Re: Android port (was: gnulib fsusage)

[Konstantin Kharlamov <hi-angel@yandex.ru>]

On Sat, 2023-01-28 at 10:49 +0200, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > From: Konstantin Kharlamov <hi-angel@yandex.ru>
> > Cc: luangruo@yahoo.com, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> > Date: Sat, 28 Jan 2023 10:50:02 +0300
> > 
> > On Fri, 2023-01-20 at 09:19 +0200, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > > > Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2023 09:47:34 +0300
> > > > From: Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support>
> > > > Cc: Po Lu <luangruo@yahoo.com>, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> > > > 
> > > > * Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> [2023-01-19 17:28]:
> > > > > First, we need to decide whether we indeed want to have this in Emacs.
> > > > > Android is not a free platform, so when its support comes with a lot
> > > > > of additional non-trivial code that we'd need to understand and
> > > > > support/maintain (including a lot of Java), we had better discussed
> > > > > that first.
> > > > 
> > > > Replicant is free platform.
> > > 
> > > That fact is not relevant to this discussion.
> > 
> > I think the point Jean meant to make is that Android platform per se isn't
> > closed, even if the unfortunate situation is that many vendors ship a lot of
> > closed code, mainly drivers (tho situation with closed drivers is slowly
> > improving, Google seem to be working on that).
> > 
> > The link Jean posted is just one of (free and open source) derivatives of
> > Android platform. The other one very popular comes to mind was CyanogenMod,
> > which later was succeeded by LineageOS.
> 
> Since the absolute majority of Android devices out there are non-free,
> the fact that a small number of free ones exist is not relevant to
> the main points of this discussion.

You seem to be confusing a platform per se with customer devices it installed on. The Android platform is free: it has its sources open, it is being developed in the open, and it even has derivatives.

The unfortunate fact that majority of the customer devices has a *modified* Android where the modifications were not released in the public is in my opinion irrelevant. That is because you are not developing against specific proprietary device, instead you are developing against open Android libraries, which are supported by those devices anyway.