Our reply here was linked on Hacker News with an inaccurate title ("Delayed Security Patches for AOSP"). Security patch backports were pushed to AOSP on September 2nd for Android 13, 14 and 15 as expected.
More information is available at x.com/GrapheneOS/sta… explaining the situation with security patches. It would be better to have a thread linking to that instead. We have early access to the security patches, but we can't break the embargo. We can only release the sources once source release is allowed. We could make a security preview branch but the system simply doesn't make sense.
Android 16 QPR1 is a new major release, not a security patch release. Our reply is talking about 2 different issues. Android 16 QPR1 is what was delayed for AOSP and we don't currently know why. It's possible it was a mistake and it will be pushed on Monday.
This is entirely unsurprising. It's been clear that Google has been into their Android duopoly-abusive stage for a while now, with more and more of their Android changes moving into GMS or non-AOSP Google apps (like camera, messages, location services, etc) over the last decade. Graphene has been doomed to this fate for a long time, and anyone who thought otherwise was naively optimistic.
The same is clearly coming for Chromium forks, which is why I've always thought the privacy and ad-blocking forks are a joke - if they ever gain enough marketshare, or if google just tires of the public open source charade, they have no chance of maintaining a modern browser on their own.
This is all the more likely now that Google has been emboldened by not having to sell off Chrome for anticompetitive reasons.
strcat · 59m ago
Security patches aren't being delayed for AOSP specifically but rather Android as a whole including the stock Pixel OS. The title is misinterpreting our reply. We didn't say they're delaying patches to AOSP specifically. Stock Pixel OS has delayed patches too.
GrapheneOS has an OEM partner and early access to the security patches so our complaint isn't about us not having access. Google has added an exception to the embargo where binary-only patches can be released which we could use for a special security update branch but that's a ridiculous exception and it should be allowed to release the sources. It can be reversed from the security patches anyway and is trivial for Java and Kotlin. We can't break the embargo ourselves but we CAN publish the security patches early under the rules of the embargo via a special branch and people could reverse the patches from there which could then be applied to the regular GrapheneOS branch. The system is ridiculous and our hope is these changes are undone.
The title should really be changed from "for AOSP" to "for Android". There's a binary-only exception in the embargo now but that's not really about AOSP and isn't being used in practice even for Pixels. They've really just delayed all patches 4 months instead of 1 while also destroying any semblance of there being a real embargo (which was already very weak).
transpute · 33m ago
Thanks for the clarification. Delaying patches for all Android is even worse than delaying for AOSP. Excerpts below.
.. Google recently made.. misguided changes to Android security updates.. almost entirely quarterly instead of monthly to make it easier for OEMs. They're giving OEMs 3-4 months of early access which we know for a fact is being widely leaked including to attackers.
.. Google's existing system for distributing security patches to OEMs was already.. problematic. Extending 1 month of early access to 4 months is atrocious. This applies to all of the patches in the bulletins. This is harming Android security to make OEMs look better by lowering the bar.. The existing system should have been moving towards shorter broad disclosure of patches instead of 30 days.
.. Android's management has clearly overruled the concerns of their security team and chosen to significantly harm Android security for marketing reasons.. Android is very understaffed due to layoffs/buyouts and insufficient hiring.. Google does a massive portion of the security work on the Linux kernel, LLVM and other projects.. providing the resources and infrastructure for Linux kernel LTS releases. Others aren't stepping up to the plate.
This would be a good discussion topic for the Linux Plumbers conference in 3 months.
ACCount37 · 2h ago
Just a year prior, I would have been against a decision to force Google to part with either Android or Chrome.
Now, I'm of the opinion that they should have been forced to sell off both, and maybe Chromebooks too, for the good measure.
No company with a direction as vile and openly user-hostile as what Google currently demonstrates should have anywhere near this level of control over the ecosystem.
thewebguyd · 20m ago
They should lose YouTube as well. Remember how they used their control over YouTube to kill Windows Phone back in the day also. They should have lost it right then.
Google is very clearly an abusive monopoly, and has been for a very long time. We all overlooked it because they were mostly benevolent. That is no longer the case.
scottbez1 · 2h ago
The sad thing is I think Google keeping Chrome is actually likely the better of two possible bad outcomes... Anyone else interested and willing to pay the true value of owning the entire Internet ecosystem is almost certainly going to look to extract value from that, and that's almost certainly worse than what Google does today. E.g. using everyone's browser to extract training data for AI without getting IP blocked.
ACCount37 · 2h ago
A year or so ago, I would have agreed. Not anymore.
Sure, a company can buy Chrome and proceed to sell user browsing habits data to the highest bidder, or use it as a backbone for decentralized scraping - backed by real user data and real residential IPs to fool most anti-scraping checks. But if they fuck with users enough, Chrome would just die off over time, and Firefox or various Chromium forks like Brave would take its place. This already happened to the browsing titan that was IE, and without the entire power of Google to push Chrome? It can happen again.
The alternative is Google owning Chrome for eternity - and proceeding with the most damaging initiatives possible. Right now, Google is seeking to destroy adblocking, tighten the control over the ad data ecosystem to undermine their competitors, and who knows what else they'll come up with next week.
palata · 2h ago
Split it to a point where no one company can own the entire Internet ecosystem. Apply antitrust laws to keep it like this.
Maybe the development will slow down, but let's be honest: we would still be fine if Android and iOS had stopped "improving" years ago. Now it's mostly about adding shiny AI features and squeeze the users.
gruez · 2h ago
>Split it to a point where no one company can own the entire Internet ecosystem. Apply antitrust laws to keep it like this.
