
Android AOSP maintainer quits - av500
https://plus.google.com/112218872649456413744/posts/9HHRURorE7g
======
aroch
For those curious:

As part of the Nexus device support, Google releases factory images. These
images contain all the blobs and whatnot necessary to restore your device's OS
even in the event of a soft-brick. In the case of the new Nexus 7, it appears
Google won't be releasing factory images and the cause is almost certainly the
fact that Qualcomm doesn't want to release it's proprietary blobs for the
Adreno GPU.

JBQ is pissed about this, this isn't the first time a vendor hasn't allowed
release of certain blobs or the first time a vendor has refused to release the
code necessary to even boot the device.

~~~
tootie
Capitalism sucks sometimes.

~~~
javert
Without capitalism, we'd be writing letters to each other.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
.. about how happy we are, what with the eradication of poverty, waste and
hunger!?

~~~
kbolino
The mistake that Marx, like you, made was in thinking that inequality was a
product of capitalism, when in fact inequality is the inherent state of
mankind, and moreover of all living things.

~~~
dkuntz2
I don't think it was a mistake, and I don't think it's a static state. I
believe that a group of people could come together and form a community
founded on equality.

The problem, to me, is more of a logistics problem, because once you get more
than ~100 people in an organization, you start losing the immediate connection
with them, which means you care less about their well being, because you don't
know them. The issue is managing people, and meaningfully punishing ne'er-do-
wells.

~~~
kbolino
What you are essentially saying is that people can create a community with
_the intent_ of making everyone equal, but they will invariably fail because
people are, in fact, not equal. Liberalism and Leninism are two consequences
of this axiom. The former tries to provide the weaker but more feasible
guarantee of equality of opportunity. The latter tries to make people believe
they are equal by getting them to ignore inequality.

~~~
dkuntz2
No, because communities are small scale. History has proven that communities
can exist in such a state. Societies need to have intent behind them. No
society has ever existed without intent behind it.

Leninism worked, we know for a fact that it worked, at least until Stalin took
over and made it something worse that ultimately didn't work.

~~~
kbolino
History has proven no such thing. Every community has its leaders, and those
leaders enjoy a privileged position. Indeed, Leninism is quite successful: at
establishing a party of elites, whose job it is to convince everybody else
that they're equal and to teach them to ignore the obvious contradictions. I
did not say that "society [should] exist[] without intent behind it"; I said
that intentions don't matter if the results contradict them.

------
GuiA
Not an Android user, but from what I understand the issue is that Google has
released the new Nexus 7, but a) the GPU uses proprietary drivers (binary
blobs) and b) the actual "factory image" (i.e. what runs on the device when
you buy it) of the Nexus 7 is still unreleased and closed source.

This means that the Nexus 7 is, practically, no more open than the iPad/MS
Surface/etc.. That would definitely be upsetting to me if the gig had been
sold as a way to strongly impact an open source piece of software, and Jean-
Baptiste's decision seems very reasonable.

Can android users/developers weigh in? I'm sure I'm getting some part of it
wrong.

~~~
ajross
That's overstating the case. Google can't distribute a tree that can build for
the new N7 because of one (or maybe a handful of) component licenses. The rest
of the system remains open source though, and can be built (for the N7 and
others) by community projects. There is value there.

Certainly the new N7 isn't a "free" device in any meaningful sense. But
Android as a whole remains vastly more open than iOS or Windows.

~~~
mariusmg
Android is "open" because there's a lot of GPL code in there. And the irony is
that with all this "openess" is still the most fragmented OS out there. The
whole situation is ridiculous.

~~~
rescripting
I always thought Android's openness was a driving force behind the platform's
fragmentation. If anyone can build an Android device, and modify it however,
wouldn't you expect it? Wasn't it an expected byproduct of Google's initial
strategy?

