alt Hacker NewsIf they hard fork, a lot of apps that are generally "necessary for the average person" (e.g. Uber, banking apps, Gmail, Whatsapp/Wechat/Line) might stop working.
Replies
Yes, but there is no alternative other than giving up. Starting a new OS from scratch with zero apps is a much worse starting point compared to a platform where 99.9% of apps work (minus those relying on Play Integrity with strong integrity) which may have its rug pulled in the future. The race here is about getting to a big enough market share that GrapheneOS cannot just be ignored as completely niche but has to be treated as a small but not insignificant minority.
It's not ideal, but in the case a hard fork happens, they could implement the same APIs and most apps will probably continue to work. Similar to how microG is a replacement for Play Services and still works for most apps (not as well as sandboxed Google Play of course).
Above that, not much would change for a few years anyway, because apps still target ancient Android versions.
Sure, but what could graphene do in the meantime? It's either make it work for the moment or stop those apps from working today.
I'd like to see them lay more ground work for web apps but it's a tough spot and the easiest choice at the moment is to continue with AOSP.