Facebook was once small too. Yet people happily signed up, giving up their privacy in the process. What makes you think the remaining companies offering a free browser wouldn't try to monetize users in a similar way? How many people are willing to pay $5/month for a browser?
cosmic_cheese · 1h ago
Browsers should be classified as critical infrastructure and be run by NPOs or PBCs. There’d be no need for end users to pay anything if the tens of thousands of companies all relying on the web chipped in to sustain the infrastructure that allows them to exist and be profitable.
palata · 2h ago
> Yet people happily signed up, giving up their privacy in the process.
When Facebook started, it was a different era. And since then, Facebook has clearly abused their position with anti-competitive behaviours.
> How many people are willing to pay $5/month for a browser?
If they can keep using Google Chrome for free, we already know the answer. If the only way for them to have a reasonable browser would to pay... who knows? People pay more than that to access movies that they could download as torrents.
Also does it have to be 5$ per month? Do browsers need to keep adding so many features, and hence so many bugs and security issues, that only huge companies can keep up and nobody wants to pay for that work?
Maybe it's enough to pay 1$/year for a company to maintain a reasonably secure browser with the features that people actually need. Do people actually need QUIC? Not sure.
gruez · 1h ago
>When Facebook started, it was a different era. And since then, Facebook has clearly abused their position with anti-competitive behaviours.
Insurgents like tiktok show that even today, people will happily give up their privacy for some dopamine.
>If they can keep using Google Chrome for free, we already know the answer.
Why would google continue maintaining chrome if they can no longer derive any benefit from it?
>If the only way for them to have a reasonable browser would to pay... who knows? People pay more than that to access movies that they could download as torrents.
No, the contention is that people will go for free browsers that violate their privacy or monetize them somehow, not some future where all browsers cost money.
>Maybe it's enough to pay 1$/year for a company to maintain a reasonably secure browser with the features that people actually need. Do people actually need QUIC? Not sure.
Remember when whatsapp was also $1/year, ostensibly for similar reasons? How did that go?
palata · 1h ago
> Why would google continue maintaining chrome if they can no longer derive any benefit from it?
That is unrelated to the sentence you quote: if people can use Google Chrome for free, they don't pay for a browser. But if Chrome disappeared, they would still need a browser. Maybe they would pay if they didn't have a free choice?
> No, the contention is that people will go for free browsers that violate their privacy or monetize them somehow, not some future where all browsers cost money.
If there are more browsers instead of a monopoly, then websites will work on the paid, secure browser that I will use, so I'm happy. I don't want to prevent people from using bad software: I want to make it possible for companies to build good software.
By not using Chromium today, many times the websites don't work correctly because devs don't care, because Chromium is a monopoly. I say split it! Then websites will have to work on more than 1 browser.
> Remember when whatsapp was also $1/year, ostensibly for similar reasons? How did that go?
It was a huge success? WhatsApp is still a huge success.
wmf · 2h ago
I wonder if Android and Chrome would support open source even less as independent companies though.
SpaghettiCthulu · 1h ago
Why not spin them each off into an independent non-profit?
wmf · 1h ago
Because people don't just throw away money.
izacus · 2h ago
And by destroying the Android development team you'd achieve what exactly? Magical appearance of the security patches you're complaining about here?
Would you start to actually pay for all those hundreds of engineers maintaining the OS?
ACCount37 · 2h ago
Either the new company takes over maintaining Android, or it fumbles the bag and the development becomes less centralized for a while - until some leader emerges and takes over.
Either way, the new control center of Android wouldn't be Google. A decade ago, I would have seen that as a very bad thing. Now, I'm almost certain that this would be a change for the better. Google is not what it once was.
wstrange · 23m ago
Or a more likely scenario is that Apple picks up even more market share, and we go from a duopoly to a monopoly.
palata · 1h ago
Drone manufacturers like Samsung, Xiaomi etc need an OS. Right now it's more profitable for them to just pay licences to Google. But if Google lost Android... they would need to find a solution.
I would like to see this, at least something would be happening.
thewebguyd · 17m ago
I could see sort of an Android consortium taking over developing it and keeping it going outside of Google. Samsung, Oppo, Xiaomi, Huwawei, Motorola, etc.
Honestly it'd probably be better off that way. Google has far too much influence and control.
cosmic_cheese · 2h ago
Yep. If we’re gonna be forking browsers, Firefox should be the base, not Chromium. Mozilla is in much less of a position to abuse their position, and more Firefox forks means more chances that one catches on with some slice of the larger public and helps chip away at Blink hegemony.
dutchCourage · 58m ago
Fully agreed. I am however worried by the fact that Firefox is basically kept alive by Google. I assume it's just so that they can pretend Chrome isn't a monopoly, but the minute Firefox becomes an inconvenience they can stop financing it. I hope we can find a way for Firefox to sustain itself long term.
cosmic_cheese · 56m ago
It’s a valid concern, and it may not be possible to properly address so long as Mozilla in its current form continues to be the controlling party of Firefox/Gecko. The best scenario might actually be for Mozilla to collapse and some other NPO or PBC with better financial sense to pick up the projects and their engineers.
wmf · 36m ago
Google pays Firefox for traffic acquisition, not out of pity. If Google stopped paying, another search engine like Bing or Perplexity would be happy to take over.
thewebguyd · 15m ago
True, but what happens when Firefox's marketshare decreases to the point where the amount of traffic lost by not having the Google deal stops mattering to Google?
If Google does the math one day, and determines that they won't lose out anymore by not paying Firefox they'll stop paying.
palata · 2h ago
> This is all the more likely now that Google has been emboldened by not having to sell off Chrome for anticompetitive reasons.
