There is a lot happening on the AOSP end this week and looks like it culminated in the resignation of AOSP handler Jean-Baptiste Queru from his AOSP duties.
Let’s start from the beginning – the factory images of the new Nexus 7 tablet have been missing from the Google Developers site since the launch and turns out it was due to licensing problems created by Qualcomm for its Adreno GPU sources. If Qualcomm does not open-source these files, the factory images of the new Nexus 7 tablet, which contain these proprietary files, cannot be put for public use.
A similar situation had led to the brief removal of Nexus 4 factory images, which also packs Qualcomm chip, but that was solved somehow and we have access to Nexus 4 factory images.
AOSP handler (former) Jean-Baptiste Queru had apparently anticipated this situation long ago and had escalated the issue but even after six months of the supposed escalation, the situation still remains the same and that has not gone well with Queru.
A Google+ post on Wednesday revealed that he has resigned from his AOSP duties, but the state of his Google employment were not clear at this moment.
Here is his full Google+ post:
Well, I see that people have figured out why I’m quitting AOSP.
There’s no point being the maintainer of an Operating System that can’t boot to the home screen on its flagship device for lack of GPU support, especially when I’m getting the blame for something that I don’t have authority to fix myself and that I had anticipated and escalated more than 6 months ahead.
All this clearly hints to a much bigger problem and the same has been talked about by GigaOM’s Tofel in this post. As there has been no official comment from either Google or Qualcomm regarding the same, so nothing can’t be said with certainty and even Quero’s comments have been very cryptic, probably with good reason as he can’t obviously divulge everything on a public forum.
We hope that these issues are solved in a timely manner else it is better for Google to stick to other chip makers for future Nexus devices.
As an early adopter of the new Nexus 7, I feel pretty betrayed(not to be too dramatic) by Google for this issue. In purchasing this, I assumed I was buying something supported by the biggest supporter of Android, and in such, a supporter of open-source. I feel like I was tricked into buying something that is essentially as closed as an iPad…