------
binarycrusader
But, but, Android is the very definition of open! Andy Rubin said so:

    
    
      the definition of open: "mkdir android ; cd android ;
      repo init -u git://android.git.kernel.org/platform
      /manifest.git ; repo sync ; make"
    

[https://twitter.com/Arubin/status/27808662429](https://twitter.com/Arubin/status/27808662429)

Well, I suppose if you define "open" as being able to build the software, but
don't promise you can actually use the result, that makes it acceptable.

The other important thing to note here is that Jean-Baptiste Quéru is not just
some random Android developer. He is the _the_ point person for what everyone
previously believed was "open" development on Android.

~~~
Macha
I can't use Linux on my laptop without some closed source blobs - does that
make Linux not open?

No, because you can get other laptops without this problem. Likewise, you can
get other Android devices such as the Nexus 10 or Galaxy Nexus which are
capable of using the result.

This sucks as it means you now need to choose between a device that's
sufficiently open or a device that's up to date, and it's certainly worth
criticising Google for, but it's not enough to claim that Android is as closed
as iOS or Windows (yet - if they do the same to the next Nexus 10 and continue
releasing Nexus devices that can't boot AOSP, then it's concerning, or if they
drop support for the devices that are currently able to use the open source
code)

~~~
binarycrusader
I'd buy that argument if there weren't an obvious, gigantic flaw with it:

no video device support (which means you can't even boot to the Android home
screen) for the new Nexus 7

Google was aware of all of these issues and still made the hardware choices
they did. They could have chosen differently.

These are flagship Google devices; my expectations are (I think rightfully)
different for those than some random device.

~~~
sangnoir
Of course they were aware of the issue, if you read what JBQ wrote, he
mentioned this was escalated 6 months ago. It doesn't take a leap of the
imagination to conclude that the expectation was the issue would be resolved
by the time the product was available for sale. Perhaps Qualcomm even stringed
them along (I'm speculating)

JBQ says he's very frustrated with the "lawyers", for what exact reasons- I
don't know. Maybe he feels like they are not exerting enough pressure, or
maybe it's Qualcomm's lawyers he's pissed at. You cannot say Google (or at
least JBQ) knew how this would turn out.

------
iyulaev
This kind of stuff is run-of-the-mill when working with the large chipset/SoC
vendors. I've worked on projects that have crashed and burned because at the
last minute the chip vendor decided they're not going to provide the SDK for
the chips we've bought and designed in.

Vendors suck (some more than others) and it's not Google's fault that they
can't convince the vendor to open source their device drivers. This sort of
thing is extremely common in the embedded world and when you're making a
device to a price point often times you have to put up with this sort of
nonsense because only one vendor makes a chip with your feature set at a given
price point.

~~~
krelian
What's the actual risk for the vendor when releasing the drivers? Isn't all
the magic in the chip itself and driver only serves as an interface?

~~~
VLM
"Isn't all the magic in the chip itself"

Yeah thats the problem.

There exists a patent troll who owns patents for using pink unicorns to render
pixels. Vendor ships a chip that uses red horses to render pixels... close
enough for a legal patent battle? Who knows. But if they try to keep it a
secret, maybe it'll all work out.

~~~
nileshtrivedi
That explains not open-sourcing the drivers. But it doesn't explain not
distributing the binaries - which is the case here.

Edit: Fixed typo.

------
dm2
The fact is that Google tries to make their devices as open as possible. That
philosophy is beneficial to the community, for the software, for their brand,
and for the tech industry. If legal issues or unforeseen problems appear while
they are launching a product that prevent stock images on a particular device,
then oh well, shit happens.

There will be a dozen other Nexus devices within the next year and hopefully
Google will learn from their mistakes, and will partner with suppliers who
won't prevent source code from being published.

Does Google benefit monetarily from not releasing source code? Nope, it likely
decreases their profit and tarnishes their reputation, so I would like to
believe that they are doing everything in their power to keep Android and the
Nexus brand as open as possible.