Exactly. The only thing that can prevent this behaviour is regulations. But apparently nobody wants to regulate, so we're screwed.
flotzam · 3h ago
"No tags were pushed to AOSP for the July 2025 monthly release of Android. We asked about this on the android-building group but each of our posts was rejected. We emailed people at Google we've previously contacted about mistakes pushing tags but received no response this time."
That's about the monthly and quarterly releases of Android, not the Android security patches. The post title is misinterpreting what's wrong. There is a lot wrong but that's not it. The baseline Android security patches are being delayed for Android as a whole, not AOSP specifically.
Not having the very tiny monthly updates pushed to AOSP is an annoyance which will delay a subset of non-security bug fixes until the quarterly releases. It's a bad change, although we know have a good idea why it happened and need the reason it happened to be reversed for them to push those again.
We've been told by multiple people at Google that the quarterly releases would still be pushed and that monthly releases are largely being phased out. However, the quarterly update was not pushed as expected on September 3rd. If it's pushed on Monday, it will be 6 days late. There hasn't been a similar delay for quarterly and yearly releases in the past.
GrapheneOS can still provide security updates but not having the quarterly release is a major problem and it's not clear why it wasn't pushed when they said it was going to be pushed.
There's a separate issue not specifically tied to AOSP impacting security patches which is what the initial part of our reply was about. See https://x.com/GrapheneOS/status/1964754118653952027 for an explanation.
strcat · 1h ago
This is an official response from GrapheneOS:
The title of this post linking our reply is inaccurate and is not what we said ("Delayed Security Patches for AOSP"). It should really be changed from "for AOSP" to "for Android". Security patch backports were pushed to AOSP on September 2nd for Android 13, 14 and 15 as expected. The issue isn't the security patches being delayed for AOSP. We didn't say patches are being delayed for AOSP.
Security patches for Android are being delayed as a whole. The delays aren't specific to AOSP. They're moving to quarterly security updates with 4 months of early OEM access instead of monthly security updates with 1 month of early OEM access. They realize that the patches distributed to OEMs are hardly secret once they're so broadly distributed. Therefore, they've relaxed the rules of the embargo and permitted releases of patches under certain rules without being allowed to providing a description or the sources for the patch. This is ridiculous because it's easy to reverse the patches from binary-only releases.
Google trying to cover for OEMs not keeping up with patches by making it seem as if the patches are now quarterly and largely being delivered on time while actually broadly disclosing them 4 months early and permitting quietly fixing them early.
Google sold Android to nerds as open source. We thought that mobile operating systems would be won by the "Linux of mobile OSs."
But Google has made sure that didn't happen and we're left with devices more locked down than the proprietary Windows ecosystem we were hoping to leave in the past - and with a company in charge looking to exert even more power over us than Microsoft did.
arcane23 · 2h ago
The trick is adding a ton of features which expose extra attack surface that needs them to maintain and fix, under the pretense that it will make everyone's life easier. Make it complicated enough so that the community cannot maintain it, enabling the corporation to throw its weight around.
cosmic_cheese · 2h ago
It’s the perfected form of what MS was trying to achieve with IE back in the 90s. All the power of a closed source monopoly, further enhanced by friends and foes alike incorporating your tech as a load-bearing pillar of their strategies, with a cloak of plausible deniability in the form of an open source repo protecting you from antitrust enforcement. A true have your cake and eat it situation.
yupyupyups · 55m ago
This is what happened with the Qt app dev framework. The Qt Company delayed releases of LTS updates to non-paying users by 1 year, while not properly dealing with the steady stream of regressions that were affecting normal releases. I quit Qt development partially because I felt that I was dealing with forever-beta software.
But actually, with Qt you do have KDE devs who push their own patches which does help deal with the flaws in the upstream project.
In the Android world, they need more devs doing the same and supporting projects like GrapheneOS with security testing/hardening.
The only reason that would make me fear from an antitrust judgement splitting Android from Google is that it may lose the Google contributions to AOSP.
Google is more and more showing that they really don't want to contribute to AOSP.
So for me, Android should be split out of Google. Maybe the other Android manufacturers will start contributing to AOSP, and maybe Android will die. But let me be honest: if Google keeps going this way, I will move to an iPhone (and I've been using and developing for Android forever). We may as well try the split, and if it fails I'll end up with an iPhone anyway.
> We want to make sure that if you download an app from a developer, regardless of where you get it, it's actually from them. That's it.
In what scenario is this a serious threat because I can't think of any.
wmf · 2h ago
People are installing banking apps that are actually from criminals. Basically app phishing.
dvrj101 · 2h ago
> People are installing banking apps that are actually from criminals.
and this identification does nothing about that, this is not to protect users. such phishing are always found on play-store alone.
OutOfHere · 2h ago
Let's not call them banking apps. They're not. They're scam apps.
The problem represented in the tweet is deeper. It is about not receiving patches which means the device is basically unsafe to use altogether.
charcircuit · 2h ago
It sounds like EV certificates, and it turned out that in practice no one cared about id verification.
arcane23 · 2h ago
Seems like there needs to be a split of both hardware and software. Mobile phones morphed into something else lately. Not all of us need all the features of a smart phone, but still need a comms device.
We need a simpler OS with simpler hardware that focuses on comms and less features. Simpler OS, lower attack surface, simpler to maintain without the help of a gigantic corporation. I don't need a supercomputer in my pocket.
gruez · 2h ago
>Not all of us need all the features of a smart phone, but still need a comms device. [...] I don't need a supercomputer in my pocket.
