i despise where Google is going with this. it's a duopoly in the smartphone OS space and we need (for lack of a better analogy, spare the technicals) open-source distros like we have with Linux on desktop.

Graphene is reaching that status for me every day and i'm looking forward to switching to it as my daily driver.

GrapheneOS is pretty neat, https://postmarketos.org/ is also pretty damn polished out of the box these days. I'd argue the "mobile desktop Linux systems" are actually a bit more polished than Graphene, esp. when it comes to default apps (no AOSP abandonware dialer, contacts etc. apps to fight with, it's all just maintained, responsive GNOME/KDE apps)

I tried getting it to run on a Pixel 3a and struggled for hours, eventually gave up (albeit I tried running it with Wayland and Niri which seems less tried-and-true).

I just wish Graphene had better support for non-Google hardware.

More like OEMs need to take security more seriously and add in the capable hardware and commit to firmware updates long term.

Unless there is a real market advantage to it, they won't. Consumers prove over and over again they are willing to trade security to save a few dollars. Furthermore, why commit to providing hardware and software support for a device to last 5+ years, when ~25% of Americans report damaging their device each year[0]. Most of a device's population will have been replaced in 3 years.

[0]: https://www.claimsjournal.com/news/national/2024/03/15/32248...

They can't due to the shortcomings of the hardware (why develop a hardened os to the grossly insecure hardware) or the vendor (no/slow updates, etc).

Anyone is free to fork, add the desired hardware support and flash.

(that's aside of some Moto flagships in 2027)

they can, but don't want to

OK, I'm confused, explain how they can deliver comparable security on a hardware that does not offer the same capabilities, from a vendor who doesn't provide patches.

You say they can. How?

If Google doesn't smarten up, it will no longer be in control of Android.

Oracle was a mighty powerhouse when it bought MySQL, StarOffice, and more. It lost defacto control of all of them, due to its stupidity. In the world of open source, the tighter you hold on, the less likely you'll retain control.

And yet, here we are, with Google playing games.

Google, a note: there are far more relying upon Android than you, and now there are forced alternative stores in the mix. If Samsung and everyone else said "sorry Google', or even a large majority, you're out. Gone. Nada.

They can now fork, and force old Android to have their new fancy pants 'Play' store too.

Google is also getting more and more pushy with Chrome. What if everyone depending upon that backend, shrugs and says "Sorry Google, we're hard-forking Chrome and we'll all maintain it".

Oracle was a mighty powerhouse

It definitly still is. We run Postgres when we host our banking / financial stuff, but when we talk with banks and say that, they demand Oracle not that 'open source amateur stuff'. We have a version of our software for Oracle (and MSSQL) as well so no biggy, but still, we always try if we know it's not a complete immediate kill (which it will be if we put it in our documentation as only option). Oracle is still everywhere at the big guys.

as someone who is associated with “the big guys”, I can tell you this is changing.

Our Oracle license licensing went up so dramatically that the team I work with is moving some very large databases to postgres from Oracle because it doesn’t make financial sense anymore.

now, if we could only stop eating at the trough of Broadcom…

I'm advising a startup doing software for banks, and the overall attitude of their clients is: "We want to get away from the #&I$*@&^#$ Oracle, but we're stuck for now".

Oracle used to be a must-have because it was one of the few products that could handle transactions on a scale of a bank, with all the requirements for backups, redundancy, etc.

A fun anecdote. Back in 2000, I was present at negotiations (as a note-taker) where database vendors were bidding for a project for a factory control system. Vendors submitted benchmark results for various DB sizes up to 40Gb, and Oracle's rep hautingly said something like: "Our minimal size for benchmarks is 80Gb, so here are our results for that size".

And this was a _lot_ for that time. Now? It's so ridiculously tiny that you can host it on a smartwatch. So why would you pay Oracle?

Agreed, I had the same talks around 2000 but at the time it was still very much mssql/db2/oracle for 'real companies'. Yet i'm still surprised how much pushback we get, especially in Asian countries (India) but we do get it, a lot. And we have conversations with financial partners in the US as they advice our VCs; those calls go the same way 'ah, you are using that hipster open source stuff, yeah we don't do that here'.

i so desperately wish we were still in the days of manufacturers making their own OS. It's why I moved to iphone: when the hardware company makes the software and vice-versa the integration is much better and less error-prone/bloated. It never made sense to me for android to be shoehorned into thousands of devices, instead of a fork being made and for thorough OS rework to happen to support the device.

Graphene has been my daily driver for the past year or so. The only thing I miss is the ability to do contactless payments. Otherwise, it's been awesome. I don't run any games nor do I care about any of the AI features. YMMV.

for some people contactless payments are essential for their lifes

Android has been so thoroughly disappointing through the years. Started as a great open free form alternative to iOS, to becoming the very thing it sought to combat.

If Android wants to be the inferior not-open-source mobile OS, why would I not just buy an iPhone instead then?

It’s closed too, sure, but at least it’s more consistent.

The amount of roadblocks Google is putting up for GrapheneOS is just ridiculous. None of their decisions make any sense, from the delayed source patches upstream, to the embargos, attestation issues, etc. Google simply regrets android being open source.

There's a non-zero chance that three-letter agencies are lobbying for at least some of this.

GrapheneOS does not even register on Google scale! It does not even manufacture its own devices!

