A brief history of AOSP (Android Open Source Project) - The Android Free

AOSP , ie Android Open Source Project , served five years in November, if we target a date to remember of your first ad. This project works towards the development and management of Android from the point of view of open source, free everything about manufacturers and their specifications, and even free than Google encloses within the Android code. Let us know a little more of his “life and work”, thanks to the Brief History tells us one of his closest collaborators.

Jean-Baptiste Queru (JBQ for Android geeks), a character that I have spoken on many occasions, is one of the gurus of development through AOSP Android.

should, perhaps, make a clarification about what is AOSP, not to confuse. Vanilla AOSP is Android, but its interface is the same. Why not? AOSP is Android without Google, ie Google Apps are not part of AOSP, it is fully open source, without any mark of any company. That is not AOSP vanilla, but vanilla is as close to AOSP. This is something that is not canon for the whole community, but it is the most accepted approach within the Android community.

All this does not mean that Google does not have to do with AOSP, in fact, co-leads the project.

Let the subject. JBQ says that the first mention of AOSP concurs with the first announcement of Android, in November 2007 , while the first release AOSP occurs 2008 in October. The release 1.0 and tools for use were released and ready to be used by anyone.

2009 took the next step, a major milestone for Android-AOSP relationship in terms of software, as it was when they needed processes to include external contributions official versions of Android, making it the first release of these features the 2.0 (first Eclair), which was released later that same year.

next evolutionary leap passed through the automation of certain tasks . Until then, and 2010 , many of the processes were done manually, so that left little time to innovate beyond schedule and to perform secondary tasks that may end up in something new and fantastic. At the end of 2010 all primary tasks were automated and ready to launch the release 2.3 , and Gingerbread.

AOSP team had a calendar hanging on the wall of their headquarters with multiple pages referencing years, allegedly torn, destroyed and burned which would refer to 2011 . The black year for AOSP . As JBQ says, “the first rule of 2011 is not talking about 2011.” If you do calculations, is the year of Honeycomb . Not that Honeycomb was a step back for Android, conversely, was a great step forward (first time we see an interface for tablets, design concepts that today are the basis of Jelly Bean, hardware acceleration …) , but not for AOSP, since never released open source. Not only that, but also was the year in which they dropped their servers (Google had them outside for lack of space), an chaotic year.

Instead, 2012 was a great year was the first year with full hardware support, 100% usable, thanks to the emergence of Nexus 4 and Nexus 7 AOSP the two devices, so to speak. Breeding ground for what has finally arrived.

2013 is the year in which they can say “we are ready”. After five years, AOSP is just what I had coveted from the start, is the vision they had. It will (and have already spent half) most of the year trying to debug what other years have left off, so that 2014 , everything runs smoothly and in parallel with the releases Android.

Remember that the latest version of Android is supported AOSP 4.1, but 4.2 also it will in a short time.

What do you think? To me it seems very interesting to discover more about the history of Android and AOSP in the words of a true expert in the field who has suffered his joys and sorrows for this work.

more | Post of + Jean-Baptiste Queru (very interesting comments and their replicas)

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