[haukem]

> If we make our own device with an OEM using Snapdragon, we'd have access to most of the sources for their driver libraries/services and a lot of firmware. It's not open source but OEMs have access.

Is it normal that phone OEMs have access to most of the source code of the kernel drivers and user space libraries provided by the SoC vendor.

I worked in the home router business and there it was normal that a OEM gets most of the kernel drivers and user space code in source code, but it was often restricted what they are allowed to publish in source code. Many vendors even published much less than they had to according to GPL and allowed by the SoC vendor.

I have heard that in the smart TV industry OEMs sometimes are only allowed to write an app and have no kernel source code access for their product.

[strcat]

Kernel drivers for all of the main Android hardware platforms are fully open source. It's the userspace libraries/services which tend to have a lot of code that's not open source. At least for Snapdragon, that's shared with OEMs so can be modified and built by them. Snapdragon also shares major parts of the firmware sources with OEMs too. Some parts of the firmware are open source.