Bigger problem is HarmonyOS and similar devices, compatible with Android. Opensource threat from china!

And no NSA backdoors or honeypots!

Sure, let's just trade the NSA for the CCP, no issues there.

One poses an active, unchecked threat to the constitutional rights of US citizens, has a chartered mission to subvert and undermine the very field of cryptography itself - going so far as to bribe standards bodies to adopt backdoored algorithms (using taxpayer funds to do so), has plotted to mass-violate the constitutional rights of their own citizens and lie about it to the national legislature (which they carried out successfully, committing perjury in the process and facing zero consequences for it), secretly cooperates with the criminal justice system via parallel construction to target nonviolent, law-abiding political activists with fabricated criminal charges as retaliation for politically disfavored speech, while the other is about 6500 miles away, has negligible presence in / reach into the US, and is generally unconcerned with the domestic political activities of US citizens.

It's not a regret. Android would never have been popular in the first place if it had not been open source. If phone makers had been able to anticipate how much the demons at Google would be able to lock down the Android then they would never had used the OS back in ~2009.

That’s possible (never underestimate the bad decision-making of phone makers), but what would they have done instead? Windows Mobile 6 was the only licensable alternative, but it was a known quantity and obviously a generation behind Android and iOS.

Maemo.

Windows Phone was pretty nice, too bad Microsoft didn't follow their DOS and Windows strategy of getting it preinstalled on every consumer PC sold. There was really only the Nokia Lumia line that I recall, but everyone I knew who had one loved it.

Windows Phone 7 didn’t ship until 2 years after Android. 2 more years later Windows Phone 8 was released and it was a legitimate option but just too late.

Pre-7 was just not an operating system that anyone except the geekiest of geeks wanted to use.

Yeah I guess Apple set too high a bar and MS was caught flatfooted (again) and was too far behind.

There were several credible competitors: WebOS, Symbian, Maemo/MeeGo, Palm OS 6, and of course Windows Mobile. But they required cooperating with a single vendor and/or a lot of work to adapt.

Android won because it was available "right now" and easy to hack. Vendors could get a BSP (Board Support Package) from a chip manufacturer, slap Android userspace on top of it, and ship a phone within half a year. It was a glorious mess for a while.

Google then slowly tightened the reins and made the ecosystem more ordered.

Not even wearing rose tinted glasses right now, for having daily driven them back in the days, maemo and then WebOS had touch ergonomics and multitasking abilities which took Android/iOS decades to incompletely mimic. Maemo/Nokia N900's design principle seems to have been "let's provide the user with desktop-level productivity tools, and shrink the desktop into their pocket", the package was massive for the era's standards, but is tiny for today's, and those dumb-down/low density ergonomics we have now give us less capabilities for more screen estate and weight (even something like an iPod pro is a "dumb" content consumption device in comparison). WebOS on the other hand was not about "producing/delivering on the go" so much as it was about getting your digital must haves (booking an appointment, updating a contact details, moving a meeting, ...) done and out of the way with just a couple key presses and finger flips as so distract as little as possible from the present. Only some advanced Android launchers get close, but it's never the focused, well polished and distraction-free experience it was back then (and for the same reason, Android/iOS are addictive content delivery vehicules meant to sink your eyeballs and time as to sell you stuff or collect and merchandise your data).

I'm interested and wishing to see a future mobile OS that does not pander to the "attention economy" like Android/iOS are, but with billions now addicted and trapped by it, I'm realistic that it won't be an overnight success.

Sailfish OS exists as a continuation of the Maemo project, even shipped their own phone recently.

I don't think this is actually true. Phone makers seem happy to have the platform locked down even further. They're putting even more roadblocks, as evidenced by most of them making bootloaders unlockable.

They're happy that it is locked down. They're not happy that they're not the ones doing the locking down.

This is what lots of people forget.

Android is not a Linux desktop or server distro. It is not about you getting to put what you want on the hardware you bought for free.

Operating systems are hellaciously expensive to maintain and that only gets worse in markets with rapid hardware improvements, as the smartphone market was up until maybe the late 2010s. Google is not a charity. SV did not come into national prominence for making investors $0. There is no money in giving maybe one in one-hundred smartphone users (and that's being generous) a bunch of code, for free, so that they can put it on their gizmo and talk to their nerd friends at their hacker meetup.

When they pitched Android as "open", they meant that carriers and device makers could load it up with all of the revenue-enhancing bloat that they wanted. In return, Google got a device that would let them hoover up all of the data they could ever want in order to build better ad service profiles for those using the devices. That is, after all, their business.

For a while, this could coexist with us screwing around with a real-life tricorder. At some point, though, the free stuff turned into a revenue opportunity that had to be exploited. And so, it will be.

Especially Android, which is an ever-growing pile of spaghetti almost as bad as Windows.

I'd say Android is already worse. It uses more ram and resources to run smoothly than Windows does. Especially now that Microsoft is actively trying to speed up Windows 11 and make it use less resources.

Any discussion about this is shut down. I just read an article https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckqxvy98x578o In the UK according to the BBC, politicians are pressing Samsung and apple to make stolen phones bricks. Samsung in response said that they have implemented several security features for this purpose. I think Samsung considers removing OEM unlocking a security feature according to the bootloader unlock hall of shame.

