Our smartphones, operating systems and apps are dominated by Google & Apple. “[…] these two Silicon Valley profit-driven companies decide which apps are or aren’t allowed, and moderate what our mobile software looks like.” says @danlammerhirt from @waag working on the Mobifree project (together with a.o. @efoundation @fdroid @NGIZero @murena @microg @delta
https://waag.org/en/article/why-smartphones-are-key-better-internet/
Android is open source and this post is full of removed. Apple is a company that makes phones and the os that runs on them. Android is used by Google for the pixel line and the nexus line before it but anyone can fork android and make it their own, make it run on any device that supports it, etc.
It’s not that easy, Google heavily dictates the development goals of Android. It’s basically developed behind closed doors, and then the source is dumped to the public after each release. Still better than iOS, but nothing like regular Linux distros
And yet it’s been sliced and diced, features added and removed, distributions created for many devices since its inception by countless developers of varying skill level. It’s a lot more like regular Linux distros than not.
You don’t get to choose the direction Debian takes on what init or sound daemon they ship. The Debian organization does. You might be able to observe their deliberations, but your input is unlikely to be a part of it. In the end the result ends up in the repos. You can take that and change it, just like people have done with Android for many years.
Nowhere near as much as you think. And yet another person who has no idea how any of this actually works and has been working for like 20 years now.
Why, oh why do I try to educate you lot on removed like this? I might as well just stick my hand in a woodchipper.
Do you have evidence to backup your statement?
AOSP is dying as Google has replaced all the core apps with proprietary versions. On top of that the Android SDK has proprietary software included and a EULA
@rdyoung @breadsmasher “Android is open source”
Well… AOSP is open source.
Google Android is not open source. And the Play Services, Play Store etc. are key services.
Yes and no.
It’s clear that no one here actually understands how this stuff works so I’m done. But I will say this. Google only controls so much. Another large player or enough smaller developers working together could change the direction. And no, you don’t really need play services, play store, etc. There are alts like f-Droid and see my earlier sentence.
Lineage OS is great and all but at the end of the day most phones have google malware