They do have a high quality product. And then you have to buy their next high quality product instead of continuing to use the old one. Their products are hardware, not drivers, and they get more money by selling more hardware rather than letting old hardware get updated.
Can't use the hardware without the drivers. If the driver is low quality proprietary code that can't be fixed or updated, they don't have a high quality product.
And yet here we all are with umpty billion Qualcomm SoCs floating around and nobody complaining about how Qualcomm's chips don't work well (except, of course, in comparison to Apple's).
The hard reality that Linux kernel driver model stalwarts must face is that the only measure that matters to these companies is profit margin, and the economics just are not in favor of upstreaming their drivers. So knowing that, do we continue to yell into the night or do we implement a solution that doesn't leave umpty billion devices without kernel security updates?
> So knowing that, do we continue to yell into the night or do we implement a solution that doesn't leave umpty billion devices without kernel security updates?
Absolutely. Google has more than enough power and leverage to solve this problem. Why doesn't it require manufacturers to upstream their drivers instead of enabling their shitty industry practices? Literally just make it a requirement for Google Play services licensing or something. The phone manufacturers will be forced to require it from the chip manufacturers as well.
Google already does a lot of good work getting open source firmware into chromebooks. It should do even more. Use all that intellectual property for good for once.
> Do they not care about having a high quality product?
No.
They care about maximizing shareholder value. If shipping lots of hardware with barely functional drivers integrators need to beat up into shape makes the most profit, that's what they'll do.
If you spend $20K more on making the software work, then it pays off paying $1 less for a part with a crappy driver than buying one from a vendor who also provides great software for anything you intend to sell more than 20K units.
Nowadays, a lot of products go out of production and are replaced by the next model before they have time to settle and get a consumer reputation. It sometimes feels like they do only 1 production run per model and then bye-bye. So, quick and "good enough", "as good" or "not worse than others" is good enough :-/
Do they not care about having a high quality product?