Linux Android and the Linux kernel community

vishalrao

vishalrao

Global Moral Police
Level J
Got this link off a slashdork post: linux kernel monkey log

What's wrong?

So, what happened with the Android kernel code that caused it to be deleted? In short, no one cared about the code, so it was removed. As I've stated before, code in the staging tree needs to be worked on to be merged to the main kernel tree, or it will be deleted.
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Because of this, Google has now prevented a large chunk of hardware drivers and platform code from ever getting merged into the main kernel tree. Effectively creating a kernel branch that a number of different vendors are now relying on.
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So, what to do?

I really don't know. Google shows no sign of working to get their code upstream anymore. Some companies are trying to strip the Android-specific interfaces from their codebase and push that upstream, but that causes a much larger engineering effort, and is a pain that just should not be necessary.
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Hope

I do hold out hope that Google does come around and works to fix their codebase to get it merged upstream to stop the huge blockage that they have now caused in a large number of embedded Linux hardware companies.
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What scared me was the comment "all of the existing "Linux Phone Consortium" groups are doomed and will probably close up silently very soon now, if they haven't already." !

DEATH TO ANDROID! LONG LIVE MAEMO! :D
 
Don't jump to conclusions. Android is here to stay. Google has the money and resources to pull in new kernel snapshots every year/year and a half and rebase their patches to it.

That said, I am definitely against google in this and expect them to work with the kernel devs to merge their work upstream..not because it would benefit the kernel but because it would help android much more in the longer run
 
Ahh @OP, correct, I was foreseeing that as something that would google would stumble upon and am not surprised. However, its far fetched to sign off android. Lets see how google gets back.

+LT
 
Ahh @OP, correct, I was foreseeing that as something that would google would stumble upon and am not surprised. However, its far fetched to sign off android. Lets see how google gets back.

+LT
 
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