It’s important to note that this is them moving in-development branches/features “behind closed doors”, not making Android closed source. Whenever a feature is ready they then merge it publicly. I know this community tends to be filled with purists, many of whom are well informed and reasoned, but I’m actually totally fine with this change. This kind of structure isn’t crazy uncommon, and I imagine it’s mainly an effort to stop tech journalists analysing random in-progress features for an article. Personally, I wouldn’t want to develop code with that kind of pressure.
Google will move Android AOSP development behind closed doors
Submitted 1 week ago by karpfenkalender@feddit.org to technology@lemmy.world
https://9to5google.com/2025/03/26/google-android-aosp-developement-private/
Comments
EmilyIsTrans@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 week ago
thann@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 week ago
Why would you want people to test your software on all sorts of random hardware when you could just pay people to test it on a smaller scale!
EmilyIsTrans@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 week ago
C’mon, that’s what PR’s, RCs, and betas are for
BeardedGingerWonder@feddit.uk 1 week ago
Would you really want everyone in the world looking at every end of day commit before you’ve refactored it into something vaguely passable?
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
I’m not a fan, but I understand it and am generally okay with it. I still wish it all happened in the open like Linux.
balder1991@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Not only that, the Android Police article mentions they had a lot of trouble merging the internal branches and the public branches, so I’m guessing as time went on they’ve diverged more and more.
gianmarco@feddit.it 1 week ago
Boiling the frog, slowly… As more of these terrible decisions keep stifling Android up to a point where it becomes just a vessel to Google’s proprietary garbage, it should be a wake up call for mobile Linux to keep improving and do it faster.
Sunshine@lemmy.ca 1 week ago
Here are the donation pages for your open-source alternatives:
opencollective.com/postmarketOS
BestBouclettes@jlai.lu 1 week ago
From AOSP to AP
doeknius_gloek@discuss.tchncs.de 1 week ago
I don’t know anything about Android AOSP, so I found this clarification important:
This does not mean that Google is making Android a closed-source platform, but rather that the open-source aspect will only be released when a new branch is released to AOSP with those changes, including when new full versions or maintenance releases are finished.
dbkblk@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Yes, there will still be the aosp repository as open-source. It will have some lag, but still there. Thus said, Google has moved a lot of things into the Google Play services over the years (closed sources). So, who knows what’s next! Let’s praise that some companies inject money / devs into postmarketos!
AppearanceBoring9229@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
With this happenning and apple getting extorted to accept third party apps it would be funny if they switch places
0x0@programming.dev 1 week ago
Surprised pikachu face… they’ve been closing Android bit by bit every year, everybody knows their real intent is to turn it into closed source.
doodledup@lemmy.world 1 week ago
They are closing nothing here. It’s the equivalent of the developer doing local commits and delaying the public pull request.
fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 1 week ago
Click bait headline.
nuko147@lemm.ee 1 week ago
I trust them. They showed that they only care for their customers and not for maximizing profits.
pastermil@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
/s right?
nuko147@lemm.ee 1 week ago
Google’s main goal is privacy and costumers happiness, Trump’s is democracy and Putin’s is peace.
Sunshine@lemmy.ca 1 week ago
It’s never been a better time to switch to !linuxphones@lemmy.ca
Atmoro@lemmy.world 1 week ago
PostmarketOS can’t happen fast enough
LineageOS, & GrapheneOS hopefully will still be good for now
Senseless@feddit.org 1 week ago
As a GrapheneOS user I’m with you on this. Hopefully this won’t negatively impact the development of GOS. I feel like it will though.
Sunshine@lemmy.ca 1 week ago
I wonder how this will affect Ubuntu Touch.
Polderviking@feddit.nl 1 week ago
If google where to close android it’ll undoubtedly be forked. Pretty sure Graphene and Calyx will be fine.
WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
and google will be doing everything they can to grow incompatibility and make maintaining an open fork impossible. don’t forget that google employs devs for pay, but fork maintainers are doing it as a hobby, out of passion, while already working somewhere. It’s a bit similar to matrix, its homeservers and clients. the spec and the software evolves slowly, but its still too fast for alt implementations