Comment on Why can computers, like even very old laptops can seemingly get OS updates forever, while mobile devices hardly get a few years of updates before getting stuck out of date?

• FooBarrington@lemmy.world ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  The APIs are part of the Linux Kernel, so you’d be forcing the Kernel to completely change their development policy of internal breakages being allowed. That’s a no-go.

  source

  • olafurp@lemmy.world ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Not necessarily. The drivers in the kernel are already released and free to use and can be linked to as long as the software linking it retains the GNU license or can claim that it’s a separate service (such as an API or separately installed service) or it has to be installed afterwards like proprietary nvidia drivers.

    Either way the source code is released and if the drivers want to retain the proprietary license they the community can make a way to download and compile the driver for the current OS after install. This will save a ridiculous amount of dev time and make Linux phone OS development much easier.

    source

    • FooBarrington@lemmy.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      There’s really no way to do this without making the whole driver source-available, as there’s no way to update it to a new Kernel without full source access. That’d be great, but the manufacturers will fight tooth-and-nail against that, especially since the drivers can contain trade secrets.

      source