What's stopping you from using a feature phone?
markus_zhang · 2h ago
I don’t even want a smart phone if the banks/trading firms don’t force me to use a phone for auth. I keep a used smart phone for company stuffs (again auth) and bank stuffs.
arcane23 · 2h ago
Security/privacy?
gruez · 2h ago
So you want a $100 feature phone that has serious security features like monthly security patches and dedicated security coprocessors? It's tough to make the economics of that work out. All the serious security features costs money to implement, either in the form of development costs or added costs to the BOM. Those costs can be absorbed if you're selling a $600 phone, but not a $100 phone. If you try to add those features to a $100 phone, it'll end up making the phone more expensive, which means nobody but security freaks would buy your phone, and you lose economies of scale that's needed to make a phone at all.
Back to your point, there's already a "split of hardware and software" in the PC market, and we know how it works out. Security there is a joke. Windows might be getting monthly security patches, but the same can't be said of the panoply of third party drivers/firmware. Whenever microsoft tries to push for better security they get shouted down by people claiming it's some sort of conspiracy to implement DRM.
arcane23 · 2h ago
You missed my point, a simpler hardware/software phone needs less resources to maintain. No eyecandy/cushy features to maintain, security becomes easier to maintain by the community. No constantly added features and gimmicks which break and introduce weak points.
Let's not forget that all these "features" which enable corporations like Google take complete control over the project also end up driving price up, constantly. Cheap phones are a sh*t iteration of more expensive phones, instead of being simpler more basic implementations of must have features without the "quality of life" bloat on the top tier models. They should have a different tier OS rather than the same one.
I would also not make the parallel between comms devices and PCs, they're different beasts.
gruez · 1h ago
>a simpler hardware/software phone needs less resources to maintain
And a such a product is going to absolutely niche, which means no economies of scale producing or maintaining it. You try to justify that by saying it'll be maintained by "the community", but who's going to want to do unglamorous work fixing security issues, compared to developing features? Mainstream phones have dedicated security teams and freelance vulnerability researchers going after them for fame/clout. Who would want to do security research for what's essentially a glorified nokia 3310 that maybe 1000 people use?
aspenmayer · 1h ago
The Flipper Zero and its success through direct crowdfunding proves that if you build it, and this next step is equally important to the first, if you build a community around it to directly market it effectively with reversible crowdfunding, you don’t have to wait for them to then come, as they’re already here, right there with you.
gruez · 1h ago
Flipper zero doesn't really have a competitor, aside from maybe a bunch of bulky equipment that fits on a table. Such a feature phone would be competing against iPhones/Pixels, both of which are pretty secure and have dedicated security teams. Any new product would have to compete on price/feature/reputation, which would be tough.
aspenmayer · 1h ago
The success of the Raspberry Pi proves that existence of competitors is no impediment to success with the proper connections with vendors and with the community.
The OpenWRT One is another example of collaborating with community trusted vendors to build a niche community based hardware product.
Ignoring how strangely against this idea you are, for no justifiable reason, it wouldn't look like a 3310, it would still look like a smart phone, probably OLED so more battery life. It would just miss a lot of modern features which are absolutely irrelevant to anyone who wants a privacy/security focused mobile phone.
Probably not the latest CPU, not the latest mobile chip, but still decent for what it has to do.
gruez · 1h ago
>Ignoring how strangely against this idea you are, for no justifiable reason
Ignoring how you assert this, when I outlined plenty of reasons which you've yet to rebut...
>it wouldn't look like a 3310, it would still look like a smart phone, probably OLED so more battery life. It would just miss a lot of modern features which are absolutely irrelevant to anyone who wants a privacy/security focused mobile phone. Probably not the latest CPU, not the latest mobile chip, but still decent for what it has to do.
Sounds like a $200 mid-range phone that's sold in much of Asia. Question is, who's going to make it? How are you going to amortize the development costs? You mentioned that it's going to use custom software/hardware to keep security maintenance burden low, but how would that be funded? Most of the SoC vendors are going to be providing kernels/drivers to you with the expectation that you're going to use it to build an Android phone. Good luck convincing them to provide engineering support for your custom software/hardware stack.
Not to mention the questions about maintenance you haven't addressed aside from some handwaving about it'll be simpler and therefore can be "community maintained".
aspenmayer · 1h ago
I have crossed paths with them before. Yellow rock approach.
>Whenever microsoft tries to push for better security they get shouted down by people claiming it's some sort of conspiracy to implement DRM.
Mainly because it is, and you can go Q.E.D. all you like, but there doesn't need to be a bunch of mustachioed villains explicitly making evil plans when everyone's ultimate aims align. They're going to get theirs, and the rest will just be a long for the ride while those people in a position of power continue to weave a collective path through the space of "conspicuously unimplemented features".
The computer was meant to be as a calculator. An unassuming tool to automate the mundane, not as a link in the chain of techno-fascism/feudalism/tyranny. The only thing that will ward off that eventuality is how we as people embrace and guide it's further usage & implementation.
The tech is currently here for every bad ending. I want to make that clear. It has already arrived. The knowledge of it's configuration to bring those ends are the part that isn't quite realized yet. I pray that it won't be unearthed, but with the way things are currently going, I have serious doubts.
gruez · 1h ago
>Mainly because it is, and you can go Q.E.D. all you like, but there doesn't need to be a bunch of mustachioed villains explicitly making evil plans when everyone's ultimate aims align. They're going to get theirs, and the rest will just be a long for the ride while those people in a position of power continue to weave a collective path through the space of "conspicuously unimplemented features".
