Jean-Baptiste Quéru, the voice behind the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) program, today announced his departure from the group. The move appears to be tied to the fact that factory images or driver binaries for the Google Nexus 7 (2013) may never be posted on the Google Developers website due to legal concerns. JBQ as many call him does not confirm that this is the reason but a number of recent tweets showed his growing discontent with the project. Today it culminated with this message:
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.
A similar situation arose with the Google Nexus 4. Google never released the full factory images and source code without ever providing an official reason why. The Nexus One was embroiled in a similar situation until HTC released the factory image files. All three devices, including the new Nexus 7, come with Qualcomm chipsets. Interesting coincidence if nothing else!
A sad day for AOSP.
Sources : AndroidPolice // Google+