Deal.
Lets get a whole bunch of different OS. That compete with each other.
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poopkins@lemmy.world 4 days agoAndroid would be unprofitable and unsustainable in isolation. So that would leave each OEM to build their own thing, but to make a long story short, everybody would just get an iPhone. So then I wonder, if making such a ruling would create the void for a monopoly, what’s the sense?
Deflated0ne@lemmy.world 4 days ago
poopkins@lemmy.world 4 days ago
What do you mean by “get”? Who will be funding the creation of all these OSes? The phone margins are already razor thin.
Deflated0ne@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Preferably something open source that fuckin corpos can’t gatekeep and control.
poopkins@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Android is already largely open source. Yet it takes a massive investment from Google to continue developing it and curate the app store with it.
I’m genuinely struggling to envision how we move from the current situation to a somehow better but more fragmented ecosystem that doesn’t negatively affect consumer experiences. Whichever way I’ve approached it, it plays in the favor of one company in particular who already has a leading market share in the US, and I truly don’t see how that would be better.
generallynonsensical@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Because Tim Cook gave Trump a trophy.
HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 4 days ago
Android could be profitable if Google Play Services went with it. However, that doesn’t exactly fix the monopoly problems associated with Android.
poopkins@lemmy.world 4 days ago
If you’re referring to Google Play itself, it’s my interpretation that this is exactly what needs to be uncoupled that the proponents of separating Android from Google are arguing.
jollyrogue@lemmy.ml 4 days ago
It could be profitable the way RHEL or the Mozilla Foundation is profitable.
Companies will pay for OS support, and companies will pay for access. Android as a foundation with a company selling OS support and services which could be rebranded would be profitable.
I’m thinking about the wider IoT space here beyond only mobile.
poopkins@lemmy.world 4 days ago
The primary ways in which the Mozilla Foundation earns money is through search partnerships, donations and grants. Guess who is the major contributor.
As for Red Hat, this comes down to subscriptions or enterprise offerings, neither which really apply to a consumer OS unless you’re willing to pay a subscription fee out of pocket. I doubt there will be much to be earned from offering consulting or training, either, unless they make Android exceedingly confusing to use.
The only companies that would pay for Android are OEMs who are already making thin margins, and effectively it’d drive the price of non-iPhones up. The alternative is that OEMs take the Huawei option and fork AAOS and develop it at their own expense.
jollyrogue@lemmy.ml 4 days ago
Yes. It’s the same thing with the Linux kernel and other large FOSS projects. There isn’t a perfect fit for Android, but it would be better than the way ASOP is run now.
Consumer devices ship with proprietary software which is licensed all the time. It could be a library or an entire OS. Consumers are not the target market, like consumers aren’t the target market for RHEL.
The prime example is Windows. It’s licensed to Dell or whomever and ships with the hardware. The license is baked in.
Some people might be willing to pay if the price is reasonable enough. Android has support for major vendors, so using it as a base would be a boon to people doing things like media boxes and signage.
It’s the opposite. Make it easy to use. Companies pay for tools which reduces developer time.
The smaller OEMs would pay for licenses, PS hours, and backend services. They don’t have the expertise or budget.
Samsung? They’re going to keep doing what they’re doing because they have the expertise and budget to fork from upstream. It’s possible they would rally around Android, like companies have rallied around the Linux kernel.
OEMs do this with Linux already, so it would bring Android more inline with the norms.
poopkins@lemmy.world 3 days ago
It’s funny you should mention this, because Google has needed to adapt this for mobile and are already open source. If the opportunity existed for a “free” and open source version of Android to be embraced by consumers, there are many such options today, like GrapheneOS (or even forking AOSP, for that matter).
My concern is that if the major contributor to that steps out, the volunteer community will need to substantially step up.
The reason I called out your example of Red Hat is to illustrate how enterprise is financing a free consumer experience.
With a very limited enterprise market, it’s not realistic to expect this to apply to an almost exclusively consumer product.
So there are two options. Either we don’t have an open source Android and in addition to the license cost of GMS, OEMs would have to license the OS itself. The alternative is that OEMs shoulder the development cost of their own fork of AOSP, which would simply be passed on to consumers. Either way, this would drive up the price of devices.
I’m not sure why you’re speaking in hypotheticals about what Android could be if it had license fees, as it’s readily available in open source under the Apache license today and, despite that, steadily losing market share.