I can't help but think this is another attempt to lock down people and devices into a Google-controlled platform where they can be spied on and sold to the highest bidder.
Does it seem suspicious to anyone that Google is pushing Fuchsia just as truly open Android phones like Puri.sm and /e/ are coming to market?
What are trade and business secrets, if not conspiracies? A group of people, acting in concert and in secret, to expand their business at the expense of other companies or consumers.
Android is open source but without Gapps you can't use 90% of the mainstream apps or certain features (Google Play Services, Frameworks or whatever it's called now). That's why Android without Google is a complete pain, and why microG exists. We're already locked in.
I think it's much simpler than that. The reason why Android updates are so broken compared to iOS and Windows is the lack of a stable driver ABI. Fuschia would fix that.
I'd bet that purism and /e are irrelevant in terms of numbers. How many users do those have? 100-200k users world-wide?
Fuchsia must have been started in about 2015 at the earliest, with the first code hitting the public a year later. Neither of these alternative platforms were relevant then and they aren't now.
The signal to noise ratio of HN is nose diving recently. Even tangential news about some shipping open source results in context-free conspiracy discussions.
If anything, a microkernel based OS will make it easier for 'truly open' devices to exist, because a lot of device hardware specific stuff that gets patched into kernels today turns into user-space stuff that is easy to update and replace separately.
Maybe we're getting tired of being misled by tech giants. Android used to be open source, too, but in practice it's anything but (Play store, etc.) So forgive me if some us are less than elated at the "don't be evil" company's latest promises.
10 comments
[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 38.5 ms ] threadDoes it seem suspicious to anyone that Google is pushing Fuchsia just as truly open Android phones like Puri.sm and /e/ are coming to market?
Fuchsia must have been started in about 2015 at the earliest, with the first code hitting the public a year later. Neither of these alternative platforms were relevant then and they aren't now.
If anything, a microkernel based OS will make it easier for 'truly open' devices to exist, because a lot of device hardware specific stuff that gets patched into kernels today turns into user-space stuff that is easy to update and replace separately.