Intel used to do the same with their anti theft technology aka Intel theft deterrent on their classmate PCs, so students had to enter unlock codes from an IT admin every 3 months or every say 200 boots to prevent the computer from being locked at the bios level preventing it from booting an OS, and there was an update which disabled that functionality permanently. And you would be warned when you had around 50 boots left to get the unlock code.

Normally you have to unlock the phone before unlocking the bootloader, and that is the protection.

I would think they are guessing most people's passwords are weak or something. Like a screen pattern is weak, can be broken in just 300k attempts or maybe less because people use the same patterns and people can't be bothered to use passphrases.

Making the bootloaders unlockable is a good thing.

No, everyone knew what they were getting into with Android. It wasn't taken lightly by the power users of the time either. I still have a phone somewhere with Ubuntu Touch on it. I really was hoping that would be my phone OS by now. Not that Canonical isn't capable of similar, but that it would bring about acceptance of Linux phones.

I think we're all more surprised by how long it took for Google to make these bad moves. For a period of time in the 2010s we actually started thinking maybe Google was alright.

It wasn't Canonical's limitation. Mozilla can confirm: the barriers to enter the phone manufacturing market are immense. Samsung, Ericsson, Sony, LG, etc, all had solid control of the deals with the network operators worldwide. It's a highly regulated market, you can't get in without Verizon, att, Vodafone etc to let you in. Canonical, Open Moko, Mozilla... Didn't have the strength to push through. Google and Apple did.

It's operators that have grips on manufacturers. Phone OEMs don't make any without the sales networks and financing structures of cellular carriers.

This is to extent that some carriers still insist that they design phones and phone manufacturers are just factories. People need to understand that power dynamic before blaming those "mere factories" for not making Linux phones.

There has to be like an SVP of SoandSo Wireless pushing like three pillar approach of iOS, Android and Linux. Otherwise the pitch decks for any alternative phones just go straight to trash(or into a motorized shredder if it is still physical).

It's operators that have grips on manufacturers

Only in the USA.

Google is also seriously dropping the ball in terms of security. The CVE-2026-43499 root LPE (aka ghostlock) is still unpatched across all Pixel devices, on the latest """security""" update, despite weaponized exploits being public for months.

I just ran https://github.com/CakesTwix/Android-CVE-2026-43499 on my Pixel 9 Pro and it seems to have been patched. I did get a system update not long ago, though.

Pixels used to have far better updates than any other Android devices but they stopped improving it years ago. It should have kept improving because it's not at all adequate. They need to be able to release OS updates more than once per month and it shouldn't take months for patches to make it into the OS. It currently takes them at least around 2 months to get even the most urgent patches into the OS. They could fix emergency calls being broken if the patch was made around 3 weeks before an OS release, but that's about as quick as they can go. It's not at all adequate for security and is a complete joke compared to Chromium's release cycle. They can get an emergency Chrome update released within a couple days. They should at least be able to do it for the Pixel OS in a week.

GrapheneOS is often around 4 to 6 months ahead on merging Linux kernel LTS releases. We used to handle this ourselves but switched to the Android GKI LTS branch maintained by Greg KH. Unfortunately, it was often struggling to keep up even before the absolutely massive increase in Linux kernel security patches this year. AI models have rapidly accelerated vulnerability discovery and it's an ongoing crisis for the Linux kernel. We want to be on the latest LTS revision within days and want to be using the latest LTS branch within months of it being released. We're not at all happy with how Android is handling things and plan to fix that ourselves. We'll get things back to how they should be.

We also ship all the AOSP userspace patches months before Pixels due to shipping all of the security preview patches as soon as possible. There are sometimes minor regressions but we find and fix them ourselves downstream. The security preview system has a terrible design especially considering that frontier AI models can reverse engineer the patches. There should at least only be a source embargo for around 24 to 72 hours rather than pretending as if it can work with the patches available 2 to 6 months in advance.

I'd love to use GrapheneOS on less secure devices, just for the sake of Google autonomy rather than privacy.

GrapheneOS's goal is privacy for the world and that's achieved through secure devices. You can get a phone specifically for GrapheneOS just as you choose a new device when you're buying a new one. Soon there will be two different phone brands which you can install it on. There's already an estimated 500,000 users with Pixel exclusivity.

https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/117249893761790371

GrapheneOS's goal is privacy for the world and that's achieved through secure devices.

Perfect is the enemy of good. What's better for privacy, an old but inexpensive smartphone running Android 11, or the same smartphone running an up-to-date third-party rebuild of Android 16 or newer with as many privacy-improving bells and whistles as the hardware can support?

Soon there will be two different phone brands which you can install it on.

...will they be available in my country (Brazil)? I don't think I've ever seen a Google Pixel phone in person.

Are all of these unsuitable [0]?

Not sure if you have any experience with eBay. I looked it up and people had problems selling to Brazil [1] but there are various listings that offer to ship. So maybe not a great option.

KaBuM!, Intec Store, Performance Solutions all charge significantly more with a 10a being more than double than from Google.

