Andrew McGlashan <andrew.mcglashan@affinityvision.com.au> writes:
I would like for any device that is manufactured in huge quantity, like all these flagship devices, to get updates for 6 years, unless the number of currently active users drops down too low (perhaps down to million users); anything longer than 6 years would probably be too long (I'll admit that), but anything shorter, well, again, they sell 100s of millions of these devices, so giving support for up to 10 years shouldn't cost them much and it would make the devices worth much more before ending up in landfill, as well as getting more life out of them.
In my imaginary dream world, the manufacturer wouldn't have to provide updates, because everyone would use the same builds of the same OS - stock Android. Imagine if every brand of every desktop computer you purchased required a customized version of XYZ* - probably without access to source code - that was only supported for one or two years before being declared obsolete. Imagine if every brand had to replace the XYZ UI with their own custom UI, in order to make their product "unique" is some way. The situation we have with phones and tablets right now is crazy. These devices are just small computers, so the user should be free to install whatever OS they want on them. In actual fact, we seem to be heading the opposite direction if anything of making computers more like phones and tables. * For XYZ insert one of Windows, Debian, Ubuntu, Redhat, etc. -- Brian May <brian@linuxpenguins.xyz> https://linuxpenguins.xyz/brian/