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Custom ROMs have had just about enough of being Android's second-class citizens
(www.androidauthority.com)
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this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2024
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Here's my take which i have not seen in this thread. When you buy your hardware it is yours you should be allowed to do with it as you please. If you want to wipe the device and install another ROM or os you should be able to. Much like the recent fight for "right to repair" not allowing you to do what you want with your property should not be allowed. As long as the manufacturer blocks your ability to do what you want with your hardware it isn't really your hardware.
Unfortunately that line of thinking stops at the divide between hardware and software. You can legally make a phone manufacturer let you unlock a phone's bootloader so you can install other software, and you can forbid them from denying hardware warranty because you installed other software. Both of which apply in the EU.
But you can't make them have their software support or play nice with the other software that you install.
You also can't force manufacturers to open up drivers if they're under NDAs and proprietary licensing (which they often are, due to extensive cross licensing because everybody's owning patents that can lead to everybody suing everybody if they were ever used).
To combat this I think drivers, firmware, etc. should be acknowledged as being in the same category as spare parts, manuals, repair tools, etc. They are equally as vital to being able to repair your device, and therefore should be open sourced at the latest when a manufacturer pulls support. Of course I would prefer them to be open sourced immediately, but with how software IP works currently that seems like a pipe dream, especially for devices with very complex drivers, like GPU's.