Motorola officially sells the Signature in Brazil [2] at the same price or cheaper than in the UK. It will be supported by GrapheneOS in 2027 on the 2027 version. From then on, hopefully Qualcomm brings MTE to the non-flagship chips and Motorola and GrapheneOS support budget or midrange devices.

perfect is the enemy of good

I don't consider that relevant when users deserve ≥ security than an iPhone. GrapheneOS is not purpose-built to avoid big-tech's services although it does that more completely than any other alternative mobile operating system, the focus is privacy.

GrapheneOS on the state of privacy and security for their ethos: https://x.com/GrapheneOS/status/2044440381803069778

[0] https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=google+pixel+9

[1] https://reddit.com/r/Ebay/comments/1d92pyn/

https://community.ebay.com/forum/shipping-57923/topic/diffic...

[2] https://www.motorola.com.br/smartphone-motorola-signature/p?...

You can dot his but it won't be Graphene but something else, like LineageOS. As long as Graphene's selling point is extreme privacy and not just more privacy, it will be this way.

The thread states that Google is putting out patches that affect other Android vendors too.

They're not treating GrapheneOS very differently from other vendors, except that Graphene isn't relevant enough to sign a contract with because they don't make phones (or money, really).

Google should be putting out the code and patches like they used to, but the constant badgering of Google on this issue feels off. I don't see anyone complaining that Samsung isn't supporting their security-focused fork enough, or complain that Apple is delaying the bootloader unlock process by a day.

Despite their very worst, selfish intentions, Google is the very best vendor of commercial open source software. While Google's open source project collapses, there's plenty of space for other vendors to step in.

We should bemoan Google's fall from grace, but only because they're on the way to becoming just as bad as every vendor but Librem if they keep this up another decade.

Google

Can we just stop saying "Google" as if it's same faceless org? No, it's not Google, one or two asshole execs are behind this policy.

I hope people remember this when advocating for chromium. Just because it is open source doesn't mean they don't control it. We need to start the long process of hard forking now or turn to alternatives like Firefox as a new foundation.

  > Google simply regrets android being open source.

Android wouldn't be what it is if it wasn't open source. With all the work from outside Google. The same is true chrome.

But they won't learn that on their own. They are breaking the deals. So we move. We force their hand

So we move. We force their hand

What do you have in mind?

We need to start the long process of hard forking now or turn to alternatives like Firefox as a new foundation.

oh yes sure. just like we can shift the population into installing Debian into their machines so we also deter M$ and Apple abuse /s

We did it before. Thanks to Firefox we broke the IE6 monopoly even on Windows.

How did that happen, anyway? Tabs? What's the next killer feature after tabs? Maybe sync?

Adblock, I would have thought. And Google can't compete in this space, by their very nature.

This is the message that Firefox needs to push: Hate ads? Use Firefox.

Well, it is time to realise that GPL and similar variants, are better in the long term. I like MIT too, but GPL worked so much better for the linux kernel. Google and others abuse the ecosystem of open source contributors here.

You mean the Linux kernel that the GrapheneOS project has to request every update for and then has to wait up to weeks to get a Google Drive link?

The GPL is worth nothing if nobody is enforcing it aggressively.

Could you quote the part of the GPL that they're not adhering to (which you seem to be implying), in this situation?

Donate to Ladybird https://ladybird.org/

They have their own problems. They may be "open source", but they don't accept contributions. I'm skeptical it will ever become more than a hobby project.

Is not accepting contributions the only/biggest issue you have with the project? I'm honestly becoming more and more okay with the "cathedral" style of open source. Depending on the project, catering to "the community" can lead a loss of focus, lack of a cohesive "vision" or scope, and just generally trying to be everything to everyone without the resources to maintain a giant beast.

With something like a browser (engine), I'm totally okay with someone saying "I'm an expert and I'm trying something with my own vision/priorities. I don't want input from random people that I have to spend time evaluating."

It's on BSD license, Google or someone else can again Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.

Handing even a slight control over the web to an all-out white replacement theorist is somehow even worse than the status quo. Ladybird is run by the kind of person I'd never want to financially contribute to.

- https://nitter.example/awesomekling/status/19693500085383702... (archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20250920103645/https://twitter.c...)

- https://nitter.example/awesomekling/status/18745182953508374... (archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20250101180923/https://twitter.c...)

- https://nitter.example/awesomekling/status/19712877382689095... (archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20250925185636/https://twitter.c...)

- https://nitter.example/awesomekling/status/19671787088520972... (archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20250914104847/https://twitter.c...)

I don't think he said anything factually incorrect though?

I'm reading your comment on Firefox. You can probably read mine and write a reply on it too!

LOL "start" using Firefox. I've been using Firefox for half a decade. There's zero I miss about Chrome.

LOL half a decade.

I've been using it for more than 20 years.

I don't know why either of use loled though

LOL, I've been using it since Netscape Navigator 3.0 Gold, via Mozilla M3 (SeaMonkey tech preview), Phoenix, Firebird, and then finally Firefox :D

Me too. Too bad I had to abandon it because Mozilla seem more focused on making AI-nonsense than a browser nowadays. No, Firefox, you don’t need AI features. You do need a better UI. You do need smoother scrolling. You do need privacy focus (which automatically means you do not need AI features). You do need to feel like you belong on the platform you’re installed on and not wish everything were Linux. You do need better designers that understand UX is not just “add controls everywhere”.

Huh? What ai features? Firefox seems largely the same as it did a few years ago.

