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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.
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.
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.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Up until this news, I was seriously considering buying one.
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!
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Quitting AOSP doesn't solve the problem. It makes it worse.
What we can do, is start a campaign of "name and shame", that starts asking key questions of Qualcomm spokesdrones, why?
And here is the real bits that should concern people, I rather doubt there is anything all that special about the blobs of code needed, or even the underlying hardware. Further, given the Copyright and Patents that SHOULD be protecting the "intellectual property" of Qualcomm, there is NOT A SINGLE REASON to release the code.
Even if the Lawyers want to be involved, how about writing a waver for AOSP so they can include the blobs needed, or the APIs to code themselves what is needed (probably showing up the crappy programmers at Qualcomm) etc etc etc.
There are plenty of ways around this issue, but if Qualcomm won't play nice, then it is time to start playing hardball. Believe me, a very loud "name and shame" Campaign would work. Here is just a one suggestion.
1) Android Apps detect if the device is running a Qualcomm chip (of any kind) and simply puts a blurb up that says "Your device is using Qualcomm Chips. Qualcomm doesn't fully support Android Open Source Projects, so please consider as part of your next Android Phone/Device one that doesn't use Qualcomm chips. Thank you.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Just a reminder that the Replicant project is trying to make a completely free and open source version of the Android software stack, including the parts that interface with the hardware.
The GPU in Intel's upcoming Baytrail tablet SoC already has 100% GPL mainline Linux drivers in at least the 3.10 kernel... just sayin'
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.
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.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
Well then good thing the Linux kernel isn't licensed under the GPL. It's licensed under a modified GPL allowing for binary drivers.
Stop spreading misinformation. There is no exception for binary drivers. There is a clarification that the kernel copyright "does *not* cover user programs that use kernel services by normal system calls - this is merely considered normal use of the kernel, and does *not* fall under the heading of 'derived work'." User programs; not drivers. Otherwise it's stock GPLv2.
Here's the actual license so you can see for yourself.
A few companies like nVidia get around this by never distributing the drivers with the kernel. In nVidia's case, they use the same driver for Windows and Linux, so they can also argue that there is nothing Linux-specific about the part they're distributing. Even so, many see this as a grey area. The Android case is completely different, both because these are Linux-specific drivers and because they are being distributed with the Linux kernel on the same media as part of a complete operating system. This is just as much a violation of the license as distributing a closed-source program which depends on a GPL library.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
Is there an upper limit to the number of times we can sarcastically quote "Open Always Wins!" after news articles like this one, before it stops being funny?
I know we haven't reached it yet, I'm just asking for information.
Read between the lines.
Queru is gone. Rubin is gone. The Chromecast, whose original and main purpose was to get Android devices connected to external displays, ran Android in prototype builds but was released with Chrome OS. Look who runs the Android group now... The head of the Chrome OS group, who is still the head of the Chrome OS group.
I'd give it no more than 2 years before the Nexus & Motorola products are released with Chrome OS and Android is 3rd-party device only with all Google services removed.
Face it, Google just isn't getting what they wanted out of the platform.
a lot of apps in the Market rely on native ARM code
That's a problem only if A. these applications are written in assembly language (highly unlikely), or B. the publishers of major NDK applications have announced their refusal to build fat (ARM/x86) binaries.
Looking at the submissions lately for AOSP and finding out just how pissed off I am about recent events including this one, which just made my day.
Something to consider while you dine this evening:
1) Increasingly Handsets and anything that shows video is being locked out.
2) This post is just one example, but I can cite others if you can't google about the whole sickening GPU/DSP issues in the industry which just keep getting worse with everything that is LINUX.
3) The convergence in my mind, that it just so happens that governments are ape shit over knowing everything you do. Further, if I may point out, the huge contracts cellular providers are getting behind the scenes to make this happen from DARPA.
Which to me, makes me wonder if the idea of knowing exactly how the video and camera hardware work is something by design, is not something your local friendly cellular provider wants you to know.
Think of the hardware GPU/DSP on your phone as partitioned as sorta "that room" you never go into while working at your local friendly Time Warner NOC for example.
I mean, wouldn't it just be dandy if the DSP/GPU hardware is BLOB'ed and secret so that the NSA/CIA can turn it on any time, preferable in a manner other software on the phone knows nothing about.
Think about that next time you AOSP a compile and include those nice little BLOB's.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.