Fairphone Open OS roadmap discussion

I’m fine with all names, they are just names. But it would be nice to have some goals for the OS written down somewhere. Else it is just Android without the Google services … and that’s pretty much what Google offers anyway.

To apply the Android litmus test: How will you deal with patches that will modify standard Android behavior? Same for mainline kernel GPU drivers and other stuff. Qualcomm and Freedreno also comes to mind.

Unified NLP for example needs some very small modifications in config files, other bigger patches could follow. This could conflict with the goal to have two OSes, with the other ‘just’ without google services.

Update: This often quoted article helps understanding the related problems (app store vs non-app store apps life cycle on a non-google phone) a bit better:

“Google’s strategy with Google Play Services is to turn the “Android App Ecosystem” into the “Google Play Ecosystem” by making a developer’s life as easy as possible on a Google-approved device—and as difficult as possible on a non-Google-approved device.”

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