[http://androidandme.com/2013/08/devices/new-nexus-7-may-
not-...](http://androidandme.com/2013/08/devices/new-nexus-7-may-not-get-
factory-images-due-to-legal-issues-jbq-leaves-aosp-over-it/)

~~~
throwaway2048
If Google was "doing everything in their power to keep Android and the Nexus
brand as open as possible", they would have gave a shit about qualcomm's
ridiculous conditions on source and redistribution before release.

Clearly they did not.

~~~
_delirium
Especially considering that they managed it with the old Nexus 7. This is
clearly not impossible, though I can buy that there are difficulties and
tradeoffs.

~~~
andrewpi
The old Nexus 7 wasn't Qualcomm.

~~~
_delirium
Yes, but nobody was forcing them to choose Qualcomm, if it didn't meet their
requirements.

------
chetanahuja
JBQ's quitting is devastating to the AOSP ecosystem. In so many different ways
that I'm having a hard time putting my thoughts together on this topic. Having
had the benefit of following his posts and rants both from inside as well as
outside google, I find it difficult to overstate the impact of this event on
real and perceived openness of the platform.

------
jordanthoms
I'm guessing Google got caught between a rock and a hard place here, with the
qualcomm processor being the best choice (and the performance of the Nexus 7
is great), but being ridiculously locked down (you can easily extract binary
blobs, so why restrict google from hosting them, they will be hosting them for
the OTA updates anyway!).

Should they have put out a worse device in order to stand up to this stuff
though? Difficult choice.

This is a pain - It's nice being able to download the factory images direct
from Google for quickly restoring the device to stock or applying an update
before the OTA is out, having to try to find them on XDA is annoying for a
Nexus device. Kudos to JBQ for standing up to this, hopefully the fallout will
cause something to change.

------
jwildeboer
So AOSP is a lot of things but not really open and the geniuses at Google
deliberately let the shit hit the fan despite 6 months of warnings by JBQ.
Stay classy, Google.

~~~
Macha
AOSP itself is open, and has no issues on the Nexus 10, Galaxy Nexus or old
Nexus 7. However, the Nexus 4 and new Nexus 7 are not capable of booting from
just the AOSP source alone. In practice this is the same as most non-Nexus
devices, except the bootloader still ships unlocked.

However, the Nexus 4 and new Nexus 7 are the flagships for AOSP, and the
maintainer was upset at the fact that the open bit is useless on newer devices
without parts that can't be distributed.

~~~
brigade
Well, no issues unless you want to use AOSP 4.3 on the Nexus 10, in which case
it has the exact same issue [1] as being discussed

[1] [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/android-
building/OvPkV...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/android-
building/OvPkVsjp63Y/Zjrpmxsq_AwJ)

------
henderson101
JBQ is a great guy, and well loved from his days working for Be Inc. His wife
cool too, if notoriously opinionated :-) Wish him all the best! Stand by your
convictions.

------
wonderyak
So we can now lump all Qualcomm devices along with Verizon (CDMA) devices into
the 'may never be properly updated' pile.

You'd think that Google would have the foresight to listen to the maintainer
of the project; perhaps they did and this is just the way it is now?

~~~
gergles
You know who owns all the patents related to CDMA devices (and makes literally
the only CDMA radio chipsets you can buy)?

I'll give you a hint, it starts with Q and rhymes with "Wallcomm".

~~~
mrpippy
> and makes literally the only CDMA radio chipsets you can buy

Actually, this is not true. The CDMA/LTE Galaxy Nexus, Droid Charge, and
Stratosphere (all made by Samsung) actually used VIA Telecom's CBP 7.1
baseband for EVDO/1XRTT (and a Samsung LTE radio for that). I'm not sure
how/why VIA Telecom was able to license QCOM's patents covering CDMA2000, but
they did.

