> Most of those DEPEND on some proprietary google app that's not part of AOSP.
Do you have something to support this ?
Many apps use Play Services (I guess that's what you are referring to but can usually also work fine without it.
For example on the app I work on, we are integrated with chromecast if you have play services available, if not, we just never display the icon.
Google is constantly pushing their proprietary APIs so a lot apps in practice only work with play services, if you even can get hold of them without the Play store app. they also abandon more and more of the AOSP builtin Apps, new features and are added mostly only to the proprietary counterparts. So a lot of things people might attribute to Android are in fact part of the Google Apps. The direction is clear and AOSP is entirely controlled by google, they could simply decide to not open the next Version or parts of it.
Before Android 2.3.7, AOSP included Google Search, Google Books, Google Talk, the Android Music app, the Android Launcher, Settings, Contacts, Calendar.
In Android 8.0, AOSP does not include any of these anymore.
In Android 8.0, you need to use Google Play services to get Location, Stepcounter, any device sensor, recent TLS on pre-8.0 devices, any of the above apps, background job scheduling (the new JobScheduler only works on 8.0 or Google Play services), and so on.
I've written apps that don't rely on Play Services, I had to reverse engineer and clone half of Play Services to even get a semi-working version.
Nowadays, the source code of a new Android version is released months after the binaries are released, and over half a year before the first binary beta releases are released (Android P's first beta binaries are out today, the source code is expected in december).
You can already build apps for Android P, making use of the new features - if Google gives you the required code, which they only provide to themselves and a selected few developers.
Google makes it as hard as possible to compete fairly, and this has already caught the attention of the EU.
And then, of course, there's the fact that the Chromecast SDK requires Play Services (so you can't use Chromecast on Kindle devices), and that receiving Chromecasts is even entirely impossible at the current time for non-Google devices (these are the reasons why Amazon doesn't support Chromecast, but is instead together with Netflix trying to establish a cross-platform API that can use Amazon's sticks, Miracast devices, Chromecast, and many other devices).
Google has done everything they could to be as anticompetitive as possible, and of course this will lead to legal action. Potentially half of the Android ecosystem at this point may be based on criminally anticompetitive actions.
Google has abandoned most AOSP apps. It has moved large parts of the API into Play Services. Android is not open, what is open is merely an incompatible fragment of an OS.
agree on the issue but I don't think that Play Services is a great exemple.
It has always been closed source and can be replaced in any AOSP build. Google has no obligation to provide open sources apps and services on top of AOSP.
I think you're mixing up AOSP and Google Apps / Play Services.
AOSP is available under a standard open source license, and can be used by anyone under those terms. It's the use of Play Services and Google's Apps that requires specific permission and has relatively onerous terms. CyanogenMod can use Play Services, but it doesn't have to, and seems to be moving away from it entirely.
That is completely unrelated. This is about propriety Google play services. Not about android or aosp. You can anyway run aosp on any number of devices.
> as long as they don't depend on the Google services
A surprising and hilarious number of things, including some of Google's own apps, show "X won't work unless you enable Google Play Services" popups and then continue working just fine. (I'm guessing they link against some client library that shows that on all function calls, but then doesn't throw an exception.)
Android is thoroughly insecure, and proprietary apps do not generally work without Google services. Google has successfully convinced, for example, nearly all apps using location, to use Play Location Services instead of Android Location API. Apps tend to just crash out without Play Services.
Even Microsoft, which is Google's direct competitor for all of these services, hilariously depends on Play Services for nearly all of their Android apps. Office, Skype, etc. all will not run on an Android phone without Google.
I have a Windows Mobile phone these days, and for all the jokes about it being dead: I actually have a wider app selection than AOSP users. Android is a proprietary OS, and almost none of it's apps today are compatible with the open source version.
Android isn't fully functional without the apps you want it to run. And all the apps you want to run require Play Services. With a walled garden like that you have no way around that requirement where it's implemented.
A UI layer you can conceivably replace. App stores have incredible controlling power. But even worse is the Play Services platform: It means even if you get the APK on an AOSP device, it won't run because it's not built to run on Android, the open source project, it's built to run of Google Android, the closed source product.
The realization people need to realize is that Google effectively forked their own OS, and the original has basically no support.
I'm relatively uninformed here, but Google often requires Android app developers to bundle Google Play Services for various features like Chromecast[1]. It is possible that the Mozilla folks needed Google Play Services for some feature.
You're conflating GCM and the wider Google Play Services that is installed on most Android devices. As someone who actually uses AOSP without Google, it weakens your argument when you conflate the two.
I don't think it is baked into the OS.
For exemple, Now on Tap in AOSP is just an 'Assist API' .
Any app can implement this system callback in order to enrich an Assist call and any developer can create an alternative to Now on Tap that will get the exact same data from the device.
AFAIK, All the Google branded apps & Services are part of Play Services. Nothing prevents you doing what Amazon is doing and create a device from AOSP, don't include AOSP and replace it with your own services.
IANAL, but it seems that the focus is on the fact that Play Services comes with a full suite of apps.
Do you have something to support this ? Many apps use Play Services (I guess that's what you are referring to but can usually also work fine without it. For example on the app I work on, we are integrated with chromecast if you have play services available, if not, we just never display the icon.
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