Hello and welcome to the Software Freedom Podcast.
This podcast is brought to you by the Free Software Foundation Europe.
We are a charity that empowers users to control technology and I'm Bonnie Mehring.
Today I'm here with Dr. Lucas Lasota from...
I'm trying to pronounce the correct, okay?
The Chest Transition Center of the Martin Luther University of Halle, Wittenberg.
Lucas is also in part-time working for the free Software Foundation Europe.
So we are also co-workers.
Yeah, thank you so much Lucas for making it.
Thank you so much for being here and yeah, taking the time at Foster.
It's a great pleasure to be here and I thank you very much, Bonnie.
It has been a pleasure here.
All right, how are you and how has Foster been so far?
Well, I think you can guess from my voice that Foster is always like that.
Very intensive, almost overwhelming, but very inspiring and very energizing.
And it gives us this energy to keep going for software freedom for the entire year.
I can imagine, I can imagine, it gives you a bit of a blast, but it's also like really exhausting at the same time.
I have to take some days after Foster for sure.
Well, I'll highlight so far like anything that you think, oh, this was really inspiring.
This is the thing that will give me some energy boost for the next weeks.
So, as you know, at the university and at FSFE, I mainly work with policy and legal issues.
And during the whole year, these issues are very emotionally demanding, if you will,
because you are always dealing with problems.
Well, if people don't have problems, then we don't need the law and regulation on relation to problems.
And during the entire year, you get accustomed to the challenge all the time.
Now we are involved with platform regulation, Apple, Google, Microsoft.
There's a lot of challenges for free and open source software.
But here in Foster, you see the power of the community.
And you see this thousand of developers.
And you see their engagement, you see their excitement to produce alternatives
to allow people to control technology, you know, to put forward software freedom.
So I think my highlight to Foster is this energy boost that helps me keeping with my legal and policy work for the rest of the year.
I can't imagine, I can't imagine.
If so many people come together, there's like this energy that is accelerating between all of them.
And it's like, yeah, it's amazing.
I think for anyone based in Europe, even outside Europe,
if you have the privilege and to visit Foster, I think even from anthropological point of view,
I think it is a very, yeah, very rewarding experience.
Again, imagine, but today, even so I would love to continue this conversation.
We won't be talking about Foster, but we will be talking about the question,
can the Digital Markets Act help to protect Free Software developers working with the Android Open Source project in short AOSP?
Right?
Yes. It's a very difficult question and happy to discuss with you today.
I'm also happy and I will, I'm really looking forward to find out what you think about it.
Before we dive into the topic, can you vary briefly outline your connection to the Digital Markets Act and how you came in contact with this?
Yes. So a primer about this, why we're talking so much about this law.
And if anyone goes to FSFE.org and go to the search function and put Digital Markets Act,
you're going to see a lot of this stuff being published on this.
Because we do think this is a very important regulation that can push to the adoption of free and open source software in critical aspects of our mobile devices,
especially in relation to alternative app stores, browsers, search engines, operating systems.
And because the main goal of this law, and this is an European Union law,
that came into force in 2024, is to promote more competition in digital markets.
That's why Digital Markets Act, you know.
And the situation with the Drupal Apple slash Google over mobile ecosystems has been so intense and so entrenched that the regulators in Europe said
we need to do something about it, we need to inject more competition in their markets and we need desperately for alternatives.
And look, Bonnie, yesterday I was in a very nice talk from our colleague who is listening to this podcast.
I highly suggest going to the Boston website and search for Gabriel Ku Wei Bin.
And he gave a primer on the legal aspects of free and open source software.
And he also gave us a historical, very short historical development of the movement from the legal perspective.
And copyright establishes a monopoly when someone creates a creative work.
So think about a book, think about software, a music.
The creator has a monopoly over that work.
Sometimes it's good, you know, because you wanted to have control about the work that you have.
But sometimes this monopoly can be overstated, you know.
And the main core of the Free Software movement was to disintermediate this monopolies.
Then that's why we created a copy left.
So the Free Software licenses is a medium to disintermediated monopoly over software.
And we have been doing this for 40 years, right?
And therefore this law that came in 2024 is just a next step on this fight.
It's just a next step on this type of work.
We are not concerning with copyright only, but we are concerning now with platform regulation.
We are concerned about digital markets, right?
And therefore this law is a trench where the FSFE and anyone that cares about Free Software should be involved.
