Android is developed by Google until the latest changes and updates are ready to be released, at which point the source code is made available to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP), an open source initiative led by Google.

then it’s not fucking open source

it’s proprietary with a cherry on top, also known as “source-available”, yuck

the “open” in “open source” means a project is developed in the open and open to contributions

@zaire It is open source, it's just using the cathedral development model. By that definition SQLite isn't open source (it doesn't accept third-party contributions) and Emacs wasn't either in the 1990s (when The Cathedral and the Bazaar was written). It used to be quite common for free software projects to not have a public version control repository and only publish releases.

@noisytoot i don’t really care

the spirit of free software is what matters, and keeping development under wraps goes directly against it

@zaire I agree that the bazaar development model is better, but calling AOSP not open source because it’s not developed in public is simply wrong.

Although in this case it’s actually worse because Google does release updates more immediately, but only to OEMs. AOSP isn’t proprietary but the version of Android that most people run is.

@noisytoot AOSP is open source with so so many asterisks we should treat it as what it is, proprietaryslop