Exclusive: Google will develop the Android OS fully in private, and here's why

Privacy News
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Originally posted by @Milus
Hi,
So Google will start developing Android in Private and only share the source for the releases.

I am not sure how this would impact alternatives OS like GrapheneOS or the rest. But I would be interested to know.

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Relevant passage from the article:

Platform developers, including those who build custom ROMs, will largely also see little change, since they typically base their work on specific tags or release branches, not the main AOSP branch. Similarly, companies that release forked AOSP products rarely use the main AOSP branch due to its inherent instability.

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This is actually pretty bad, since we’d commonly pull in patches from those branches.

eg. today’s GrapheneOS release for example has an unreleased fix:

backport upstream brightness fluctuation fix from Android 16 Beta 3.1

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GrapheneOS has already expressed frustration with the current lack of access to Google’s internal development branch. It seems very unfair that OEMs must have a GMS license to access the internal branch.

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GrapheneOS has replied to this concern on Mastodon.

We already had to wait until the stable tags to get the vast majority of the source code, so not much will change overall. It’s a major step in the wrong direction but without a large direct impact on us. It only reinforces that we need to obtain partner access via an OEM we can work with to help improve their platform security while also being able to port our changes earlier.

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Sounds like the anti-trust didn’t hit hard enough.

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Theres a word for it, enshittification. Previously theres a few alternatives for Android and IOS duopoly but they never took off. Nokia got Meego but killed it off for Windows Mobile. Samsung tried with Tizen but end up getting back into Android. Mozilla got FirefoxOS but killed it off. Canonical got Ubuntu Mobile but end up killing it off too. Currently theres PostmarketOS that seems promising but they seems to lack on manpower and funding.

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Don’t forget BlackBerry 10 (killed off), Symbian (killed off), KaiOS (seems pretty dead) and SailfishOS (GNU/Linux but not fully open source)