Google plans to ease the Android update problem (The H) [LWN.net]

Google plans to ease the Android update problem (The H)

Posted Jun 29, 2012 21:12 UTC (Fri) by Kit (guest, #55925)
In reply to: Google plans to ease the Android update problem (The H) by clump
Parent article: Google plans to ease the Android update problem (The H)

Google already has requirements in place to be able to call a device 'Android', in addition to further requirements to be able to use any of the Google apps (including the Play market). Apparently, none of those requirements have anything to do with providing any sort of updates at all.

It would seem that Apple got the right approach: Remove the carrier from the equation. Part of the problem is that, even if the manufacturer develops an update, the carriers will drag their feet with deploying it, sometimes taking the better part of a year before bothering to push it out (while other devices will immediately receive updates if they're the flagship device).

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Google plans to ease the Android update problem (The H)

Posted Jul 1, 2012 15:36 UTC (Sun) by forthy (guest, #1525) [Link]

The right approach for Google to solve the update problem would turn the current Android license philosophy completely around. The solution is to go GPL (optimally GPLv3), and be as pedantic as Debian is. No binary drivers allowed, no locked boot allowed, all updates including kernel updates go through a central repository.

Customization/branding *is* allowed. But this should go through well defined interfaces, and a branded distribution of Android (or any other Linux) must be created in such a way that "unbranding" is a piece of cake - just drop the brand-specific packets.

The ironic thing is that while Google has an Android branding program, the only way to get plain vanilla Android (other than Nexus) with a high likelyhood of updates is to buy some cheap white-box stuff from China. They use the test-keys to compile Android (i.e. no release-keys from Google, i.e. completely uncontrolled), they use CPUs like Allwinner A10, which have GPL compatible drivers for everything, and there, it just works. There is a bit of lag, because they don't have many resources allocated to software and testing - probably just one lonely guy or so, but it's not nearly as much as with the branded parts.