Google’s Android, the world’s most widely used mobile operating system, started life as open-source software. In its quest for ever-greater profits, the tech giant has been gradually eroding Android’s open-source capacity over the last decade.

Google’s Android, the world’s most widely used mobile operating system, started life as open-source software. In its quest for ever-greater profits, the tech giant has been gradually eroding Android’s open-source nature over the last decade.

Originally published on The Lever, but that one asks you to sign up.

  • ArtixCory@lemmy.mlEnglish
    251·
    1 day ago

    And thus highlights the hypocrisy of their “let’s all be friends” messaging around getting Apple to adopt RCS; Google holds the keys to integrating RCS in messaging apps on Android. Last I heard they only granted access to Samsung.

    I’d be willing to excuse a mobile OS for being partially or completely proprietary if it was good. But neither Android nor iOS are.

    • alexcleac@szmer.infoEnglish
      16·
      1 day ago

      RCS is a really nice thing in principle, because SMS/MMS infrastructure is just awfully outdated from security standpoint.

      Though, replacing SMS/MMS infrastructure which is internetless yet cross-carrier by making it a internet-first and tied to a single meta-carrier under the hood kind of defeats the purpose overall. There was an attempt to build an independent carrier-deployable implementation of RCS, yet it turned out to be bought off by Google :(