[JayXon]

generate_204 is used to check if a network has internet connection or need to login at captive portal, not sure about Fuchsia but on Android if you don't want to use google server for that, you can disable the feature or change it to use a different url https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/186993/captive-p...

Apple and Microsoft both have something similar but with their own website, and AFAIK there's no way to change the url on iOS.

[1vuio0pswjnm7]

What I meant was remove the code to make these automatic connections to Google servers from the OS source, re-compile and re-install.

That is what I look for in "open source". If I cannot edit, re-compile and re-install, much of the value to me of "open source" is lost.

[dhodell]

But this is not always a fair label to apply. If I release a device running Android that prevents you from using your own Android, that's a problem with me and the device I released, not with Android. This seems to be conflating hardware and software -- which is understandable in the context of operating systems -- but we should be clear about the cause of the problem, which has nothing to do with the openness of the code.