I ask this because I think of the recent switch of Ubuntu to the Rust recode of the GNU core utils, which use an MIT license. There are many Rust recodes of GPL software that re-license it as a pushover MIT or Apache licenses. I worry these relicensing efforts this will significantly harm the FOSS ecosystem. Is this reason to start worrying or is it not that bad?
IMO, if the FOSS world makes something public, with extensive liberties, then the only thing that should be asked in return is that people preserve these liberties, like the GPL successfully enforces. These pushover licenses preserve nothing.
Adding to this, Google would make Android fully proprietary in a heartbeat if they could, given they’re already closing down more and more portions of the AOSP and trying to lock down app development and distribution as well.
And conceivably all it would take to turn Android fully proprietary ala Windows, is to hard-fork AOSP to keep the Lineage/Graphene/etc. users happy, and then rewrite main Android as closed-source.
Although, it’s kinda ironic that Windows, a fully closed environment, is less restrictive in terms of app dev and distribution, than Android, a supposedly semi-open environment, is. Like, MS isn’t mandating signed exes or trying to fully lock Windows into the MS Store, yet, while Google is trying to mandate signed APKs and also trying to lock Android into the Play Store.
And before anyone says, ‘But SmartScreen,’ unless that option is specifically disabled, you can just run unsigned exes by clicking ‘Run anyway’ still, Android doesn’t have a ‘Run anyway’ equivalent option AFAIK.
I think the reason for this is mainly historic.
I’m pretty sure this is changing too. Like the start menu deprioritizing the application menus vs the “app list”
Adding to this, Google created Android, wrote all the source code, and released it as Open Source.
By definition, Google cannot take anything here. It is only a question of what they give way in the future.
What Google wants is for people to use Google services. So they are making that less and less optional. There is no way for them to mandate this in Open Source and so they are shrinking the size of AOSP.
Online “services” are the greatest threat to software freedom. What kind of license is used has little to do with it.
Since this is a “GPL saves the world” thread, how would the GPL change anything? Android is mostly permissively licensed. But let’s assume that it is all GPL. Since we are talking about code Google wrote, nothing changes at all.
And the Linux kernel is already GPL licensed. Does that mean I can run whatever I want on my phone?
No. The threats to freedom in the Android space have literally nothing to do with permissive vs copyleft.
So far Google services aren’t being mandated on the desktop like they increasingly are on phones, yet, at least.
WEI threatened to push that once already, plus Google trying, again, this time with an actual chance of success given the Win10 EOL combined with the dumpster fire that Win11 is for the SKUs that normal people can legally access, to push Android to desktops in addition to mobile devices, certainly doesn’t help matters either, and if Google gets away with locking down Android successfully, that’ll probably embolden them to try to lock down the web at large with WEI again too.