AOSP Maintainer Quits

In a post on Google+, Jean-Baptiste Quéru, long-time maintainer of the Android Open Source Project, has said he'll no longer be working on it. "There's no point being the maintainer of an Operating System that can't boot to the home screen on its flagship device for lack of GPU support, especially when I'm getting the blame for something that I don't have authority to fix myself and that I had anticipated and escalated more than 6 months ahead." Quéru is referring to the recently-released Nexus 7 revision, for which Google has not provided factory images of Android 4.3. This seems to be because GPU maker Qualcomm is refusing to release the blobs necessary to boot the device.

Comments

Google can fix it with a hammer.

[Anonymous Coward]

The best way to solve this problem is for Google to announce that they will not to use any parts that don't include open source drivers. The blobs will be released real quick.

Re:Google can fix it with a hammer.

[h4rr4r]

That is exactly what google should do.
If your drivers are not in the mainline kernel, your parts do not go into nexus devices.

Re:Google can fix it with a hammer.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why?

Why would google do that?

Google doesn't give a damm about open source really. They care about profits.

Customers don't give a damm about open source either. Just a tiny tiny % of geeks care.

They are not going to screw over profits and customers for a tiny tiny % of users... that's just stupid.

Re:Google can fix it with a hammer.

[spire3661]

People dont give a shit how a structurally sound a bridge is constructed either, only a tiny tiny % of its users do.. Just because only a few know enough to care doesnt change the argument. Very often it is the unpopular ideas that are correct.

Re:Google can fix it with a hammer.

[Pieroxy]

Wow... That was some analogy and some conclusion. Let's dive in!

People dont give a shit how a structurally sound a bridge is constructed either, only a tiny tiny % of its users do. Just because only a few know enough to care doesnt change the argument

Comparing a phone with a bridge is at best disingenuous. There are public health safety issues with bridges that are obvious to many I guess. The disadvantage for users is obvious. Phones? What disadvantage can you see for a random user by using a "closed" phone? Right. None.

Very often it is the unpopular ideas that are correct.

Well, now you have to define 'correct'. And you will quickly see that there are as many definitions as there are people trying to define it. Google doesn't care about your definition of correct, nor should it. And you don't care about theirs. Just, remember, don't throw around yours as if it is a universal version of 'correct'.

Re:Google can fix it with a hammer.

[spire3661]

There are public safety issues at play in a device you carry with you at all times,devices that will live in our walls, our appliances, everything. Open Source is the cement, the steel beams that will hold up future information society, dont be so dismissive of its true importance. How are we ever going have a galactic computer if we allow art to determine what can and cant be done on a computer? We should get it right and not sell out for movies.

Re:Google can fix it with a hammer.

[Anonymous Coward]

Comparing a phone with a bridge is at best disingenuous. There are public health safety issues with bridges that are obvious to many I guess.

Begging the question.

The disadvantage for users is obvious. Phones? What disadvantage can you see for a random user by using a "closed" phone? Right. None.

Overgeneralization.

Re:Google can fix it with a hammer.

[Anonymous Coward]

There are public safety issues at play in a device you carry with you at all times,devices that will live in our walls, our appliances, everything.

Ok then all mobile phone software should be closed source to prevent people from messing with something that can potentially harm them.

Re:Google can fix it with a hammer.

[Antique Geekmeister]

Given the existence of the Google Summer of Code projects, the ongoing publication by Google of Java patches, and the contribution of Google employees to fascinating projects on github.com, quite a large percentage of Google employees both use and publish open source and freeware. Numerous business partners and collaborators work with it extensively, especially when they see me publishing my patches or updated code and see that they benefit from my ongoing involvement. And they are willing to pay my company more because our projects are available, as source, so that work can be evolved or continued even if one of our developers changes employment.

I've certainly helped engineers try to reverse engineer software without source 10 years later, and it is _barbaric_. The last time, I fortunately found that the developer had actually cannibalized software I'd written decades ago to build the application. It was a reminder of why a GPL can be so much more powerful than an Apache or BSD license: the developer had not chosen to publish their modifications to their clients, for various legal and workflow reasons.

Let anyone forget...

[CAIMLAS]

Lest anyone forget, or for lack of never knowing, that this reason is likely only the tip of the iceberg.

It's not to discount it as a significant factor, but anyone who's quit from a position knows it's not just one thing, usually, there are several - lack of pay/low pay, poor work structure, poor work environment, demeaning personalities, etc.

