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by vatueil 2603 days ago
The point regarding Play Services is valid, and if the parent comment had focused on that I would not have objected. But that doesn't mean AOSP is a "very small part" of Android or that it isn't open source.

The flip-side of your experience is that it highlights the existence of a large number of Android devices based on AOSP that don't run Google apps, particularly in the PRC. Aside from the Chinese market, you have a major company like Amazon selling millions of devices with their own AOSP fork on them. On an individual level, I can install Lineage OS on my unlocked devices and use apps from F-Droid as well as many others.

Play Services does have a significant foothold in many users' experiences, which bears discussion, but it doesn't invalidate AOSP. It is Android's open source nature that allows for forks and for apps to be shared across the Android ecosystem much more readily than programs developed for an actual proprietary operating system such as Windows.
1 comments
pjmlp 2602 days ago
Apps have been shared across PC-DOS, MS-DOS, DR-DOS, and several Windows variants, exactly the same was as Android for the last 30 years.
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vatueil 2601 days ago
Really, DOS? And new versions of Microsoft Windows? That's not even remotely comparable to the situation with open source Android forks.
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pjmlp 2601 days ago
Yes, really.
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vatueil 2600 days ago
And "Windows variants"? Comparing Windows backwards compatibility to the ability to run Android apps across different Android forks misses the point. All versions of Windows are proprietary operating systems owned by the same company: Microsoft. Amazon Fire OS, Lineage OS, and other Android forks are not.
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pjmlp 2600 days ago
Yes, Windows variants as well.

Microsoft does license Windows to the same OEMs that are having fun with Android, which just like on Android are allowed to do a certain level of customisations.

Windows is not only what comes with a PC.

The only big difference is that AOSP costs zero dollars, euro, yen,.....

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vatueil 2599 days ago
The difference is that it's free and open source. ROMs such as Lineage OS do not need to pay for a commercial license to fork the code, and an app such as F-Droid can run natively on any Android device.
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