As long as there is also a minimum support window, say 3+ years, and full specs and source are community released, then why not?
The important part could easily be ensuring that older hardware can be accessed. We need an end to binary blobs, or, to force long term blob support and updates.
I imagine a scenario where you pay $20 per year for support and updates for your old device, to a third party.
Or of course, there could be foundations, compile it yourself, etc too.
But if the environment is the reason, why not share the load?
Manufacturers publishing code, sources, and docs is not trivial in of itself.
I'm not a fan of it, because that basically means that Google asks the community to take up the bill for a service they sell at extraordinarily high price.
I know that's the case for lots of open-source software, but since we're coming to that topic, Google's open-source policy that produces software that is either tightly aligned with their own interest (Chrome) or barely usable without their proprietary ecosystem (Android) is shameful. Quite frankly, I would much rather see open-source communities work on linux phones, no matter how useless that may be.
Another reason I'm not a fan of it is that if Google is allowed to transfer their responsibility to a community, I'm willing to bet that their initial support duration will drop even more, and that any issue will be blamed on open-source maintainers, log4j-style.
> But if the environment is the reason, why not share the load?
Does Google share the profits? Is their Android business barely profitable to justify getting free labour?
As long as there is also a minimum support window, say 3+ years, and full specs and source are community released, then why not?
The important part could easily be ensuring that older hardware can be accessed. We need an end to binary blobs, or, to force long term blob support and updates.
I imagine a scenario where you pay $20 per year for support and updates for your old device, to a third party.
Or of course, there could be foundations, compile it yourself, etc too.
But if the environment is the reason, why not share the load?
Manufacturers publishing code, sources, and docs is not trivial in of itself.