The future of Android as an Open Source project
If the court ended up forcing Google to sell Android, shouldn't we worry that its license as an open source project could be removed and then it become proprietary?
Any part that is already open source will eternally be open source. Furthermore, there are rules about using open source code in projects that requires them to also be open source.
This is entirely untrue.
Any part that is already open source will eternally be open source.
Only in the state that it is right now. Google could at any point simply stop releasing the source code with no warning and make all further modifications proprietary.
there are rules about using open source code in projects that requires them to also be open source.
That is only true for copyleft licenses. Licenses that are merely "open source" (also called "permissive") such as the Apache License 2.0 which the AOSP is licensed under do not give two hoots about what you do with the code as long as you give appropriate credit.
The only part of Android that has a copyleft license is the Linux kernel (GPLv2) and I wouldn't really consider it part of the AOSP in practice.
It’s not entirely untrue. You did however add some relevant details. Thank you for making this more precise.
The point is: Android phone owners would still be fine if Google went full-proprietary at some point. A majority of the code would/could be forked and maintained.
Or a project like GrapheneOS that’s already based on Android code would be expanded to fill the void.
i think it would probably go the other way. google has closed down so much of the android core system that they would probably respond to the court by opening those parts back up.
Google is only going to "respond" by doing things it's explicitly ordered to comply with and of course extremely reluctantly; only doing the bare minimum that could be seen as complying.
They sure as hell aren't going to open up the google surveillance services unless explicitly and specifically forced to do so by a court.
yeah but if they're forced to part with them they may believe it better for their market position to strip all the secret stuff out and just disown the rest.
You should worry about that in any case. The writing has been on the wall for quite some time now.