Because we really want to allow people to control technology, to control our mobile devices.
And sometimes it's not possible without regulation because the situation becomes so disadvantages for Free Software developers,
even for end user customers, not customers, I'm sorry, end users, right?
Thank you.
That without regulation we cannot do anything more about it, you know.
Was this what you were thinking like when you were at the DMA, you were like,
oh, this will be an next step to help end users to be more empowered.
And that monopolies are not that much in the, in the power of controlling everything.
Was this what you were thinking like when you read it?
Yeah, that's a very good summary, yes.
How did you feel about this?
Were you like really inspired or were you like, I hope that this works out?
Well, that's a very good question.
I mean, when I jump out the bed every day, I think I have to think, well, this will go on our workout.
Well, I hope it will work out.
But this brings me to the question because we already touched a bit on the monopoly side.
So it's now over 20 years ago that Google acquired the Android open source project, right?
And your work of the University of Halle-Wittenberg, you did also study on Google
and especially the policy shift in regard to AOSP.
So in the study, you wrote the AOSP has served as a baseline not only for diverse commercial versions
of Android-based operating systems, but also for alternative, non-profit community-driven versions of operating systems.
Can you walk me through what happened like before Google took this policy shift in 2025
and yeah, how Google has seen or how Google's role as a gatekeeper to be precise?
Yeah, so just about some organizational aspects about this study before we move forward,
this study has not been published yet.
So we submitted this study to a publication in a legal journal.
So this study has not been published.
What we have is a working version that we already discussed in a conference.
And this version that you have access is an internal one that we shared on this conference.
And I'm happy to discuss this working version that you have.
But this is not the official version that will be published yet,
because we are waiting for the feedback of the peer review that we submitted.
But I would like you to provide just a context on this study and why this is important work that we have been doing.
Because in the last three years, my research work and also my work at the FSFE has been dealing with Apple.
Apple has taken a very aggressive approach against this law,
because this law tries to open up an infrastructure from Apple
and to allow more competition on App stores, browsers,
allowing interoperability for Free Software,
not only for software, but Apple is questioning this whole law
and saying that this law is in constitutional law,
you know, it's not proportional.
But sometimes we forget that there are other companies that this law applies to.
And one of these companies are Google and other companies are Microsoft, Amazon,
looking at their others.
But the problem with Google is that how Google relates to this law is a little bit more nuanced than Apple.
Apple has a very strong adversarial position against this law.
But Google, since, as you already mentioned, in the beginning of this podcast,
Google is responsible for the Android open source project.
And Android open source project is a fundamental part of the Android operating system.
And the Android operating system is the most popular and the most used operating system in the world, you know, by far, you know.
And...
You mean like on smartphone?
Yeah.
In mobile devices, right?
So comes Android in the first place, then iOS in the second place and together, together,
they have more than 99% of the entire market of mobile operating systems.
We, of course, know we are from the Free Software community.
We know that there are many others, alternatives, operating systems,
that the Android base are not Android boys, they're the Linux phones, several of them.
You know, but their part on the market are very thin, you know,
that's less than 1%, unfortunately.
And we want to change that.
But today's topic is about Android.
Perhaps we can do a podcast in the future about Linux phones.
We did one. We did one in the past.
I will link it on the show notes.
Oh, that's a great, yeah.
But we did one in the past.
That's super cool.
But...
And Android, as you said, right?
I would like to...
Well, I'm old enough to remember 2007 the expectations we had.
And Android, when Android came into the market, it was a blast, I remember.
Everyone would like to have an Android phone.
Because before that we were having kind of smartphones,
but the smartphones, they were very limited in their capacity
because they pre-installed apps just from the manufacturer.
And Android came with this promise, you know, with this potential
that you could install any software that you would like on your phone via the app store.
And this would turn your smartphone as truly a general-purpose computer,
you know, and you would have these awesome apps that you don't have in your PC
because, well, the smartphone comes with other hardware functionalities.
There's a camera, there's telemetry, there's a microphone,
and you could bring software to a whole other level of experience and functionalities.
And...
I never looked at a smartphone like this,
and now I feel like, oh, yeah, this is how I felt when I came in.
That's how I felt when I got my first smartphone.
Now everybody knows that I'm a bit older.
Right.
And I think Google understood the power of opening up their infrastructure
to these type of contributions.
