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It appears Google has stopped publishing device-specific source code for Pixel phones (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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As noted by the news release from CalyxOS and Mastodon thread from GrapheneOS, Google did not release the Pixel device-specific source code alongside their Android 16 AOSP release like they usually do. I think many of us, including myself, are hoping this will be published in the near future, but considering they moved AOSP development behind closed doors earlier this year, it's more likely Google has stopped publishing this section or their code altogether, making development of custom ROMs for Pixel devices significantly more difficult. Sad news for the Android ecosystem, and for open source in general.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 day ago

While this was an inevitable move, it makes me curious if they are hitting a point where Gemini is becoming so integrated in all their software stacks and they're just insanely paranoid about any precious "AI" code leaking that they just decided to close the gates early.

Probably for the best long-term. Having this weird dependency on the generosity of a corporation was always a liability. Whatever comes next can hopefully avoid it.

Hopefully someone like the EU, to combat ewaste, eventually requires all hardware manufacturers to sell their mobile hardware with bootloader/firmware flashing unlocking requirements. The work then will be for the community to write support for all these various makes and models of device, but the endgame being actual device freedom. Although with the world seemingly leaning hard into Authoritarianism and Fascism, it might not end up being the right time and freedom will remain underground.

A pity too, all phone hardware at its core is generic ARM computers with various devices connected to fairly generic interface busses. They just encrypt bits of code so the sauce to make things work is hidden.