I’ve been trying to convince people for the last 10-15 years that Google is no friend to the open source community. It’s been difficult and sounds self-serving as I do it from Apple devices and make no attempt to hide or conceal that.
AOSP and chromium are open source projects. What Google actually puts out — Android and Chrome — are not. They take the open source foundations, and they build upon them with closed-source components. They’ve always done this. AOSP does not have any Google apps either (sometimes called GApps) as those are not open source. Browser and Mail are not Chrome and Gmail, though the former may be a chromium-based browser and the latter may be capable of retrieving and sending through Gmail (much like Apple’s mail app can).
Android is not an open source ally, and macOS is kinda, sorta, not really based on UNIX. But we could flip the script and say that Apple is a friend to open source because macOS is basically UNIX (via OS X and NextStep), while Android isn’t open source at all. I can already see the pitchforks being sharpened. Both positives are technically true from a certain point of view (like Vader having killed Anakin Skywalker, to use Obi-Wan’s example for this turn of a phrase), but the negatives of both are more accurate. Because to really be a friend to the world of open source (and FOSS, and the more preferred licenses), you can’t just half-ass it, you gotta go all the way. Apple isn’t there and neither is Google.
F-Droid is what the Android Market (I’m that old, and older) should have become, with Google offering a repository you can add to F-Droid. Google Play Store is trash and pretty much always has been, and I say that as someone who deals with the App Store (which is also trash) every day.
Of course I also root for GrapheneOS, up until they say you can only use their OS with a Pixel phone. If I want iPhone 11 performance, I’m not spending iPhone 18 Pro money on a Pixel 11, I’m gonna either get iPhone 18 Pro performance, or, if I want Android, I’m looking at the Galaxy S line. I’m not even looking at Pixel and its sorry ass, seven generations behind Tensor line. Bad enough Snapdragon struggles to keep up with Apple silicon. Does Tensor even try?
But nah, I wanna see GrapheneOS do what Andy Rubin did. Make Linux run on phones. But make it run on any phone. I guess I don’t mean “including the iPhone.” That would be nice, but Apple isn’t unlocking that bootloader. But we should expect a free, open source alternative to Android to run on any hardware, not just the one run by the one causing the problems. (So what standards do I aspire my iPhone to? I want it to be more like the Mac, with a terminal and ability to install apps from anywhere.)
I liked the idea of it. I never had the privilege of using it. If Chrome can be an OS, I don’t see why Firefox couldn’t, since Netscape (what we used to call Firefox in the 90s… sorta) had a bunch of apps (email, what became Thunderbird I think?, web page composer, maybe another tool).
On the other hand, a browser shouldn’t be an OS, but if Mozilla were to sponsor a Linux distro that includes Firefox and Thunderbird, that would be nice. Plus give it appropriate theming.
Android as mobile Linux was a fine idea that was never executed very well. As a Mac guy, I wish Apple took its mobile lead with more responsibility, and shaped the iPhone (and especially iPad) to be more like the Mac. But they got greedy, and Google was never altruistic. I just don’t really have a ledge to stand on when I say Google wasn’t, because iPhone never really was either. The distinction of being made by a storied computer company rather than an advertising company is almost completely lost when you look at the App Store. I think if the iPhone was made with the spirit behind the old days of OS X, things would be different. The want to make something great that is also elegant. Meanwhile, the Android/Linux side should have been pushing the boundaries of what is possible. Both, for example, should be almost completely usable via terminal. And then Windows Mobile/Windows Phone should have been what iPhone became — the phone for everybody else, easy to use, with AI assistants, ads, sponsored content, and whatnot. But more app compatibility. I basically wish phones followed the computers that inspired them more closely.