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Custom ROMs have had just about enough of being Android's second-class citizens
(www.androidauthority.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Here's a harsh truth and a reality some tech users need to wake up to.
Google has never cared about open-source. They have never cared about user-choice/user freedom. They could easily tomorrow make Android closed-source and that would be the end of Android. It has always been about control. Apple got that authoritarian idea correct long ago by locking down the entire OS.
Google is allowing open-source modding only because there's a large community out there that cares and wants it to thrive. And since it runs on Linux, it would make Google look VERY bad if they removed bootloader unlocking, open source, removed features that causes issues for custom roms.
Google doesn't care you YOU. If they really cared, they wouldn't be slowly removing features or adding anti-user features that in the long run, don't benefit anyone but them.
I'm glad the government declared them a convicted monopoly. I'm still ashamed it took them this long to finally go through with it.
What an insane world we live in.
There is another side to this coin though,
Android roms took googles work. The community could have assisted with other mobile os systems like Firefox OS or Ubuntu mobile but didn't.
Instead ROM developers wanted a cookie cutter solution.
In practice, Android is actually fairly open. Republicans have a weird obsession with Google (remember that weird hearing where they clearly didn't understand technology). You can even disable the inbuilt apps
This could lead to a situation like windows where 50 popups are added. It's could backfire and it benefits Apple a lot. That's what I'm concerned about. I'm worried that I'll end up paying for Gmail or more for Android. And Google will get blamed for it
Android ROMs community took Google's work? Are you forgetting which community developed Kernel does Android use? Let's not think about the custom ROMs community as free loaders, please. They provide a free and amazing service.