Like it or not, TPM was meant to increase security by deterring evil maid attacks. If you can't stop this sort of attack, your device doesn't offer serious security, and a feature phone with wifi/bluetooth/cellular data turned off probably has similar security. Moreover TPMs were introduced over a decade ago and there's still no DRM that's based on it. People did forget about SGX though, which came and went but had actual DRM built for it. I've also never heard a peep about HDCP which is specifically for DRM purposes and is built into every GPU/monitor.
IlikeKitties · 47m ago
Okay, so there's so much wrong here i don't know where to start.
> Like it or not, TPM was meant to increase security by deterring evil maid attacks. If you can't stop this sort of attack, your device doesn't offer serious security, and a feature phone with wifi/bluetooth/cellular data turned off probably has similar security
TPMs in their commercial implementation do not deter any evil maid attack. Only some special cases like HEADS Firmware actually protects you from an evil maid attack. TPMs, Secureboot, etc. merely prevent non-signed code from booting when the hard has not been tampered with. Tamper with the hardware and make it show a green "everything is fine" screen while booting a tainted kernel and device drivers and a tpm won't save you.
> Moreover TPMs were introduced over a decade ago and there's still no DRM that's based on it.
Google Play Integrity API is essentially this. Can't run certain apps on devices that don't pass TPM based attestation. Not exactly DRM but something akin to it.
> People did forget about SGX though, which came and went but had actual DRM built for it.
People didn't forget, it got broken so badly intel gave up on it.
> I've also never heard a peep about HDCP which is specifically for DRM purposes and is built into every GPU/monitor.
You've just not been listening. It's just that HDCP also has been bypassed a lot.
charcircuit · 2h ago
Security of the Android ecosystem should not be compromised just to make the lives of Googlers easier in handling the public, internal, and pixel branches of AOSP.
Edit: The HN title is false and security patches were released. But this is more about Google trying to appease OEMs who aren't capable with keeping up with a monthly OS release schedule.
ACCount37 · 2h ago
And so, Google's war on open Android continues.
Fucking hell. Can Google stop being evil for like 5 minutes? It's like they can't go a week without coming up with some new fucked up thing to do to their already tormented mobile ecosystem.
"Why should people believe what you say about /^.*$/?"
That regex derived from the tweet seems apt.
OutOfHere · 2h ago
I hope that this action, along with Google's refusal to correctly safeguard and segregate apps, costs Google all of Android in the long term. Neither deserves to exist.
Any thoughts on Linux phones?
add-sub-mul-div · 2h ago
Unchecked Apple without real competition would be worse than the status quo.
OutOfHere · 2h ago
That is a misrepresentation because Samsung, Huawei, and various Linux vendors each will have their own answer, their own alterative. In no universe will Apple be without competition. Apple is not even a consideration since it doesn't allow unapproved app installation anyway.
odo1242 · 2h ago
Android only ever had a chance because it is one ecosystem. Developers aren't going to develop for five slightly-different ecosystems in a trench coat.
folmar · 1h ago
This ship has sailed, in the past Amazon's store did not succeed a lot, but there are already a few important enough offsprings:
* Huawei with separate store and no Gapps
* Samsung with importantly different browser and ton of extra features, also another store
* in China the app-in-wechat and similar are a major thing
If you develop for a diverse set of user you need a lot of effort.
chasil · 48m ago
Apps that run on the Kindle Fire can't use Google Mobile Services, and the Amazon appstore is missing many well-known titles.
The Play Store is mostly absent from China, and I really don't know how that ecosystem works.
Was there one ecosystem?
charcircuit · 2h ago
There already are multiple different android ecosystems today. For example Samsung has SDKs that have features when targeting their flavor of Android. There will still be a common base.
OutOfHere · 2h ago
> Developers aren't going to develop for five slightly-different ecosystems
The point, perhaps, is for one to emerge as the prominent choice, the correct one. Diversity however has its own value.
palata · 2h ago
I wish Android manufacturers contributed to AOSP, so that it would still be one ecosystem, but with shared ownership. But I guess it's more profitable for all of them to let Google do it on their own. And it sucks for the user, because we have to live with Google's decisions.
palata · 2h ago
It is a shame that those companies don't contribute to AOSP (or fork it). Apparently Huawei decided that they would do better alone with their own HarmonyOS, but I don't get it. It could be so powerful if AOSP was actually shared between the Android manufacturers...
I would happily leave Android and go with such a fork. Instead, each (Samsung, Huawei, ...) try to make their own thing. And good luck to them to beat Android on their own.
dvrj101 · 3h ago
̶D̶o̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶b̶e̶ ̶e̶v̶i̶l̶
neilv · 2h ago
Looks like PostmarketOS (mainline Linux for phones, with choice of frontend, such as Plasma Mobile or Phosh) has demoted all their previous "Main"-tier devices to "Community" or lower tier:
Anyone know whether this is a sign of a push for being daily driver quality? Or a sign that volunteers previously doing promising work have drifted away, and they're acknowledging that?
Arnavion · 45m ago
I am the pmOS maintainer for the PinePhone. It was demoted from main to community because I was the only maintainer and one of the criteria for main is to have two or more maintainers. ( https://gitlab.postmarketos.org/postmarketOS/pmaports/-/merg... ) Originally many pmOS core devs were maintainers, which is why it was in main, but they all lost interest and it was about to be demoted to testing / unmaintained, so I volunteered to become the maintainer to stop that from happening.
A blanket statement of a phone being "of daily driver quality or not" is impossible to make because everyone has different expectations of a "daily driver". I have been daily-driving the PinePhone since 2021 (it is my first and only smartphone) but that doesn't mean everyone else will be happy with it.
fabrice_d · 2h ago
Main is described as "The most supported devices, with all the features and stability you'd expect from a regular OS."
