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

["Bird, Tim" <Tim.Bird@sony.com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mark Brown <broonie@kernel.org>
> On Thu, Aug 24, 2023 at 10:16:31AM +0200, Linus Walleij wrote:
> 
> > Since then they come a long way, after a few generations of lost
> > hardware that the kernel never supported properly, Android is
> > pushing the Generic Kernel Image and being more restrictive about
> > proprietary extensions every day. It's going the right way.
> > Todd Kjos at Google and Greg Kroah-Hartman from the community
> > have been instrumental here.
> 
> I do have some concerns about the effects of GKI on framework
> improvements, by making it difficult for vendors to update any of the
> shared APIs it pushes them into implementing anything they can't get
> from the frameworks in their drivers instead.  This means if they're
> going to upstream things and do the best job possible they'll end up
> working on multiple versions which provides a bunch of stop energy.
> Life will be much easier for vendors if they just worry about their
> specific devices as much as possible.

For an alternative perspective on GKI, I'm not a big fan of it.  The contractual
nature of the agreement with Google to use it is arguably a GPL violation.
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).

 -- Tim