In the short term, perhaps. If someday Google decides to stop publishing open source updates to Android, though…
Eventually all the ROM teams would have to either massively ramp up their development responsibilities to cover every aspect of an aging Android codebase, or shut down as users leave because their project is dangerously outdated. Or probably both, because even if they tried to take over development, what ROM team is going to have the resources for that on a long term basis?
Something makes me think if that happens that LineageOS will become a system in its own right and the community will step up and do the work required to keep it properly up to date.
So then we will have three mobile operating systems, iOS, Android, and LineageOS. iOS will be made by Apple, Android will be made by Google, and LineageOS will be made by the open source community. Don’t get me wrong, I assume development will become slower, but I don’t think it will stop entirely.
That would be awesome to see. OEM bootloaders (and their fuses) and dealing with the proprietary drivers/blobs are the things that really need to be tackled with resources to be on as many devices as possible. I doubt those companies will want to play nice depending on whatever Google demands to be allowed Google Play Services. It is so hard to actually break into the OS market for mobile at all, but it is dedication that LineageOS has had that has kept it alive and updating. I hope that all the custom ROMs and the Linux Mobile OSes help each other out to the benefit of everyone on all levels of phone/tablet tiers.
In the short term, perhaps. If someday Google decides to stop publishing open source updates to Android, though…
Eventually all the ROM teams would have to either massively ramp up their development responsibilities to cover every aspect of an aging Android codebase, or shut down as users leave because their project is dangerously outdated. Or probably both, because even if they tried to take over development, what ROM team is going to have the resources for that on a long term basis?
Something makes me think if that happens that LineageOS will become a system in its own right and the community will step up and do the work required to keep it properly up to date.
So then we will have three mobile operating systems, iOS, Android, and LineageOS. iOS will be made by Apple, Android will be made by Google, and LineageOS will be made by the open source community. Don’t get me wrong, I assume development will become slower, but I don’t think it will stop entirely.
That would be awesome to see. OEM bootloaders (and their fuses) and dealing with the proprietary drivers/blobs are the things that really need to be tackled with resources to be on as many devices as possible. I doubt those companies will want to play nice depending on whatever Google demands to be allowed Google Play Services. It is so hard to actually break into the OS market for mobile at all, but it is dedication that LineageOS has had that has kept it alive and updating. I hope that all the custom ROMs and the Linux Mobile OSes help each other out to the benefit of everyone on all levels of phone/tablet tiers.
This would be the best outcome. I don’t even care if the OS gets “outdated”. If it’s good enough and runs F-Droid I’ve got everything I need.
Same.