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A comment on MicroG Project: A re-implementation of Google's Android apps and libraries. Parent comment

Re:MicroG Project: A re-implementation of Google's Android a... by sunnyps on Thursday November 03, 2016 @07:38PM (#12869115)
I find the browser complaint funny because they've moved to Chrome which even has an open development model[1] (Android does not). Chrome is also used for the WebView implementation starting in KitKat[2] (made updateable via Play Store in Lollipop). All of this code is open-source and also openly developed (which means code review, bug tracker, mailing lists, design docs are public).

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12578134

[2] https://developer.chrome.com/multidevice/webview/overview

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Re:MicroG Project: A re-implementation of Google's Android a... by GranPC on Thursday November 03, 2016 @08:07PM (#12869311)
Chrome for Android is only open source as of a few months ago. Before that, the UI was entirely proprietary.
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Re:MicroG Project: A re-implementation of Google's Android a... by lucideer on Friday November 04, 2016 @01:08PM (#12874126)
This may seem like pedantry, but neither Chrome for desktop, nor Chrome for Android are open source.

I'd see the main general motivations for something like MicroG as being a sense of trust, privacy, control. As long as even 0.1% of any packaged end-product is closed source, this isn't possible.

From https://developer.chrome.com/multidevice/faq :

> Is Chrome for Android open source?

> Chrome for Android is derived from Chromium. Since the launch of the first version, we have steadily open sourced all the critical components. You can build various Chromium components for Android as used in Chrome for Android using the instructions here.

This is just a long way of saying "no"

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Re:MicroG Project: A re-implementation of Google's Android a... by sunnyps on Thursday November 03, 2016 @09:30PM (#12869684)
Ah, yes the UI was upstreamed only recently. However it was possible to build Chromium on Android either as "content_shell" (minimalistic UI on top of Chromium) or as WebView.
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