Either that, or for chinese android OEMs to just refuse this. I have a Xiaomi android tablet where google play is entirely optional, and it doesn't require any developer verification, and I greatly doubt they'd let google refuse to let them use their own app stores.

I made an issue on the keepandroidopen repo about a "remove my app from google play pledge at least.

Unfortunately, I really can't see a critical mass of devs organizing to do that. What I'd really like to see is for somebody to start selling hardware with something like GrapheneOS installed out of the box. Having to get an older phone, and then side load the OS is just too high a bar for even most technical people to jump over. But if you could just buy a phone that works out of the box, that could drive adoption. And then the ecosystem would develop around it completely outside Google control.

There needs to be a collection of devs supporting this, or promising to remove their apps from google play if this passes. I'd be one of them, but I don't see any group / collection of devs doing this yet.

Nova launchers users are ‘evaluating’ other launchers, and some users already switched.

Smart launcher Lawn chair

Are both good alternatives.

That's good to know, it means GrapheneOS will probably have it too. For now GOS is very usable but yeah, they're definitely boiling the frog when it comes to locking down Android.

Desktop mode is in the open source part.

That may not matter however, because using AOSP without proprietary parts has become increasingly difficult.

Does anyone know how much of this is part of the actual AOSP?

Honestly thought this would be around much quicker but Google seems to have nailed it as far as I can tell. Hopefully will get properly ported

Cool. If only Google was still a decent company worthy of giving free mindshare to.. 😅

This does not mean that Google is making Android a closed-source platform, but rather that the open-source aspect will only be released when a new branch is released to AOSP with those changes, including when new full versions or maintenance releases are finished.

Tbh, the removal of the device-specific code is a much bigger deal than this.