I am almost certain there would be two major impacts from that. The first being that operating system development would slow to the pace that the community wishes instead of having big money behind it. And the second is that security updates would come quite a bit faster.
Edit: I figure brand new major features would be slower in coming. But security would be improved.
I figure brand new major features would be slower in coming. But security would be improved.
I feel there's going to be an element of "old man yells at cloud" here, but that isn't inherently a bad thing. I just use Windows at work at the moment but there's very little I do in Windows that I couldn't do as far back as Windows XP as long as driver support kept up. I don't use it for the OS, the OS just enables me to use the applications I need.
Same with MacOS. I know Apple always act like every minor enhancement is the greatest thing ever (look, we added Tabs to Finder 🤩), but ultimately the OS is there to act as the pathway between my applications and my hardware.
If the focus switched from features to security, would we really lose anything of value? At a minimum I wouldn't have family contacting me cause their PC looks different than it did previously (looking at you centralised Windows taskbar 👀).
The operating system that runs most servers, a lot of them doing web cloud and networking, with high levels of security (developed by security companies) is open source, the *BSD distributions and also Linux.
But I also have doubts if this is the right move.
What does it mean to "open up" an operating system in this context? Do they mean something like the possibility to intall other OSes on their devices, or that the app stores needs to be more open? I'm guessing it does not mean they have to start open source:ing parts of the OS... or?
I would love if device makers were forced to open up their hardware to other OSs. Unlockable bootloaders for all as well as allowing users to install their own signing keys so secure boot can remain enabled.
Granted, there would still be black box firmware required to use half the components inside, but that's another battle.
This should be a right of the consumer that purchased the hardware. Same goes for gaming consoles. You used to be able to officially install Linux on a PlayStation.
Rather than waiting around for the legal system to nanny me, I've gone ahead and committed to only purchase hardware that does not attempt to restrict me.
The thing with AOSP though, that it has the potential to stand on its own, given a talented dev team behind it. I see this everywhere in the ROM communities. So actually Android is a great example, despite what a lot of people say about Google "monopoly".
Let's make them open up their hardware instead with all the software or documentation needed to run it and have them compete with aftermarket operating systems.