[Yetanfou]

Linux was started by a student and brought into the limelight by volunteers. While the current development is largely paid for by corporations the essence of the thing is still the same, Linux-the-kernel is free software and can be forked by anyone who so pleases. If those corporations all were to loose interest, go bankrupt or suddenly decide they want to change Linux into a DRM-infested monster which only listens to its corporate master it would be a simple thing to fork the thing and ditch the corporate version. What would be less simple is the answer to the question who would pay for future development and how drivers would be written if and when hardware manufacturers started acting up but it would not be impossible to go that way. OpenBSD is a good example of a system which is developed without too much corporate funding, the concept has been tried and tested and is known to work.

[_bxg1]

This theoretical situation is precisely the one Android is in. The only difference is that Google is the only corporate stakeholder, so as they lose interest in various open-source Android components, those components simply die. Maybe the answer is to get more corporations invested in AOSP.

[bennofs]

A big difference is that development of Android is done behind closed doors, whereas for Linux you can observe what is happening in public (discussions on the mailing lists for example). This means that it's essentially impossible to follow or contribute to Android development in a meaningful way. This is also reflected in the fact that there are open issues in Android with almost no reaction from any developer for years.

[_bxg1]

"it would be a simple thing to fork the thing and ditch the corporate version"

^ This is what I was speaking to. This holds for Android.

[swiley]

A large portion of the components needed to boot (not to mention use) android have always been closed. This is absolutely not the case for Linux. You can boot a totally free kernel on most PCs and don't really even need much userspace (busybox and whatever app you want to run (provided it doesn't need X11) is usually enough)

Furthermore, android really wasn't built to be easy for individuals to work on. Compare compiling and modifying Linux to compiling and modifying android. I've done the first but I don't think I've ever even finished downloading the source (tens to hundreds of gigabytes) to even start with the second.

[_bxg1]

Those components are presumably hardware drivers, right? In which case they're kept closed-source by the OEMs, and in which case you'd face the same problem whether you're putting Android on top of them or not. The solution in either case is to develop open source drivers. This is true regardless of whether you start with Android or go back to the Linux kernel and start over.

[swiley]

On modern Linux the drivers are part of the kernel which puts them under the GPL, legally obligating the release of their source code. On android the graphics drivers are part of userspace which lets the authors get around this.