TL;DR - Android 16 has been released, but lacks Pixel-specific code, which the Calyx and Graphene developers indicate are going to cause issues for third party builds.
And at least one commentator speculates that Google may fork “Pixel Android” into a closed-source product, where all of its development times goes, while AOSP might continue to exist in a state where its development is dependent on volunteers, making the claim of AOSP’s open source nature “technically correct”. I would add that such a scenario would be troubling as it would be extremely challenging to retain app compatibility over time.
So, here’s to hoping that this is all a big misunderstanding, but given the cast of characters and potential ramifications, it is a story to watch closely in the coming days.
to pixel outsiders, this is more like “pixels are now like the rest of lineageos device trees”, you’ll get GPL kernel sources and have to reconstruct the rest yourselves. Seems to work for most, just 1. isn’t convenient and 2. makes it harder to ship device security fixes very quickly
Edit: that said, this is malicious compliance (the AA article). I guess they target security researchers, not wanting to make their work easier (as with doing device-tree inhouse too):
Furthermore, Google’s decision to squash the kernel source code’s commit history also hinders custom development
It doesn’t sound like Google is purposely trying to make things harder on ROM developers. It sounds like they’re just making it so source trees are not tied to Google hardware. But that wouldn’t be the first time a big evil corpo smoke screened anti-consumer policy changes with a “better for you this way” statement.
If the Pixel is going to be “just like other phones” then I don’t see how that would be an enormous problem unless Google intends to hold back device specific data required by ROM developers. Some makers give developers the middle finger on that data and we don’t see ROMs for those phones. I don’t think Google is that hostile…yet.