I’m not doubting they added some ai junk somewhere. But whatever they did seems very easy to ignore.

I've been using it since the time it was called Netscape Navigator. Just sayin'

Shit, remember Mosaic? Gopher?

Hard forking doesn't solve the problem of closed source.

If the goal of a hard fork is "the community will invest equal resources that Google does today" then you wildly underestimate how many engineers work on Chrome.

But the open source project wouldn’t need to invest as much as Google does. There are all kinds of features and things they are working on that the general public really does not care about.

But the open source project wouldn’t need to invest as much as Google does.

Not at first. Yet over time the work increases as one must differ more and more from Chrome. I believe that's why so many forks are giving up on Manifest V2.

Forks are giving up on mv2 because it's not as important as the people online say it is. If mv2 was what would cause a browser to gain market share they would keep maintaining it, but if the market is not rewarding browsers with mv2 then it does not make sense to maintain.

but perhaps we dont need several gigabytes compressed code to have a browser. perhaps what google have been doing is an utter abomination?

This is cool until Google doesn't load in your free browser.

Then, you use this: https://duckduckgo.com/

Actually, use it now.

This works for nerds, but not for grandma who can't even describe what she's doing without using the word "google".

The bigger problem is wasting developer effort contributing to Google's platform. The real secret behind Android being "open" (sorta) is that while almost nobody runs AOSP, Google has tricked a bunch of fools into working on Android forks instead of building a real competitor.

Playing at their table is a losing game, the house always wins.

Windows only isn't still 90% market share because of Wine, then Proton.

Neither Wine nor Proton run on Windows. Building Android emulators for Linux: Worth your time. Building Android knockoffs which claim to remove the Google from Google's operating system? Foolishness.

Valve is working on supporting apks for their new VR operating system. If this goes anything like Proton then I'm hopeful for the future of Android without Google.

The developer effort is not wasted because it's open source. Anyone can fork it at any time. None of it can be thrown away from humanity, wasting it.

The reason why no one runs AOSP is because the phone market rewards differentiation. Each phone manufacture wants to build their own experience and building on top of AOSP is how they do so.

Is it really a losing game? Building a new OS from scratch is not worth it. Why throw away an entire app catalog for your device? Consumers want access to existing app catalogs when buying a phone. If anything is a losing game it's building a new mobile operating system over forking Android as a base.

It wasn't worth it, but it's 2026, not 1991, when Linus first released Linux. AI can shit out a new OS, given enough tokens, and a VM/compatibility layer would let you run Android apps until native ports became available. The question is why would you want to do that? Computers are vastly more capable than they were when the Linux kernel was originally designed, and the needs of programs and their permissions have changed as well. https://xkcd.com/1200/ While throwing away all the learnings and starting from scratch are usually not justified, sometimes it is the right choice, if enough things have changed. Should GPS location, fine grained or coarse, and related permissions, be a part of the OS kernel or a user space daemon that other processes can query or some other thing? That wasn't a question when Linux was created but should be a core consideration for a replacement system that was created today, along with a myriad of other modern day questions that didn't exist back then. I don't think it's a loosing game, and I don't have the resources to make one myself, but I do think that the world's materially changed enough to justify building a new one from scratch.

AI generating code changes the game significantly, though there are issues with that. A new OS would have taken several millions and multiple teams, but can now be done for far less. The problem is hardware to run it on. Who'd pay $2,000 for a shittier phone with less features when a $500 used one with GrapheneOS is right there? So the market, (in)efficiently, hasn't come up with a new phone OS. Not because it isn't warranted, but because the free market isn't a perfect system.

The reason why no one runs AOSP is because the phone market rewards differentiation.

No, the reason is that AOSP doesn't even include a functional keyboard nor a functional call manager nowadays.

AOSP apps were abandonned around Android 11, you can't just keep them as is for real users, it looks amateur.

Even the open-source ROMs came to the same conclusion eventually and developed their own.

the reason is that AOSP doesn't even include a functional keyboard nor a functional call manager nowadays

No one was using those apps so it didn't make sense to spend time on them.

wildly underestimate how many engineers work on Chrome.

It is completely insane how many people work on Chrome. It seems like it is time to deprecate web browsers and do something different. Like you get a frame-buffer to draw on with something like a wasm vm. Web pages get replaced by programs (which they essentially are anyway). Get rid of 99.9% of the cruft that has accumulated over the decades in browsers. If you want to have some of that cruft, that is a library you have to send.

Or go the other way and make web pages not programs at all, like they originally were. Unfortunately, just communicating information isn't cool, doesn't monetize, and certainly doesn't get clicks.

The biggest mistake the web ever made was leaving it up to to the website to choose how content renders.

It should be the users choice how their browser renders, it's their damn browser. Instead, browsers are built to follow standards that mostly favor the developers preferences above those of the person who actually own the device rendering it.

The modern web is user hostile by design.

Like you get a frame-buffer to draw on with something like a wasm vm. Web pages get replaced by programs (which they essentially are anyway).

The biggest thing standing in the way of this is actually Apple, since they don't allow competing browser engines or equivalent so you can't make something like this for iOS whatsoever.

Apple can create a clone for their wall-garden when they want to catch up to the times.

Not denying than many engineers work on Chrome just wondering how many of them work on Chrome features that are anti pattern, reducing privacy, improving information collection or tracking or against users interest in broad.

