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Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella admits giving up on Windows Phone and mobile was a mistake
(www.theverge.com)
this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2023
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Android open source bits are fine and all, but a lot of apps require Google Play Services which is not open or free.
Google Play Services has some quite strict requirements to adhere to in order for Google to licence that to you.
This includes have certain Google apps preinstalled on the device. Including Chrome.
I also doubt Microsoft would be happy with Google having the ability to cut them off whenever they damn well please.
There are a ton of phones in China running Android without google services . If you try to cut off Microsoft you would also be hurting all those Chinese phones. Google also can’t do that without being sued by Microsoft for not allowing competition.
Well, the idea behind FOSS is that you can share the common stuff and build your own stuff on top and while doing so improving the common stuff, testing uncommon usecases and adding features.
Personally I would love to have another bigger company working on Android next to Google, because that means they would (hopefully) implement their own "google services", to not rely on Google.
If that takes off, then apps will need to support both, making it more sensible to either create stable generic interfaces, where a third completly open-source implementation can more easily dock into, or not rely on them unnecessarily.
The only real problem with android is that the license is not GPL, so companies are not required to cooperate and likely end up creating their own silos.