People should be able to write software for Android, and distribute it outside Google’s Play store, without having to:
- pay Google
- give government ID to Google
- agree to Google terms and conditions
People should be able to install the software they want on their phone, from sources other than Google’s Play store, without having to jump through Google-imposed hoops.
e.g. via F-Droid.
We’ve got until September this year to stop Google squeezing the open Android ecosystem.
GrapheneOS is currently unaffected, at least specifically regarding your freedom to install apps. They’ve stated this won’t affect GrapheneOS.
The main problem as pointed out by floofloof is that a lot of Android development is no longer part of AOSP, but separate proprietary implementations. For example, if you install stock Android, Google has a feature to recognize music playing around you and provide a list to you later. GrapheneOS lacks this feature, because it relies on proprietary code. Same goes for the features to find your device if it’s lost, AI stuff, etc.
Personally I’d be very heppy if Graphene OS continues long into the future without those features anyway.
Most of them aren’t necessary to most people, but the main concern is features that should reasonably be part of the core Android experience being removed, or features that have no reason to be reliant on Google at all.
For example, GrapheneOS can’t support the detection of your phone being quickly ripped away from you to auto-lock the device, even though that should only require onboard sensors and processing, and it can’t support the additional custom clocks for lock screen customization, because Google decided those would be built into the Google app then extended to Android after, rather than being built into AOSP.
You can reasonably see a future where other functionality gets put into these proprietary blobs too. Maybe the launcher becomes proprietary and GrapheneOS has to use or develop a separate FOSS one that might not support all the same features. Maybe charging optimization gets locked behind proprietary code because Google claims it uses “special algorithms” to adjust how your phone charges. Maybe Private Space gets turned proprietary because Google claims it needs special security features.
That’s why it’s particularly concerning, because in the future, Google could just decide that any number of features aren’t part of AOSP anymore, and now GrapheneOS either has to give them up entirely, or make/find an alternative.