Re: Android port

[Konstantin Kharlamov]

On Sat, 2023-01-28 at 17:57 +0800, Po Lu wrote:
> Google is working on allowing the proprietary drivers to run alongside
> any version of Linux, not on removing them entirely.
> 
> Google themselves develop Play Services, arguably the most problematic
> piece of proprietary software in Android.
> 
> > The link Jean posted is just one of (free and open source) derivatives of
> > Android platform. The other one very popular comes to mind was CyanogenMod,
> > which later was succeeded by LineageOS.
> 
> LineageOS and CyanogenMod are not free software, because both contain
> proprietary device driver files, and in the case of CyanogenMod,
> proprietary user level libraries as well.
> 
> AOSP, on the other hand, is really free software.  But that doesn't help
> when you can only run it in an emulator.
> 
> If you had read the Android appendix of the Emacs manual, you would have
> seen that it explains this situation:

I didn't because a link to the branch was never posted in the thread ☺

Either way, now I see the point you are trying to make as you're using an
expression "from a practical standpoint it is closed". So, like, in theory it is
open, but in practice no device runs the original Android.

In my head I still can't connect the relevance of that "practice" to Emacs
Android  port though, because you can treat the port as a program that is
supposed to run on the original open platform, and then, almost "accidentally"
(not really, but I hope you see my point), as an app that can run on any other
Android device…

But I won't be going into that further because my main motivation for
participation was to make sure your work on making the port isn't wasted, which,
judging by your reply, seem to have been resolved before I joined.

So, anyway, thanks for your work!