code, they bricked most of my old devices when they EoL'd them by not letting me unlock the bootloader and install my own OS, they don't release drivers.
I'm deeply unhappy with Google's current direction, but they're still lightyears from the level of evil Apple inflicts upon us.
Alternatives exist. They just need signifiant adoption.
Though I see signal usage creeping upwards. Maybe just my circle
You can support independent Android development (for example, GrapheneOS)
So really, the alternative is proper GNU/Linux (or as I've recently taken to calling it...)
It is as close to GNU/Linux as Inferno was to UNIX System V.
Which is why Termux has to work around what is actually available as public APIs on the NDK.
The alternative are other AOSP-based OSes like GrapheneOS and Lineage. Once they are used widely enough and funded enough, they could fork AOSP when needed. In some sense they have already soft-forked in that they use major and QPR2 releases, but put a lot of patches on top to fix issues, improve security, etc.
GrapheneOS has an estimated 500,000 active installs now, apparently LineageOS has 1.4M active installs. Probably around two orders of magnitude more than traditional Linux desktop-based phones, which have been trying since, checking notes, Maemo in 2005?
The more successful Android alternative - iOS - that people love so much doesn't do any of that and it's apparently even more secure and earns even more money.
See post downbelow: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50083579
So why? :)
NDK seems to be handled like a 20% project in terms of allocated resources, I bet it has not more that like 2 FTEs, given its progress since Android 2.1.
just hang up the hat and never look back
Being able to have a fully functional version of KDE Connect was also be a requirement.