Unfortunately there was/is no device supported by postmarketOS that fits that description. You'll need at least good telephony support including 4G features like VoLTE, proper camera support (not potato polaroid from the 80s quality), Wifi, Bluetooth, geolocation, working GPU acceleration, media hardware decoders, decent battery life. And I'm probably forgetting a few things.
Let's hope that initiatives like https://liberux.net/ will help make a fully working, long lasting device available!
palata · 2h ago
Unfortunately, and as much as I like Linux for phones, I think it's very, very far from AOSP. It completely misses the AOSP security model and the apps (no, I don't believe that running waydroid on Linux is entirely viable, otherwise instead of Linux for phone we would have Waydroid as an alternative to Android).
I think the only realistic alternative would be to build upon AOSP properly, with Google being just a contributor instead of the owner. But it cannot come from a community fork by someone in their garage, it has to come from Android manufacturers. I was hoping that Huawei would start something like that, instead they went with their own HarmonyOS.
https://x.com/grapheneos/status/1964757878910136346?s=46
They say this:
Our reply here was linked on Hacker News with an inaccurate title ("Delayed Security Patches for AOSP"). Security patch backports were pushed to AOSP on September 2nd for Android 13, 14 and 15 as expected.
More information is available at x.com/GrapheneOS/sta… explaining the situation with security patches. It would be better to have a thread linking to that instead. We have early access to the security patches, but we can't break the embargo. We can only release the sources once source release is allowed. We could make a security preview branch but the system simply doesn't make sense.
Android 16 QPR1 is a new major release, not a security patch release. Our reply is talking about 2 different issues. Android 16 QPR1 is what was delayed for AOSP and we don't currently know why. It's possible it was a mistake and it will be pushed on Monday.
https://x.com/GrapheneOS/status/1964754118653952027
https://bsky.app/profile/grapheneos.org/post/3lyb6rx46tc2r
https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/115164133992525834
The same is clearly coming for Chromium forks, which is why I've always thought the privacy and ad-blocking forks are a joke - if they ever gain enough marketshare, or if google just tires of the public open source charade, they have no chance of maintaining a modern browser on their own.
This is all the more likely now that Google has been emboldened by not having to sell off Chrome for anticompetitive reasons.
A more detailed explanation is at https://x.com/GrapheneOS/status/1964754118653952027.
GrapheneOS has an OEM partner and early access to the security patches so our complaint isn't about us not having access. Google has added an exception to the embargo where binary-only patches can be released which we could use for a special security update branch but that's a ridiculous exception and it should be allowed to release the sources. It can be reversed from the security patches anyway and is trivial for Java and Kotlin. We can't break the embargo ourselves but we CAN publish the security patches early under the rules of the embargo via a special branch and people could reverse the patches from there which could then be applied to the regular GrapheneOS branch. The system is ridiculous and our hope is these changes are undone.
The title should really be changed from "for AOSP" to "for Android". There's a binary-only exception in the embargo now but that's not really about AOSP and isn't being used in practice even for Pixels. They've really just delayed all patches 4 months instead of 1 while also destroying any semblance of there being a real embargo (which was already very weak).
Now, I'm of the opinion that they should have been forced to sell off both, and maybe Chromebooks too, for the good measure.
No company with a direction as vile and openly user-hostile as what Google currently demonstrates should have anywhere near this level of control over the ecosystem.
Google is very clearly an abusive monopoly, and has been for a very long time. We all overlooked it because they were mostly benevolent. That is no longer the case.
Sure, a company can buy Chrome and proceed to sell user browsing habits data to the highest bidder, or use it as a backbone for decentralized scraping - backed by real user data and real residential IPs to fool most anti-scraping checks. But if they fuck with users enough, Chrome would just die off over time, and Firefox or various Chromium forks like Brave would take its place. This already happened to the browsing titan that was IE, and without the entire power of Google to push Chrome? It can happen again.
The alternative is Google owning Chrome for eternity - and proceeding with the most damaging initiatives possible. Right now, Google is seeking to destroy adblocking, tighten the control over the ad data ecosystem to undermine their competitors, and who knows what else they'll come up with next week.
Maybe the development will slow down, but let's be honest: we would still be fine if Android and iOS had stopped "improving" years ago. Now it's mostly about adding shiny AI features and squeeze the users.
Facebook was once small too. Yet people happily signed up, giving up their privacy in the process. What makes you think the remaining companies offering a free browser wouldn't try to monetize users in a similar way? How many people are willing to pay $5/month for a browser?
When Facebook started, it was a different era. And since then, Facebook has clearly abused their position with anti-competitive behaviours.
> How many people are willing to pay $5/month for a browser?
If they can keep using Google Chrome for free, we already know the answer. If the only way for them to have a reasonable browser would to pay... who knows? People pay more than that to access movies that they could download as torrents.
Also does it have to be 5$ per month? Do browsers need to keep adding so many features, and hence so many bugs and security issues, that only huge companies can keep up and nobody wants to pay for that work?
Maybe it's enough to pay 1$/year for a company to maintain a reasonably secure browser with the features that people actually need. Do people actually need QUIC? Not sure.
Insurgents like tiktok show that even today, people will happily give up their privacy for some dopamine.
>If they can keep using Google Chrome for free, we already know the answer.
Why would google continue maintaining chrome if they can no longer derive any benefit from it?
>If the only way for them to have a reasonable browser would to pay... who knows? People pay more than that to access movies that they could download as torrents.
No, the contention is that people will go for free browsers that violate their privacy or monetize them somehow, not some future where all browsers cost money.
