I think it would still be a good question to ponder, even though that isn’t what has happened yet.
What IF Google decided future versions were closed source? How would that not affect our open source alternatives?
Google can decide all they want, but they can’t close source Android due to the GPL.
https://source.android.com/docs/setup/contribute/licenses says most of the Android userspace is Apache 2 licensed. While they can’t close source the Android branch of the kernel, they could close-source new userspace code and it would probably diverge from the last open source release quite quickly.
Realistically, that would probably be sufficent to make Android functionally closed-source, even if the GPL bits were still available.
Pretty much nothing, because 99% of what everybody uses is proprietary blobs on top of Android anyway. The Andriod open source is absolute minimum barebones, with MS Paint like UI and basically no UX.
What happens? (If, because again, that’s not what has happened, so far.)
- GrapheneOS would continue, but probably not manage compatibility with the next Pixel phone.
- Various forks of Android Open Source get created, with mixed success. Existing phones will keep working, new phones with proprietary servers drivers are much less likely to work.
- We create something like
ndiswrapperto help us extract weird new phone hardware drivers and make them work with open operating systems. - The fully open phone hardware projects suddenly get a bunch of new customers.
The last point is the only thing I’m confident is preventing Google from taking their fork of AOSP fully closed. (Yes, I know it wouldn’t be legal. But I’m not sure their lawyers think they would be held accountable. Most people don’t understand the existing laws Google already breaks daily since purchasing YouTube.)