[http://www.anandtech.com/show/4465/samsung-droid-charge-
revi...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/4465/samsung-droid-charge-review-droid-
goes-lte/5)

To my knowledge, these are the first non-QCOM CDMA2000 phones shipped (at
least in the US) since Nokia's ill-fated CDMA S30 phones made for
Verizon/Sprint from ~2003-2005, the 3589i, 6235i, and maybe others. I believe
TI/ST/Nokia teamed up to make that baseband, but it all ended in lawsuits from
Qualcomm a few years later.

It's too bad, the 3589i was a great phone.

------
jlund
I hope that Mozilla and Ubuntu are more successful in keeping binary blobs
under control on their hardware. It will probably mean avoiding Nvidia and
Qualcomm hardware though. Whether or not this is even realistic or possible is
an interesting question.

~~~
av500
One can always go with the Chinese SoC vendors :)

~~~
randallu
Who incorporate SGX and Mali GPUs with closed drivers.

------
samspenc
Is he still working at Google? Just quit AOSP?

~~~
durin42
AFAIK he's still at Google, just not doing the AOSP release guru thing
anymore.

------
einarfd
This is a worrying development for Android as an open source project. That
Google doesn't care enough about keeping ASOP relevant, to even make sure
their new Nexus 7 is supported in it, is rather depressing. Some here are
blaming Qualcomm and I'm sure they are part of the reason this happened. But
the new Nexus 7 is probably going to bring in a sizeable chunk of money, and
Google could have used this to force Qualcomm's hand. That Google didn't,
sends a clear message about their priorities.

~~~
Zigurd
It is depressing because if AOSP becomes irrelevant, it hurts community
involvement in android, and, in a way even worse than that, they miss the
opportunity to refine AOSP for fast porting so that OEMs can keep up with
Android releases and update their product in the field.

------
Splendor
This really shows poor planning on Google's part. If their goal with the Nexus
line it to be able to release builds to ASOP, they need to source their parts
accordingly.

------
zmmmmm
It's puzzling to me that Qualcomm has managed to get to the position now where
it is virtually a monopoly provider for ARM chipsets that support LTE. A lot
of discussion happens about standards essential patents wrt Motorola and
Samsung - surely that equally applies to Qualcomm and the other chip makers
(not least of all Samsung) should be able to readily license these patents and
build competitive chipsets?

~~~
wmf
It may be more that Verizon and Sprint require CDMA and Qualcomm has a
monopoly on that, so if you want to support Verizon you need Qualcomm and once
you've designed that version it's easier to also use Qualcomm for the AT&T
version as well.

------
zobzu
+karma for the balls to disclose the reason to quit, and it being a reason
like that.

------
JonSkeptic
This does not bode well for the Security Enhanced Android project; it was
already in poor shape and I fear this could be it's demise.

------
cpeterso
Google could acquire MIPS and forget ARM and Qualcomm. Imagination Tech bought
MIPS for just $100M just 9 months ago.

------
artagnon
The situation is somewhat similar to what was happening on desktop Linux some
years ago. On the desktop, the kernel _and_ most of the core userland is GPL
(mostly v2), an extremely powerful license. nVidia got away with being able to
distribute proprietary GPU kernel modules for some time, because distributions
weren't moving fast enough. Why did they do it? Some vague illusion of their
"Intellectual Property" being stolen, and competitors destroying them. All in
all, they suffered (because they had to keep up with a fast-moving linux.git),
and users suffered (because they had to get the precise version for their
kernel). After many years of work, the cards were eventually reverse-
engineered, and the noveau drivers are technically superior today. All in all,
nVidia gained nothing and lost a huge amount of trust: if they'd upstreamed
their driver, it would have been maintained for free (and improved upon); they
could have concentrated on their core competency: making chips.

Today, AOSP (contrary to what its name suggests) is mostly just a code-dump
project. They've forked Linux and have stripped out the GNU (GPL) userland.
Broadly speaking, there are two ways to stay in power. 1. release minimal
source code, and don't let other parties get in (aka. the Apple/Microsoft
strategy). 2. simply assign all copyright to a neckbeard foundation with no
money and nothing to lose (aka. FSF/GNU). Provided there's a big enough market
(unlike nVidia being virtually the only manufacturer of decent GPUs back in
the day), people will simply stop buying your hardware because their software
doesn't run on it.

Google is pretty much on its own here, because there is no "open source
project": various vendors fork the code and make their own modifications on
top and distribute it happily. I run a CM nightly myself, because I get
updates in the form of commit SHA-1s every night: _that_ is how you involve
users and build a community. Can anyone threaten CM? Now, Qualcomm is
attacking Google: Google can't give them the finger because they're powerless.

Fragmentation (aka. forks) are part and parcel of any uncontrolled
development. GNOME is one very famous example: not everyone is happy with the
same thing (GNOME Shell, Cinnamon, Unity etc.). For another example, look at
mplayer: mplayer, mplayer2, and (now) mpv. The forks compete against each
other, and the competent communities eventually achieve dominance. Contrast
that with how many times Torvalds' tree has been forked: the forks don't
survive because the community and leadership is strong and won't bend to
anyone's demands (you're probably seen the media reporting how Linus gives
nVidia the finger, or bashes patches that further Microsoft's UEFI agenda).
Emacs has also had various forks in the past (remember XEmacs?), but all of
them died off because of weak leadership.

AOSP should think about these issues seriously, and figure out how to keep the
project running. I don't know what they should specifically change, because
nobody has any idea about what problems they are facing.