>Maybe it's enough to pay 1$/year for a company to maintain a reasonably secure browser with the features that people actually need. Do people actually need QUIC? Not sure.
Remember when whatsapp was also $1/year, ostensibly for similar reasons? How did that go?
That is unrelated to the sentence you quote: if people can use Google Chrome for free, they don't pay for a browser. But if Chrome disappeared, they would still need a browser. Maybe they would pay if they didn't have a free choice?
> No, the contention is that people will go for free browsers that violate their privacy or monetize them somehow, not some future where all browsers cost money.
If there are more browsers instead of a monopoly, then websites will work on the paid, secure browser that I will use, so I'm happy. I don't want to prevent people from using bad software: I want to make it possible for companies to build good software.
By not using Chromium today, many times the websites don't work correctly because devs don't care, because Chromium is a monopoly. I say split it! Then websites will have to work on more than 1 browser.
> Remember when whatsapp was also $1/year, ostensibly for similar reasons? How did that go?
It was a huge success? WhatsApp is still a huge success.
Would you start to actually pay for all those hundreds of engineers maintaining the OS?
Either way, the new control center of Android wouldn't be Google. A decade ago, I would have seen that as a very bad thing. Now, I'm almost certain that this would be a change for the better. Google is not what it once was.
I would like to see this, at least something would be happening.
Honestly it'd probably be better off that way. Google has far too much influence and control.
If Google does the math one day, and determines that they won't lose out anymore by not paying Firefox they'll stop paying.
Exactly. The only thing that can prevent this behaviour is regulations. But apparently nobody wants to regulate, so we're screwed.
https://xcancel.com/GrapheneOS/status/1952413110947430786
"July monthly release was not pushed to AOSP and then neither was the August monthly release. September quarterly release hasn't been pushed yet."
https://xcancel.com/GrapheneOS/status/1963812920673861981
Not having the very tiny monthly updates pushed to AOSP is an annoyance which will delay a subset of non-security bug fixes until the quarterly releases. It's a bad change, although we know have a good idea why it happened and need the reason it happened to be reversed for them to push those again.
We've been told by multiple people at Google that the quarterly releases would still be pushed and that monthly releases are largely being phased out. However, the quarterly update was not pushed as expected on September 3rd. If it's pushed on Monday, it will be 6 days late. There hasn't been a similar delay for quarterly and yearly releases in the past.
GrapheneOS can still provide security updates but not having the quarterly release is a major problem and it's not clear why it wasn't pushed when they said it was going to be pushed.
There's a separate issue not specifically tied to AOSP impacting security patches which is what the initial part of our reply was about. See https://x.com/GrapheneOS/status/1964754118653952027 for an explanation.
The title of this post linking our reply is inaccurate and is not what we said ("Delayed Security Patches for AOSP"). It should really be changed from "for AOSP" to "for Android". Security patch backports were pushed to AOSP on September 2nd for Android 13, 14 and 15 as expected. The issue isn't the security patches being delayed for AOSP. We didn't say patches are being delayed for AOSP.
Security patches for Android are being delayed as a whole. The delays aren't specific to AOSP. They're moving to quarterly security updates with 4 months of early OEM access instead of monthly security updates with 1 month of early OEM access. They realize that the patches distributed to OEMs are hardly secret once they're so broadly distributed. Therefore, they've relaxed the rules of the embargo and permitted releases of patches under certain rules without being allowed to providing a description or the sources for the patch. This is ridiculous because it's easy to reverse the patches from binary-only releases.
Google trying to cover for OEMs not keeping up with patches by making it seem as if the patches are now quarterly and largely being delivered on time while actually broadly disclosing them 4 months early and permitting quietly fixing them early.
We posted a much more detailed explanation at https://x.com/GrapheneOS/status/1964754118653952027. It would be better to link to our more detailed post.
But Google has made sure that didn't happen and we're left with devices more locked down than the proprietary Windows ecosystem we were hoping to leave in the past - and with a company in charge looking to exert even more power over us than Microsoft did.
But actually, with Qt you do have KDE devs who push their own patches which does help deal with the flaws in the upstream project.
In the Android world, they need more devs doing the same and supporting projects like GrapheneOS with security testing/hardening.
Google is more and more showing that they really don't want to contribute to AOSP.
So for me, Android should be split out of Google. Maybe the other Android manufacturers will start contributing to AOSP, and maybe Android will die. But let me be honest: if Google keeps going this way, I will move to an iPhone (and I've been using and developing for Android forever). We may as well try the split, and if it fails I'll end up with an iPhone anyway.
In what scenario is this a serious threat because I can't think of any.
and this identification does nothing about that, this is not to protect users. such phishing are always found on play-store alone.
The problem represented in the tweet is deeper. It is about not receiving patches which means the device is basically unsafe to use altogether.
What's stopping you from using a feature phone?
Back to your point, there's already a "split of hardware and software" in the PC market, and we know how it works out. Security there is a joke. Windows might be getting monthly security patches, but the same can't be said of the panoply of third party drivers/firmware. Whenever microsoft tries to push for better security they get shouted down by people claiming it's some sort of conspiracy to implement DRM.
Let's not forget that all these "features" which enable corporations like Google take complete control over the project also end up driving price up, constantly. Cheap phones are a sh*t iteration of more expensive phones, instead of being simpler more basic implementations of must have features without the "quality of life" bloat on the top tier models. They should have a different tier OS rather than the same one.
I would also not make the parallel between comms devices and PCs, they're different beasts.