Getting endless gripes and complaints about lack of support for something as popular and 'open' as the Nexus 7 when they've got no ability to fix the situation - but should, by Google's own marketing claims - has got to be pretty disheartening on its own, but I'm certain it's not the only thing.

Re:Let anyone forget...

[symbolset]

"The task is not possible" can be a pretty compelling argument for giving it up.

Re:Let anyone forget...

[Trepidity]

It's also worth noting that this was his full-time day job at Google (possibly more than full-time, if it went as this kind of project often goes). That's sometimes a good situation, because you're getting paid rather than putting in unpaid nights/weekends on the project. But sometime it can actually be worse, and more stressful, because it's your real job and you have to work on it daily. At least if you get burned out on a volunteer open source project, you can ignore it for a bit, step back from the mailing list and bug tracker for a little while things settle down, and then come back to it later with some fresh energy. But if it's your actual day job that is harder to do, unless you have an exceptionally flexible boss.

Well, I guess that settles that

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

Up until this news, I was seriously considering buying one.

Re:Well, I guess that settles that

[h4rr4r]

Join the club. I guess I will have to stick with the original one a little longer.

I would pay extra for a device with all the drivers in the mainline kernel. So far that seems impossible in the tablet/phone area.

Re:Well, I guess that settles that

[wierd_w]

This is an easy mistake to make.

The reality is that pockets on women's clothing are often tiny, or outright missing. This is why women carry purses, and why they constantly ask male friends/lovers to hold things for them. This is because female clothing is tailored to accentuate the curvature of the female anatomy, and pockets distract from this effect. Take note the next time you go clothing shopping with the girlfriend. While she's in the changing room, just look casually at the clothing there in the lady's section. You will note that slack pants almost never have pockets of any kind, and female jeans tend to have oddly shaped or diminutive pockets. Skinny jeans especially.

Clothing designers (cough) design clothes (for skeletons) this way on purpose. They expect that the woman will have a matching handbag to match "her outfit." This is *why* women have 50 purses, and insist that they need to buy a new one every time they get a new outfit.

Seriously, you'd have trouble getting an ipod mini into the pockets on women's skinny jeans. Forget about getting a 7in tablet in there.

(Having 2 sisters sucked big time while growing up.)

Re:It's Qualcomm's decision to make

[Trepidity]

It'd be one thing if this was in a third-party android device; nobody is insisting that Google must require every Android device to have open drivers, too. But this is Google's flagship device that's supposed to show off their platform. If they really "encourage everyone to make devices that are open and modifiable", they could lead by example by making sure that's true of their own device!

One odd thing...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I'm not surprised that Qualcomm are being dicks about driver source(though I would assume that they have some haha-nominally-GPL-compliant shim for interacting with the Linux kernel, like Nvidia does); but the lack of a factory image seems very weird indeed.

Do they somehow think that anybody who wants to steal their precious secrets (and has the resources to actually be a threat), is going to be stopped by the need to buy a $200 consumer electronics widget and crack it open? If the device is shipping, the driver binaries and firmware blobs are shipping with it, in millions of units. They aren't going to stay secret long against anybody who cares.

Re:It is time to wake up

[Scutter]

You had me until you brought out the "dumb sheep" trope. You would be more effective in persuading people if you could leave out the hyperbole and tired, cliched insults.

Re:Android is deprecated

[Applekid]

Face it, Google just isn't getting what they wanted out of the platform.

Or they got exactly what they wanted: market penetration. The majority of happy Android users will have no problem upgrading to a closed Chrome Mobile as long as they get keep their apps (which will then be emulated in an Android VM, a VM within a VM if you will). And Google dropping old, smelly, and open Android means they won't keep their apps on future Android devices.

If I could go back in time and tell myself 5 years younger that Google, not Microsoft, was going to lead the next wave of Embrace Extend Extinguish, I'd have laughed in my own face.

Re:Android is deprecated

[Rich0]

Face it, Google just isn't getting what they wanted out of the platform.

Or they got exactly what they wanted: market penetration. The majority of happy Android users will have no problem upgrading to a closed Chrome Mobile as long as they get keep their apps (which will then be emulated in an Android VM, a VM within a VM if you will). And Google dropping old, smelly, and open Android means they won't keep their apps on future Android devices.

ChromeOS isn't closed - well, no more than Android is. ChromeOS is actually based on Gentoo, believe it or not, so if anything the foundation is even more open.

However, in general everything in ChromeOS is web-based, and web-based apps in general don't have touchscreen UIs. I'm not sure that we'll ever see full Android-ChromeOS convergence. If we do, the result will be a platform that is actually much closer to the traditional Linux distro.