Can anyone actually share 1 - 3 examples where a hard fork of a living os project has actually succeeded ?

If AMZN couldnt make their fire whatever it was called fork of Android really grow, what chance has the community got ?

OwnCloud -> Nextcloud, OpenOffice -> LibreOffice, Elasicsearch -> OpenSearch, privacyIDEA -> eduMFA

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_OpenOffice

Difficulties maintaining a sufficient number of contributors to keep the project viable have persisted for several years. In January 2015, the project reported a lack of active developers and code contributions.[49] There have been continual problems providing timely fixes to security vulnerabilities since 2015.[50][51][52][53] In September 2016, OpenOffice's project management committee chair Dennis Hamilton began a discussion of possibly discontinuing the project, after the Apache board had put them on monthly reporting due to the project's ongoing problems handling security issues.[54][55][56]

Sounds like AOO is effectively dead, so this example is a fail to my challenge.

OpenSearch & ElasticSearch both seem alive, as well as OC & NC.

Neither https://github.com/privacyidea/privacyidea or https://github.com/eduMFA/eduMFA say either is a fork of the other.

I think you failed to share 3, 2 seem to valid examples of my challenge but the other 2 are questionable.

But they won't learn that on their own

I think they're fully aware of this. They just don't care, because the goal of "get market share super high" has been reached, so now they have no need for it to continue being open.

I don't disagree about what that means we should do; I just don't think we should assume they're being naive here. It's like writing a program to play chess; you should select your move assuming the opponent is smart and will make the optimal counterplay rather than assuming weakness, and then if they end up being less smart than that, you're still in a good place.

I think this is true, but I also believe the original people who built it are not the people in charge now.

We haven't had antitrust enforcement for 25 years. It's high time we did.

Google needs to be broken up.

MS was never broken up.

Tbh I don't think fighting open source is Google's best play. I think it is in their own best interest to keep it fully open. It is free labor by those who are most passionate. It gives strong signals at what people want, this direction you develop. It strengthens security as more people try to test it. It means people work on forks rather than alternatives. All this is true even with a monopolistic market share.

So yes, I do think they are being naïve. The stance is myopic. It is only a good move in the short term, and barely even that. It is under the false belief that we operate in a zero sum game.

Most successful open source projects have devs being paid by big corporations, including Linux itself, which only really took off in the 2000's when companies like IBM started caring.

Also in the last century most software was commercial, and thanks to business friendly licenses we are back to demos, PD, Shareware and co, only with new names for a younger generation.

Google will do just fine.

or turn to alternatives like Firefox as a new foundation.

With the way Firefox is heading, that might not be the best idea. Nowadays Mozilla seem more focused on riding the AI-hype wave than actually making an excellent browser people want to actually use.

It's not really a "both sides" thing given the scale difference between what Google is up to and that.

No one is forcing Mozilla’s hand (afaik) and no one is actually thinking “if Firefox had a chatbot that might convince me to move over”. Youre right that it is not a “both sides” thing, its a “Mozilla thing”. Through and through.

Some people are thinking "Firefox doesn't have a chatbot so I'll use chrome" though

Really? How many people can that possibly be, and how many of those would a reasonably sane developer actually want?

If your competition is attracting the worst kind of users, do you really want to get in their way?

Yes you want more users not less. This is business 101. Even business 000. Customers good.

It is sad to see Firefox riding various hype trains over the years, but I can't really blame them. Miss the wrong train, and you fall behind and may not be able to catch up. Miss the train to nowhere, and you are only wasting resources.

As for the excellent browser that people want, that raises the question of what people want. There are likely as many answers as people.

Yeah. It’s a tough balance to achieve but that’s the situation we’re in right now so Mozilla really ought to step up (and I totally wish they would).

My biggest pain point at the moment (entirely subjective mind you) is not even the AI nonsense, but how disjointed and alien the Firefox UX and general feel is to Apple platforms (what I use, at the moment). I don’t want Firefox to mirror Safari 1:1 but I do want the Firefox UI and UX to feel polished, well thought out and thoroughly in line with system HIG specs—given that I spend a lot of time in a browser, it shouldn’t feel like a stranger in a strange land amidst my other desktop applications.

Aggressive UI improvements would go a long way to restore some faith in the incandescent fox‘ mission—at least for me.

What aspects feel foreign on macOS? The Firefox preferences for sure. Anything else?

Tab close buttons are on the right (windows style) instead of on the left (macOS style), for one.

I mean, it’s the same on every browser except Safari

Maybe I'm not enough of an Apple fanboy but using work provided mac with firefox for 15 years I never noticed UI being disjointed from the system any more than Chrome.

Is Firefox or Mozilla perfect? Heck no. But we're not comparing Mozilla against pre-IBM Red Hat or Ben & Jerry's or whatever your concept of the ideal corporate citizen is. We're comparing Mozilla against Google. That's a very low bar that Mozilla clears with ease, especially if you're criteria includes shoving AI down your throat.

Firefox is no longer part of most browser compatibility matrices, what ease?

Firefox is no longer part of most browser compatibility matrices, what ease?

What would be the point of a browser compatibility matrix then?

Mozilla gets 100M a year from Google ??? No fucking way they are biting the hand that feeds.

Closer to 500M, actually.

