No matter the manufacturer, every Android phone has one thing in common: its software base. Manufacturers can heavily customize the look and feel of the Android OS they ship on their Android devices, but under the hood, the core system functionality is derived from the same open-source foundation: the Android Open Source Project. After over 16 years, Google is making big changes to how it develops the open source version of Android in an effort to streamline its development.

  • noodlejetski@lemm.ee
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    6 days ago

    Google confirmed to Android Authority that it is committed to publishing Android’s source code, so this change doesn’t mean that Android is becoming closed-source. The company will continue to publish the source code for new Android releases, so when Google releases Android 16 later this year, we’ll get the source code for the update. In addition, Google will continue to publish the source code for Android’s Linux kernel fork, as it is licensed under GPLv2, which mandates source code releases, and is separate from AOSP.