Hope for a future in which AOSP adaptations could vouch for their non-criminal nature to Google?

Platform Development
#1

This ars technica article WRT Google’s Play Integrity (formerly SafetyNet Attestation) might be of interest for @Jolla (rather Seafarix than Jolliboys) due to these statements from Shawn Wilden, the tech lead for hardware-backed security in Android:

Wilden offered some hope for a future in which ROMs could vouch for their non-criminal nature to Google, noting “some discussions with makers of high-quality ROMs” about passing the Compatibility Test Suite, then “establishing some kind of relationship we can use to trust them.”

Personally I think this is only playing with words in order to keep AOSP Open Source Software (which bears some advantages for device manufacturers), but practically closing the Android software ecosystem completely, while appearing “not to be evil” to the public.

The reactions of the maintainers of GrapheneOS are primarily based on technicalities, interesting to read, but ultimately they come to a similar assessment, unfortunately.

7 Likes
#2

Interesting. As the thread from GrapheneOS confirms, Google is using its monopoly on Play store and services to limit full use of Android apps to devices running the regular Android OS for commercial reasons. This is problematic for their GrapheneOS and SailfishOS.

There are limits to what you can do with Android apps on Jolla devices. WhatsApp, Spotify etc. are on other stores or can be downloaded directly but many apps are only on the official store and then even if you managed to somehow get the APK on your device, it will not start due to lack of Play services.
This is the case for some apps that I need for my work on a daily basis. So the Android app ecosystem seems more open than Apple’s but in reality it’s not much different. I like Sailfish but if it means having to use two phones, it doesn’t work for me.

Jolla should probably partner with GrapheneOS and make a joint complaint to the EC competition authorities. Define and enforce a clear definition of what kind of ecosystem dependencies there may be for APK apps to limit the impact of arbitrary commercial monopolist behavior.

#3

Distributing device identifcations is a hard-problem…cheaper to do it at OEM level (than OS level…)