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AOSP Source Releases Are So Late Developers Disassemble Libraries to Report Bugs

470 points • by tharen • today at 6:18 AM • 233 comments • view on HN

Comments

kodebach • today at 7:38 AM

I can't prove it, but I still think this is (partly) due to a recent EU regulation majorly backfiring. I can't remember which one it was, but one of the recent regulations mandates that devices get updates for a certain period. Within that period a manufacturer must provide each update for all their devices in a short timeframe. The intention was to prevent flagships getting updates immediately and lower end devices having to wait months. However, due to some (also well intentioned) wording about open source, the release of the source code is counted as the first release of an update and starts the timer. I'm pretty sure Google is delaying public AOSP updates to give their partners (mainly Samsung I suppose) more time to finish building their updates on top of AOSP.

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userbinator • today at 7:14 AM

One character: a plain compare loop. Correct.

Not surprisingly, I get slight hints of Claudism in the text.

AI "opening" the source of software is one of the best things I've seen going for it so far.

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reddalo • today at 7:11 AM

The new Google motto seems to be "be as evil as you can".

We need an Android alternative, something that respects users' freedom.

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dethos • today at 10:00 AM

We need a third option. Be it SalfishOS, Ubuntu Touch, Nura, or whatever picks up with a sizable community. We just need to start developing and investing in that one. It won't be perfect, but it will offer an alternative and control to the users.

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Retr0id • today at 9:16 AM

It'd be mildly amusing if this led to someone doing an AI-powered decompilation of AOSP.

evan_a_a • today at 9:43 AM

Bit of a hyperbolistic title. The core of the bug report doesn't require disassembly of the library. The bug author just went the extra step to do a root cause investigation, which of course requires light reversing work.

duttonw • today at 6:55 AM

Google not releasing won’t help now in the ai age….

lrvick • today at 3:59 PM

Soon it will all be reverse engineered including all the proprietary binary blobs, and Google will not be able to do a thing about it.

typ • today at 8:10 AM

Given the current trajectory of all things, I think that the drawbacks will outweigh the benefits for a project like AOSP due to the changing economics. The reduction of SBOM (and therefore the attack surface) will be far more beneficial than the saving of work from hundreds of imported dependencies. The trend of vertical integration will likely happen in software sooner or later.

mentalgear • today at 7:27 AM

I wonder if they use already / what their experience is with "REA Reverse – Engineer Anything" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50028275).

pjmlp • today at 8:00 AM

Good look with NDK issues, having the source code available would not help much anyway.

NDK seems to be handled like a 20% project in terms of allocated resources, I bet it has not more that like 2 FTEs, given its progress since Android 2.1.

senfiaj • today at 10:48 AM

AI is starting to successfully decompile binaries, unless the binary isn't purposefully obfuscated, I guess it's almost "open source".

slim • today at 6:55 AM

It's time to fork it

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jackdaniel • today at 7:09 AM

corporate incentives turned into a laughing stock :p

lenerdenator • today at 4:19 PM

Remember when everyone was thinking of Google as a trustworthy partner in free and open-source software?

Man, the early '10s were wild, man.

kogasa240p • today at 3:56 PM

Wouldn't it be better to start focusing energy onto projects like PostmarketOS (now Nura)? Sure the Linux phone space on the hardware side is a bit barren, but there are options and you don't really need top of the line specs to get something working; you could even use an SBC with a cellular modem peripheral to have a cellphone replacement.

raverbashing • today at 8:13 AM

Is it just me or Google has a lot of those silly bugs, where it seems nobody is thinking for 2 seconds on what they're actually doing?

NooneAtAll3 • today at 8:49 AM

just fork the android already, ffs

jjjegly • today at 8:52 AM

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jjjegly • today at 8:48 AM

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tangyumin • today at 8:08 AM

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mentalgear • today at 7:28 AM

Fork them!

yieldcrv • today at 7:09 AM

every generation of control freak eventually gets tired of Android as the features that actually have market traction get merged into iOS

just hang up the hat and never look back

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