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We’re big fans of open-source buildable code at Fairphone. Here’s why
Quoting: We're big fans of open-source buildable code at Fairphone. Here's why. - Fairphone —
Compared to iOS, Android, at its core, is open-source. It’s in the name of the publicly available, modifiable source code for the Android operating system—AOSP, or Android Open Source Project.
However…
In practice, running a fully functional version of Android on any device requires a lot of proprietary software from various component vendors, including the chipset manufacturer. On top of this, you also have Google’s own proprietary services that have been taken into account. The primary technical challenge is maintaining long-term software compatibility, as the open-source AOSP components must reliably communicate with various vendor-supplied, possibly pre-compiled or binary, components, which need to be adjusted when the operating system is updated.