~$585 million in 2024 (86% of total revenue) https://stateof.mozilla.org/pdf/Mozilla%20Fdn%202024%20-%20A...

Mentioned as "one customer" in the PDF.

Where is the form, forum or spot in general where one can tell Mozilla?

Android wouldn't be what it is if it wasn't open source.

Yes, and now that they've achieved market saturation, it's time to pull up the ladder.

Thanks for all the free work, suckers!

Don't worry, we will fork and just repeat the pattern with new names! See you next time!

It makes perfect sense when you apply the Friedman doctrine to their actions. [0]

Google is a lawn mower, stop anthropologizing them. This goes the same with Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, ...

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_doctrine

I'm convinced Android being open source is just an accident of history. It's been somewhat useful for Google to be able to ride on that goodwill, but they're not actually invested in open source beyond the ways it directly benefits them (or at least they haven't been in the last 10 years). Thus they're happy to throw the baby out with the bathwater if they believe they need the bathtub for anything that will earn them 0.1 cent more than that baby would.

It's like PC parts being modular. IBMs greatest mistake and the industry wants to make sure it never happens again.

Does anyone contribute to AOSP besides Google? Does Google actually accept any patches into "upstream" and ultimately into their own commercial distro?

The phrasing of your first question is ironic given GrapheneOS has upstreamed a ton of their security hardening.

You're probably asking if they're able contribute anymore?

Can you link to patches or commits they upstteamed? I'm not aware Google ever accepted any.

https://grapheneos.org/faq#upstream

https://android-review.googlesource.com/q/status:merged+auth...

Nothing in last 5 years; and if we ignore the last one, Nothing in almost 9-10 years. I am not sure how much weight it holds. Now if that's on Google on not accepting stuff that's different matter

Many developers will likely be developing at Android 16 APIs only. Will rely on Aptoide+AOSP exclusively. This is likely the timeline we'll see a decline in Play Store and Pixel usage.

Important details further down: https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/117282129725629495

So it seems like the problem isn't that the new API is Pixel exclusive, but that the first and third quarterly release patches each year are Pixel exclusive?

QPR1 and QPR3 are now Pixel exclusive since Android 16. That means the new APIs for app developers added in Android 17 QPR1 are Pixel exclusive until Android 17 QPR2. There hasn't been a case of new APIs for apps not being open source or not being available to every OEM since Android Honeycomb (3.x).

The world needs a Steam Phone.

If you mean GNU/Linux phones, they already exist and can be used as daily drivers by technical people. Sent from my Librem 5.

Yes, but a popular one that's usable by regular people and with a very wealthy organization behind it.

I miss my blackberry

Why GNU? I get the appeal of Linux, but Android has that angle covered. What makes GNU a better userspace than Android for phone use? I actually think the Andoid userspace is very good for what it is. If Google's influence were magically removed, Android would be more or less the ideal OS, at least for me.

Alright AI maximalists, what's the estimated token budget to remove the Google dependency?

GrapheneOS has the bootable AOSP and will have Google-alternative device support.

We probably need an equivalent to Play Services, app signing/porting/publishing tools.

With these in hand could we talk Valve into providing the scalable alternative to the play store?

A lot. But I don't think you can do it with just tokens. Android without the Play store and Google Play Services is just not very useful (in the West anyway).

The token budget isn't to remove Google it's to create drivers for individual phone hardware, which phone and chip manufacturers keep closed source. Also it would be used to find exploits to unlock permanently locked bootloaders

GrapheneOS accepts donations and, to my knowledge, they spend it in hiring full time engineers.

They have replacement portions for Play Services already (attestation, an app store, and location), but it'd be interesting if they also offered something for push notifications.

If you have it to give you can spend your budget on a donation and fund the effort directly.

Buy HarmonyOS device. No google jumk, android compatible os, fdroid works, years of security updates from maker, and 40% lower price.

As a personal device it works pretty well. For ssh terminal and reading markdown, it has by far best display.

That's Huawei's Android fork, right? Is it available on devices outside of China? I'm not seeing an obvious place to buy a device running it.

I think it started like this, but it no longer is the case.

I feel like Huawei missed a gigantic opportunity there: forking AOSP may have gotten them traction. I would totally buy a Huawei device if it could run GrapheneOS, and I wouldn't mind if GrapheneOS was based on Huawei's fork rather than Google's.

Why would China allow the domestic sale of a device that could run GrapheneOS?

LOL an OS controlled by the Chinese government?

As long as it's OSS, you could always fork it back l.

If only Graphene had a better marketing team. It pains me to say this but it is the absolute truth: the public does not know Graphene and does not care about Graphene. Even it’s name is absolutely awful. This is like the Linux distro hell: “you should use BingaBoingoKonohaOS_v34 or Peppermint_Cinn4monR0ll with the OutOfThisWorld DE, but steer clear of the Pancake package manager, use openMsPacMan with GrassFaceWhazzit frontend instead.” How is anyone (as in not us, the tech nerds) supposed to reason about this?

Things will keep as is for as long as they keep making these OSs FOR the tech nerds.

Downvote me all you want. You know it’s true. An OS made for nerds and by nerds will never reach mainstream and will not, ever, move the needle anywhere. Tech is no longer a hobbyist’s game.

What's particularly bad about the names of Graphene, Mint and Cinnamon? Especially compared to Android and iOS!!