~~~
blessmurk
True ...Fuck you Nvidia

------
voodoo123
_Well, I see that people have figured out why I 'm quitting AOSP.

There's no point being the maintainer of an Operating System that can't boot
to the home screen on its flagship device for lack of GPU support, especially
when I'm getting the blame for something that I don't have authority to fix
myself and that I had anticipated and escalated more than 6 months ahead._

So much for all that noise from Google about 'openness'. The detractors were
right.

~~~
DannyBee
Even other open devices (Firefox phone, Ubuntu Edge) will suffer this fate -
they all, AFAIK, will require proprietary blob drivers for the GPU.

~~~
wedesoft
Intel provides FOSS graphics drivers [1]. I'm not sure though whether they do
mobile graphics cards with free software drivers, too.

[1] [https://01.org/linuxgraphics/](https://01.org/linuxgraphics/)

~~~
rincebrain
Depends what you mean by "mobile".

The non-Atom chips usually have real Open GPU drivers that work the same as
the desktop ones; the Atom chips [AFAIK] are the ones that primarily suffer
from being PowerVR-licensed things with badly half-working "open" drivers.

~~~
Narishma
Not all Atom chips have PowerVR graphics, though AFAIK all the phone and
tablet Atoms do.

------
static_typed
We are all to blame!

All of us that buy, or let relatives buy Android devices that use restrictive
and closed blobs.

Customers and only customers have the power to make the change.

Every time we encourage someone else to buy a non-Android device make sure to
publicise the fact on open social media like Farcebook or Twatter on the
corporate tags and pages to raise awareness in the less technology literate
and make some voices heard.

It is one thing for companies to see bottom-lines get affected, but they also
need to understand why. Don't just boycott, let the world know why too!

~~~
kalleboo
Is there someone/somewhere you can read ranking of manufacturer openness? For
instance, Sony seem pretty active in the AOSP[0] but you never even hear them
mentioned.

[0] [http://developer.sonymobile.com/2013/07/25/android-open-
sour...](http://developer.sonymobile.com/2013/07/25/android-open-source-
project-aosp-4-3-now-running-on-xperia-tablet-z/)

------
mnbc98
Does anyone else find it highly suspicious how every Android device feels the
need to ship a binary blob?

Given Google's close relationship with the NSA, the reason seems fairly
obvious...

~~~
BitMastro
Not suspicious at all. Are you being paranoid? Binary blobs are so widespread
unfortunately that you will find it difficult to have something that doesn't
ship them. Graphic card drivers? Wireless chips? Even a computer BIOS is
mostly a binary blob.

