My Opinion of Google's Android Open Source Project (AOSP)

[Blair Vidakovich]

I am posting this into a few groups, and I think some will appreciate my
attitude to this subject more than others.

Just for transparency, I am posting this message in:

gnu.misc.discuss, alt.religion.emacs, comp.unix.advocacy, alt.os.linux.

--

I have been auditing a lot of google's code for android lately, their
AOSP (android open source project) and i am, in short, surprised and
horrified that it is so poorly documented publicly. virtually all of the
git repos read like this:

- no READMEs quite a lot of the time

- git headline: ''No description, website, or topics provided.''

- a mixture of all the worst corporate languages

- a bizarre mixture of Makefiles and ''soong'', the go build environment
which is virtually undocumented

- quite a bit of the AOSP website is holding your hand through undoing
all of their locking down of android hardware and firmware

- there are like.. 5 devices per manufacturer that have been confirmed

- to ''just work'' with the AOSP code, there is virtually no support for
what i assume is the vast majority of devices, especially cheap ones

- important HOWTOs and INSTALL files are rendered inside the google git
environment as text file laden with dense unrendered HTML markip
code, making them impossible to read

- the most logical way of organising the code, to my mind, would have
been to reference the releases against the Qualcomm/Allwinner chipsets
etc, instead of by device corporate brand and tablet/phone model

- it is a jumble and a complete mess

overall it gives the impression of a complete lack of transparency and
effort to educate people to bring them up to speed with the aims,
workflow, and history of the android project

you kind of ''had to be there'' when the frankly bizarre and ugly design
choices were made in the operating system