Google’s Android, the world’s most widely used mobile operating system, started life as open-source software. In its quest for ever-greater profits, the tech giant has been gradually eroding Android’s open-source capacity over the last decade.

Google’s Android, the world’s most widely used mobile operating system, started life as open-source software. In its quest for ever-greater profits, the tech giant has been gradually eroding Android’s open-source nature over the last decade.

Originally published on The Lever, but that one asks you to sign up.

  • redhat421@lemmy.worldEnglish
    31·
    2 days ago

    Those apps are installed in the squashfs image. Such images are write once, read many and thus they can’t be mutated at runtime.

    • youmaynotknow@lemmy.mlEnglish
      11·
      2 days ago

      I know, and that’s exactly my point. They used to be in the user space, now they are in the system partition. They CHOSE to do this.

      • redhat421@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        3 hours ago

        Yeah. That’s a good point. I don’t know why anyone would put any frequently updated app in squashfs.

        I guess you can use the app right after you factory reset even if you don’t have much data which might be something? Are updates smaller since they’re just deltas?