It feel like we’re losing to Google, day by day. They aren’t killing AOSP directly, but they are making it useless step by step.
Now it’s Google Play Services, Play Integrity checks, installation source checks… more and more apps just refuse to run without GMS. Banking apps? Most of them don’t work. And it’s only getting worse. I run vanilla AOSP on my main profile, no Play Services. I keep GMS only in my work profile for the apps that absolutely need it. But now even some regular apps that don’t need any play services won’t work on my main profile anymore. They simply block your from running , like le chat.
Maps is google’s most important app there is no way to run without play services. Sure we can use webview or gmaps wv, but they don’t provide turn-by-turn directions. Earlier maps used to work without play services, but two years ago, an update stopped it from working. Now that old version is out of date and no longer works.
Google is slowly making GMS very important to run. The problem with GMS is they require to run as system app and has to have all the permissions by default.
Hope EU puts pressure to make google allow apps to run independently without GMS or atleast install them as user apps(like graphene os sandboxed play services).
If we keep going on like this, AOSP can only run fdroid apps in the future.
That’s the point of the original post though. Google is starting to make development of these custom ROMs more difficult. If Google ever decided to lock down the bootloader for new Pixels, Graphene would be in a world of hurt. I also use GrapheneOS and love it, but who knows if it will be alive two or three years from now.
My point is its absolutely absurd to yell that AOSP is dead because GOOGLE SPECIFIC files such as device trees and firmware files (that maybe one or two other oems regularly distribute) and just jump ship to a platform arguably over a decade behind. Are there concerns? Yes, but those concerns are absolutely nowhere near close to justify the absolute mess the mobile linux space is in. It would be like if amazon packages starting arriving a day late and we all switched to aliexpress.