Re: [MAINTAINERS SUMMIT] Between a rock and a hard place, managing expectations...

[Bart Van Assche <bvanassche@acm.org>]

On 8/24/23 10:20, Bird, Tim wrote:
> Sony has had experiences where GKI prevented us from making changes 
> to the kernel to address issues raised in carrier certification, 
> causing delays and extra (very funky) workarounds, since we couldn't
> change kernel code directly.  Google is not very responsive to 
> non-top-tier phone vendors, and using GKI you are essentially at 
> their mercy.  GKI, for us, removed some of the value of open source 
> (ie, the ability to modify the source to suit our needs).

Since I'm a Google employee: can you give an example of Google not being
very responsive, e.g. a bug number or patch URL? All the phone vendor
requests I have seen are processed in a reasonable time.

The quality of the Android kernel patches that I have seen and that are 
sent directly to Google is often low. Sometimes there is no other way to 
describe these as a nightmare from the point of view of code maintenance.

The GKI indeed makes changes to the core kernel harder after its API has 
been frozen. Does carrier certification really require changes to the 
core kernel?

Thanks,

Bart.