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 4 weeks 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 4 weeks ago
thann@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 weeks 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 4 weeks ago
C’mon, that’s what PR’s, RCs, and betas are for
BeardedGingerWonder@feddit.uk 4 weeks 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 4 weeks 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 4 weeks 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 4 weeks 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 4 weeks ago
Here are the donation pages for your open-source alternatives:
opencollective.com/postmarketOS
BestBouclettes@jlai.lu 4 weeks ago
From AOSP to AP
doeknius_gloek@discuss.tchncs.de 4 weeks 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 4 weeks 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 4 weeks ago
With this happenning and apple getting extorted to accept third party apps it would be funny if they switch places
0x0@programming.dev 4 weeks 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 4 weeks 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 4 weeks ago
Click bait headline.
nuko147@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
I trust them. They showed that they only care for their customers and not for maximizing profits.
pastermil@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
/s right?
nuko147@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
Google’s main goal is privacy and costumers happiness, Trump’s is democracy and Putin’s is peace.
Sunshine@lemmy.ca 4 weeks ago
It’s never been a better time to switch to !linuxphones@lemmy.ca
Atmoro@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
PostmarketOS can’t happen fast enough
LineageOS, & GrapheneOS hopefully will still be good for now
Senseless@feddit.org 4 weeks 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 4 weeks ago
I wonder how this will affect Ubuntu Touch.
Polderviking@feddit.nl 4 weeks ago
If google where to close android it’ll undoubtedly be forked. Pretty sure Graphene and Calyx will be fine.
WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks 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