The grumpy editor answers a call from CyanogenMod 7

Posted Mar 10, 2011 11:10 UTC (Thu) by micka (subscriber, #38720)
Parent article: The grumpy editor answers a call from CyanogenMod 7

Yes, it feels a bit more like open-source.
If only those "firmware" could feel a bit more like ditributions, with real package managers. Each package could have its own life instead of only beaing seem as a part of a whole blob.
What would be the point ? Updating involves a complete overwrite of the system instead of just replacing a component. I don't know if it's the case with cyanogen (I don't own a cyanogen supported device, my handset is a samsung spica that has is own, very chaotic, community).

I know it's not impossible,usual Linux distribution are already very good at this (actually, I just replaced the firware of a low-end NAS with 64Mb RAM with Debian Squeeze), but I suppose it comes from the form of the original Android code drops, that were kept by the communities.

The grumpy editor answers a call from CyanogenMod 7

Posted Mar 10, 2011 13:07 UTC (Thu) by yaap (subscriber, #71398) [Link]

Yes this is important, as it's a pre-requisite for timely security patches. But how much interest is there?

For regular Android, because the handset vendors can do arbitrary customization, they would be the one to manage the upgrades. And I'm not sure they're really willing to do that... It's cost for them, they don't care much. I only see them moving toward this forced by a big security issue, still to come. But with phone based payment coming let's say it's a fertile ground...

A community distro like Cyanogen would be a much better place to do that. But then I'm not sure Google would care making the effort just for them.

Maybe it's just me being pessimistic, but I don't expect much progress there before a big security problem force the industry to move. But we'll get there.