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.

[tlhIngan]

Except Google will find itself without a Nexus device to sell. Especially since Google has started toning down their Nexus line and starting offering "Google Edition" phones which are stock Android phones.

Because you think companies like Samsung, HTC, LG, etc care that the drivers are open or not? They sign the NDAs and get access to partial source code they need to create their devices.

As for using obsolete fabs and such - it's still expensive. Masks still cost around $100,000 each, and you need 10 or more of them still for a modern chip, so a tapeout run still costs a couple of million dollars.

FPGAs can be used, but when I used them, the dev systems used FPGAs cost $30K each, and the entire system ran at 10MHz. Oh, and you needed 4 FPGAs to simulate a subset of the chip. (That said, if you have 10 hours or so, Android DOES boot...).

The big problem still is the 3D stuff - all highly patented - implementing an open core will basically violate piles of patents, including many dating all the way back to when companies like S3 existed.

Of course, you can run Android in pure 2D mode, as 2D graphics are mostly patent free, but performance stinks. At the very least, a plain old framebuffer with no hardware acceleration can be implemented using open and free drivers.

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.

[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.

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]

Agreed. I'd be willing to pay considerably more, and would consider it a major point of sale feature. It would mean I wouldn't be at the mercy of the device maker for firmware updates, at the very least. (A vanilla build of android from source is practically garanteed to work if all device drivers are in mainline kernel. If push came to shove, I could roll my own damned update.)

At this point I seriously wonder why there aren't people clamoring to produce fully open hardware SoC solutions for this market. Even lower powered devices on obsolete fab processes would be very desirable given the lockouts presented by the major players. A shiny toy is worthless if you can't actually use it.

The only thing I can come up with for why this hasn't happened is the employment of thermonuclear patent portfolios. Again, refusal to hold a patent bomb would further influence my purchase choice. Combined, i'd be willing to pay over 200$ more. (But I must have BOTH features. Mainline support, and peace of mind for not supporting the patent madness.)

Seriously. Show me a device that does both of those things, and can actually fit in a pocket, and I will buy it.

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!

Replicant

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Replicant

[viperidaenz]

.... that works on hardly any hardware, because it lacks drivers.

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:It's Qualcomm's decision to make

[JesseMcDonald]

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.

Re:Much Noise, No Change

[slew]

Texas Instruments seems good...

Except for the small problem that last year Texas instruments quit making SOCs for tablets and phones...