Google outlines plans for mainline Linux kernel support in Android
It seems like Google is working hard to update and upstream the Linux kernel that sits at the heart of every Android phone. The company was a big participant in this year's Linux Plumbers Conference, a yearly meeting of the top Linux developers, and Google spent a lot of time talking about getting Android to work with a generic Linux kernel instead of the highly customized version it uses now. It even showed an Android phone running a mainline Linux kernel.
But first, some background on Android's current kernel mess.Currently, three major forks happen in between the "mainline" Linux kernel and a shipping Android device (note that "mainline" here has no relation to Google's own "Project Mainline"). First, Google takes the LTS (Long Term Support) Linux kernel and turns it into the "Android Common kernel"—the Linux kernel with all the Android OS-specific patches applied. Android Common is shipped to the SoC vendor (usually Qualcomm) where it gets its first round of hardware-specific additions, first focusing on a particular model of SoC. This "SoC Kernel" then gets sent to a device manufacturer for even more hardware-specific code that supports every other piece of hardware, like the display, camera, speakers, usb ports, and any extra hardware. This is the "Device Kernel," and it's what actually ships on a device.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 21 2019, @05:34AM (6 children)
And those SoC patches from Qualcomm include closed binaries that are both chip model and kernel version specific with an utter rats-nest of patches to the kernel to make it as hard as possible to upgrade the device to a newer version of Android. Been there, done that, did not get the T-shirt or a working phone.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 21 2019, @09:01AM (4 children)
MediaTek are even worse, Samsung CPUs were pretty bad a few years back -- not that it matters much now since they're shutting down their CPU division. I'm surprised nobody has sued these companies for breaching the GPL.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Thursday November 21 2019, @09:22AM (3 children)
It's not really possible to sue for Linux GPL violations. Only the copyright holders can sue for copyright/license violations, so you'd have to get every single Linux contributor to participate in a lawsuit.
This is why the FSF asks all contributors to assign copyright to the FSF, so that it's actually feasible for the FSF to sue for GPL violations.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday November 21 2019, @02:54PM (1 child)
If Linux were to have copyright holders sign over rights, who would they go to?
Linus? Who pays him?
The Linux Foundation? They were acquired by Microsoft (as a platinum member) in 2016. Talk about handing the copyright directly to the wolf.
Other ideas?
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(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 21 2019, @03:58PM
what about the other 27 platinum members?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 21 2019, @09:46PM
You don't need every contributor; you just need one to enforce their rights under copyright law. Even better for your claim if they wrote part of the code being patched by the derivative work, but I've seen some analysis that even that may not be necessary under a "multiple-edition edited-volume" theory.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by NotSanguine on Thursday November 21 2019, @09:32AM
That's absolutely true.
I still haven't gotten anything later than Nougat to even boot enough to debug via logcat for my HTC OneMax (t6vzw) [soylentnews.org].
And the issue is integrating the older HTC kernel/hardware blobs into newer versions of Android.
But why should you expect anything else? Making it easy to do would mean not having to buy a new phone every 26 minutes because android versions/features aren't supported by those proprietary kernels/hardware blobs.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 3, Funny) by Sulla on Thursday November 21 2019, @05:55AM
Not sure whats more concerning, my eyesight or that this could be a legitimate article for Georgia
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 21 2019, @07:51AM
I thought stable API is nonsense.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 21 2019, @07:53AM (2 children)
How is it not breaking the GPL to ship that to customers without the source code?
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday November 21 2019, @02:55PM
VMWare got away with it.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 21 2019, @03:56PM
You can find your copy of the sauce code by making an in-person request at our Freedom Annex inside the dumpster out back.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday November 21 2019, @09:43AM (2 children)
You mainline because you want the FOSS guys to keep your software in shape, instead of having to devote resource to chase whatever the FOSS devs implement. But the big sw makers/hw makers duopoly will continue shitting on the principle of free software because they prefer to control the stack some way. So don't expect drivers to become open because android is mainlined. So, what's the advantage for Free software? More problem because, by mainlining and adding your guys to the kernel dev team you might effectively hamper some new developments because you don't like the direction they are taking?
The only silver lining is that some chinese mediumweight vendor might decide to cater to the FOSS crowd with a device based on mainlined android with free drivers. You still can have a backdoored modem chip to spy on them but at least those devices are fun to own.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday November 21 2019, @02:59PM
So, basically, Google would mainline because the rush from doing so is bigger than the pain of not mainlining.
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by DannyB on Thursday November 21 2019, @03:02PM
Hopefully the rest of the devs are significantly larger in number and can bring sanity.
It seems a long, difficult battle to ever get back to completely open hardware combined with completely open software.
I see how, over a very long time, Linux is now in everything and even Microsoft has had to embrace Linux and open source.
RISC-V gives me hope that we might possibly get enough commercial players that see the value of truly open systems, that we'll eventually get there.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 21 2019, @04:43PM
it is utterly totally hair-raising that a free (yes, endlessly copiable with no repercussions) and open-sourced (yes! yes, go look how it's really made!) kernel is driving belleons of dollars of profits in form of "dummyfication phones" but not even 1% of said dumb phones can be software modified (reprogrammed) to work with the latest and greatest kernel ...
aliens watching would assume that we earthling have some kind of religious cult were software trumpfs hardware and with each new software version (kernel) new HARDWARE has to be manufactured/printed.
it might be the reason for aliens to visit earth to "enlighten" the human race that we got it all ass backwards: hardware (computing engine / abacus / whatnot) is a tool and can run different software; we don't have to redo the hardware every time the software changes ...