Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by NotPavlovsDog 1906 days ago
I'm glad that that xiaomi eu incident I shared has served as a warning for you and perhaps others, but saddened that it took place and perhaps represents the broad state of android custom ROM development.

I've avoided Android development as much as I could - it's a mess. Right now I am actively reviewing what my options are for some older hardware that I would hate to toss just because of no updates. So far I unfortunately don't have any other positive suggestions, outside of Lineage and the few software/app developers that have a serious approach to development, such as Magisk for root access.

What I have seen on XDA forums was not inspiring, unfortunately. I regret not being able to suggest anyone else, so I suppose it's the unsatisfactory general "do your own research and be extremely wary" recommendation/warning.

XDA forums even have a sticky post for developers about respecting the GPL, yet most custom ROM builders don't share code nor a build manifest nor a report of what different licensed code / binary is included in their build, thinking that linking to the original GPLd code, such as xiaomi's GNU/Linux kernel github page, is enough.

Is this a satisfactory approach to you? Let us leave out the whole "spirit of the thing" debate, Free Software etc -

knowing what code your application includes, crediting it, listing the different licenses and having a manifest of binary blobs is mandatory if not for the reason of keeping track and having a sane development workflow.

So, if the majority of the ROM developers don't do it, that is an avoid them sign to me.