And a such a product is going to absolutely niche, which means no economies of scale producing or maintaining it. You try to justify that by saying it'll be maintained by "the community", but who's going to want to do unglamorous work fixing security issues, compared to developing features? Mainstream phones have dedicated security teams and freelance vulnerability researchers going after them for fame/clout. Who would want to do security research for what's essentially a glorified nokia 3310 that maybe 1000 people use?
The OpenWRT One is another example of collaborating with community trusted vendors to build a niche community based hardware product.
https://openwrt.org/toh/openwrt/one
Ignoring how you assert this, when I outlined plenty of reasons which you've yet to rebut...
>it wouldn't look like a 3310, it would still look like a smart phone, probably OLED so more battery life. It would just miss a lot of modern features which are absolutely irrelevant to anyone who wants a privacy/security focused mobile phone. Probably not the latest CPU, not the latest mobile chip, but still decent for what it has to do.
Sounds like a $200 mid-range phone that's sold in much of Asia. Question is, who's going to make it? How are you going to amortize the development costs? You mentioned that it's going to use custom software/hardware to keep security maintenance burden low, but how would that be funded? Most of the SoC vendors are going to be providing kernels/drivers to you with the expectation that you're going to use it to build an Android phone. Good luck convincing them to provide engineering support for your custom software/hardware stack.
Not to mention the questions about maintenance you haven't addressed aside from some handwaving about it'll be simpler and therefore can be "community maintained".
https://danieldashnawcouplestherapy.com/blog/yellow-rock-met...
Mainly because it is, and you can go Q.E.D. all you like, but there doesn't need to be a bunch of mustachioed villains explicitly making evil plans when everyone's ultimate aims align. They're going to get theirs, and the rest will just be a long for the ride while those people in a position of power continue to weave a collective path through the space of "conspicuously unimplemented features".
The computer was meant to be as a calculator. An unassuming tool to automate the mundane, not as a link in the chain of techno-fascism/feudalism/tyranny. The only thing that will ward off that eventuality is how we as people embrace and guide it's further usage & implementation.
The tech is currently here for every bad ending. I want to make that clear. It has already arrived. The knowledge of it's configuration to bring those ends are the part that isn't quite realized yet. I pray that it won't be unearthed, but with the way things are currently going, I have serious doubts.
Like it or not, TPM was meant to increase security by deterring evil maid attacks. If you can't stop this sort of attack, your device doesn't offer serious security, and a feature phone with wifi/bluetooth/cellular data turned off probably has similar security. Moreover TPMs were introduced over a decade ago and there's still no DRM that's based on it. People did forget about SGX though, which came and went but had actual DRM built for it. I've also never heard a peep about HDCP which is specifically for DRM purposes and is built into every GPU/monitor.
> Like it or not, TPM was meant to increase security by deterring evil maid attacks. If you can't stop this sort of attack, your device doesn't offer serious security, and a feature phone with wifi/bluetooth/cellular data turned off probably has similar security
TPMs in their commercial implementation do not deter any evil maid attack. Only some special cases like HEADS Firmware actually protects you from an evil maid attack. TPMs, Secureboot, etc. merely prevent non-signed code from booting when the hard has not been tampered with. Tamper with the hardware and make it show a green "everything is fine" screen while booting a tainted kernel and device drivers and a tpm won't save you.
> Moreover TPMs were introduced over a decade ago and there's still no DRM that's based on it.
Google Play Integrity API is essentially this. Can't run certain apps on devices that don't pass TPM based attestation. Not exactly DRM but something akin to it.
> People did forget about SGX though, which came and went but had actual DRM built for it.
People didn't forget, it got broken so badly intel gave up on it.
> I've also never heard a peep about HDCP which is specifically for DRM purposes and is built into every GPU/monitor.
You've just not been listening. It's just that HDCP also has been bypassed a lot.
Edit: The HN title is false and security patches were released. But this is more about Google trying to appease OEMs who aren't capable with keeping up with a monthly OS release schedule.
Fucking hell. Can Google stop being evil for like 5 minutes? It's like they can't go a week without coming up with some new fucked up thing to do to their already tormented mobile ecosystem.
That regex derived from the tweet seems apt.
Any thoughts on Linux phones?
If you develop for a diverse set of user you need a lot of effort.
The Play Store is mostly absent from China, and I really don't know how that ecosystem works.
Was there one ecosystem?
The point, perhaps, is for one to emerge as the prominent choice, the correct one. Diversity however has its own value.
I would happily leave Android and go with such a fork. Instead, each (Samsung, Huawei, ...) try to make their own thing. And good luck to them to beat Android on their own.
https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices#Main
Anyone know whether this is a sign of a push for being daily driver quality? Or a sign that volunteers previously doing promising work have drifted away, and they're acknowledging that?
A blanket statement of a phone being "of daily driver quality or not" is impossible to make because everyone has different expectations of a "daily driver". I have been daily-driving the PinePhone since 2021 (it is my first and only smartphone) but that doesn't mean everyone else will be happy with it.
Unfortunately there was/is no device supported by postmarketOS that fits that description. You'll need at least good telephony support including 4G features like VoLTE, proper camera support (not potato polaroid from the 80s quality), Wifi, Bluetooth, geolocation, working GPU acceleration, media hardware decoders, decent battery life. And I'm probably forgetting a few things.
Let's hope that initiatives like https://liberux.net/ will help make a fully working, long lasting device available!
I think the only realistic alternative would be to build upon AOSP properly, with Google being just a contributor instead of the owner. But it cannot come from a community fork by someone in their garage, it has to come from Android manufacturers. I was hoping that Huawei would start something like that, instead they went with their own HarmonyOS.