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0 pointspiaste2y ago0 comments

I'm on GrapheneOS now and the OTA updates are as automatic as on Google Android. I imagine they went with the first option you listed, since they famously ship Google Apps as a sandboxed unprivileged optional package through their own mini-app store. Do you have any idea how they got around those licensing requirements?

Big fan of Lineage, btw. Before getting a Pixel, Lineage (and its innumerable spinoffs) allowed me to use the excellent hardware of Xiaomi phones without their godawful software.

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timschumi2y ago· 2 in thread

> I imagine they went with the first option you listed, since they famously ship Google Apps as a sandboxed unprivileged optional package through their own mini-app store. Do you have any idea how they got around those licensing requirements?

The important difference (I imagine) is that they still don't deliver Google Apps built into the ROM (which was what Google was disagreeing with 15 years ago).

The current consensus is that it's OK for a separate Google Apps package to exist, and that Google will turn somewhat of a blind eye under the assumption that the package will only be used on devices that have been licensed for use of Google Apps by their respective OEM.

piasteOP2y ago

Thanks for the response. It makes sense, for sure.

Gonna drop a wild take - if it's such a problem, have you thought about straight up merging the mini-app store and sandboxed GPS package from the GrapheneOS codebase? I know that they focus on Pixels only due to a lot of low-level security features, but I don't think the GPS sandboxing relies on that.

Obviously it would take a lot of work but it seems that the solution ought to work just as well for any other Android replacement.

Or, to throw another wild guess, are you perhaps concerned that the "blind eye" only extends to Graphene, since they target Google's own devices only (and are lower profile in general, and also apparently contribute a lot of upstream code), while Lineage is much more widespread and well-known so it wouldn't get treated as nicely?

timschumi2y ago

> if it's such a problem, have you thought about straight up merging the mini-app store and sandboxed GPS package from the GrapheneOS codebase?

I'm sure at least someone has thought about doing that. However, including any amount of GrapheneOS code is considered a no-go.

> Or, to throw another wild guess, are you perhaps concerned that the "blind eye" only extends to Graphene, since they target Google's own devices only [...]

The "blind eye" in this case is the assumption that the permission to use Google Apps is attached to the device, not the software that is running on it (I'm not sure if this was ever communicated by Google in private or publicly).

While GrapheneOS still has the lowest amount of friction (because they only ever ship the devices that Google ships, with the respectively matching Android version), we hope that this licensing assumption applies to everyone equally.

> (and are lower profile in general, and also apparently contribute a lot of upstream code), while Lineage is much more widespread and well-known so it wouldn't get treated as nicely?

LineageOS being somewhat well-known and wide-spread is indeed something to be considered. As an example, PixelExperience both ships Google Apps built-in and has obvious points of conflict in regards to trademark issues, yet continues existing. We are not keen on finding out whether Google has changed their stance or whether PixelExperience is simply small enough to be flying under Google's lawyers' radars.

For what it's worth, we regularly try to contribute upstream as well, but get ghosted most of the time on things that aren't trivial. :^)

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