It's the OS every drug dealer uses and the government can't break it. In privacy circles you can't get better marketing than that.

The trouble is that banking apps will not work if you degoogle your phone. GrapheneOS was an attempt to make this sort of thing work, in a phone OS more secure than stock Android

But to be honest, many banking apps randomly stop working with GrapheneOS anyway. So if you see this...

https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compa...

https://github.com/PrivSec-dev/banking-apps-compat-report

And check the issues, it's unpredictable whether a bank will continue to work with GrapheneOS

So.. if you accept GrapheneOS might not be reliable for this use case, and decide have two phones (one just for banking stuff, another for.. using), then degoogling is fine.

Only thing is that the banking device probably needs to be a phone (or tablet I guess), I don't think you can emulate a real device good enough for it to work on something like Waydroid

So...if you vibe code API shims Google can't sue your right? It would be clean room implementation by definition.

Installed GrapheneOS on my Pixel 10 yesterday, only used the stock rom to start the installer... Am feeling a little unconfortable due to this situation: [0]. Hope this gets better. Really feeling the dislike for Google on this one.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49741510

https://grapheneos.org/releases#2026091700

Fixes/updates the modem firmware.

Ah that's great news! Do you know how to force an upgrade?

So, the real thing that's happening here is:

* Google drop "real" Android source-code updates to OEMs _and_ the public every half.

* But they ship four Pixel updates, including documentation + SDKs.

* Now they added new APIs in a Pixel-only update.

* Google also drop security update backports to "trusted" OEMs monthly (which GrapheneOS have had access to for years).

So, there are now Pixel-exclusive app features on the Pixel SDK version which isn't available to OEMs - but, it's highly unlikely any app developer would actually depend on these new APIs, since Pixel marketshare is tiny to begin with. This in essence just makes Pixels a weird beta-testing device for what will come out a quarter later to "normal" devices, which is sort of an odd business decision, but also a weird thing to get really mad about, in my opinion (I do see what GrapheneOS are trying to do, with having OEMs saber-rattle about not getting features on the same cadence as Pixels, it just doesn't resonate very loudly for me).

However, the API headline seems to bury a deeper lede; in the thread, GrapheneOS also claim that the quarterly Pixel releases contain security content which is not appearing in the monthly backports. This is quite bad and very sloppy if true, since the Pixel releases can easily be patch-diffed and exploits backed out of them. I'd be interested in seeing this enumerated in more depth.

I don't really see what the Pixel-only early API releases achieve except for allowing developers to work on Pixels ahead of time, but Pixels are such a small sliver of the universe that it basically just gives Google a leg up, I would assume. And if you're on Graphene why would you care about Google's beta edge apps?

Exclusive access to QPR1 and QPR3 releases gives Pixels an unfair advantage over other Android OEMs. They get an extra 2 major updates per year. Introducing new APIs for third party app developers as part of these updates means third party apps will now run best on the Pixel OS. Google apps already run best on the Pixel OS due to many exclusive features. It's Google's standard overall approach to propping up parts of their business with their monopolies in other markets. It's not legal.

I honestly don't think anyone would care. They have a "leg up" for what 3 months every 3 months?

Nobody buys a Pixel because of this minute software advantage.

Maybe get Motorola or Samsung to support security updates for six years and get back to Pixel users.

Pixel 9a and earlier were officially sold as Android Open Source Project reference devices. Google made a commitment to providing 7 years of updates from launch for 8th/9th gen Pixels. Google then arbitrarily declared they were no longer AOSP reference devices with the release of Android 16 and stopped providing those updates. Many people bought Pixels due to this and it wasn't fulfilled. GrapheneOS has been able to continue support with a massive amount of work including reverse engineering, but other operating systems haven't been as successful and mostly haven't even moved to Android 17 yet or supported 10th gen Pixels.

There are currently around 400k to 600k active Pixels with GrapheneOS. There have been far more than that when including the past devices our users have purchased. Pixels are a small segment of the overall market and that's substantial. If you add in people on other operating systems such as LineageOS then there are even more people using Pixels with another OS. A significant portion of people who bought Pixels did so because they were AOSP reference devices.

Samsung provides 7 years of support with monthly updates for their flagship devices. Unlike the Pixel OS, Samsung ships a lot of the security preview patches early.

Motorola Signature (2026) has 7 years of support. The upcoming successor to it is the first non-Pixel meeting all of the update and hardware security feature requirements for GrapheneOS.

Pixel 11 currently doesn't meet our security requirements due to at least temporary lack of MTE support which may get added in Android 17 QPR2. The upcoming Motorola device is also going to be using a 6.18 kernel at launch rather than 6.12. We would have launched Pixel 11 series support already if they met our security requirements. It's likely they will down the road but it's not clear why they omitted firmware and software support for a major security feature at launch. It's the firmware part which impacts us.

Many people bought Pixels due to this and it wasn't fulfilled.

Did they though? Or is this just conjecture? Because, honestly, Pixels are not even available worldwide so a few AOSP enthusiasts dropping off and going to Graphene hardly seems concerning for the mighty G.

AOSP reference was a tagline for a few nerds that still wanted the Nexus devices of yore, but it was clear from day one that Google wanted their Pixel phones to be their iPhones.

I did