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"Why is #Android such a hellscape?" Part 1 - Licences

How much does "open source" mean if you have to go through 6 circles of legal hell to publish your work? "Not fucking much", I would say.

I've never had an Android device that doesn't require some kind of "proprietary blobs" to run, and the practical impact of this is a) building your own OS is a soupy hell (bless LineageOS devs for trying to make this easier, but it's still a nightmare) and b) once you've built your image, your choices of where to host it are limited to 1337-w4r3z-y sites that are going to (rightly) scare off almost everyone.

You'd think #Google, one of the world's biggest and creepiest companies could use its wide influence to make companies using Android play ball - "negotiate a licence so that people can freely distribute the drivers for your hardware, otherwise we'll change the first google result for 'samsung' to a dick pic" would be my suggested abuse of their monopoly power - but you would be wrong.