Academically speaking, on a little bit more on the theoretical speaking,
this strategic move has a name for it.
It's called the power of the network effects.
And what is the network effects?
It means that any network, the value of this network,
increase proportionally to the size of this network.
So the bigger the network is, the more value it has.
And that's why today, both Apple and Google,
they don't want to lose control over their app stores
because the app stores now it's a huge network of apps.
And this network brings a lot of money to them.
But aside from this, what really disrupt the market,
in the end of the first decade of 2000s,
we were talking about 2007 here, right,
was when they opened up their infrastructure for apps,
this disrupt completely the market,
the dispute out of the market.
Symbian, Nokia, they put out the palm.
Remember palm, palm was super chic.
So you're very young.
No, I feel young again.
But palm devices were the crème de la crème in the past.
And they disrupted it.
Now they're in museums.
So Apple followed this,
and they also opened up their infrastructure
for external contributors.
So the first version of the iPhone came without an app store.
And there was what the first app store was,
a free and open source one called CD.
You could not install apps on it.
No, no, the first version of the iPhone was completely closed
and it came only with pre-installed apps.
The first app store was a CD was a free and open source software.
And two years later I don't know,
Apple changed the operating system in order to block CD.
And now the only way to install external software
on smartphones were via their own app store.
So the control over app stores already has a long history,
a very long history.
So why am I saying all of this?
Because Google did one step further
to not only open the app store,
but to open the entire operating system.
So they opened the operating system to free and open source.
So Android, it is, well, at least, you know,
parts of it, a free and open source project.
There is one, which is licensed into the app 82.
But the history doesn't end there, you know.
And it would be very easy to say,
yes, we have the most successful free and open source project of all time
because billions of people are using it.
But the history unfortunately doesn't end there.
And Google has excerpt control over iOSP in different forms,
not only via the licensing aspect.
And we can talk about this.
How to control iOSP in a way that would hinder software freedom
to others to exercise this traditional way
that we see software freedom in such powerful ways
and anti-competitive ways that in 2018,
you know, Google got record fines from the commission
because of this anti-competitive practice.
I can imagine what was this fine about
and like what was this EU commission saying there?
So Google's strategy was a pretty clever one in the beginning
so they open up the platform.
And then suddenly, you know, if you were a manufacturer,
if you were a smart one manufacturer,
then you could adapt the functionalities
of your devices to the operating system.
And this was something truly revolutionary, you know.
Because manufacturers, they always have the problem of
the chicken and egg, you know.
If you want a successful device,
you need this operating system for it.
But then, in order to have an operating system,
you need a device for it.
Let's put this on a context.
Recently, I met some folks from risk five.
Risk five is an open hardware specification for chips
and they were telling their talks exactly this problem.
They wanted to find a device that would enable them
to have risk five, you know,
and having this open architecture on laptops,
but then they have to find an operating system for this.
And so it took several years for them,
but yeah, Ubuntu agreed and then they found also a device manufacturer.
But anyway, so let's go back to 2007.
In 2018.
No, no, I started with 2008.
2018 is the fine, right?
Yes, it is.
Until we got there.
So manufacturers were facing this problem.
You know, and they said, okay.
Okay, I have this cool device,
but I need an operating system.
But the operating system is very expensive to develop.
You know, think about how many hours of work you need
to have a cool operating system.
And then you have apps.
You need to add the apps.
And then the apps should run on the operating system.
And you know, how are we going to do this?
You know, so Google came with a solution for this.
And they said, look, we will have Android.
Android will be open and you will be able to adapt your devices
to have Android running on it.
So they really solve this problem
for many, many, many, many manufacturers.
You know?
So manufacturers, okay, cool.
But then here comes the trick.
You know?
And I would like to introduce here in our talk
how Android is organized.
The Android stack, right?
Because the Android stack is where Google exerted it
and exerced control over OSP until today.
You know?
And this also what led the European Commission 2018
to establish records finds.
You know, it was really.
I don't have the, I forgot the numbers.
But I may be wrong.
You can check.
But it was on the billion scale.
That's quite a lot of money.
Very.
Because with this, what I'm going to say right now,
Google was able to lock in entirely all the manufacturers
on the Android ecosystem.
So by opening up the operating system layer
to free and open source software,
Google was able to immediately attract millions and millions
of, you know, the developers that were interested
into contributing to the platform that was already, you know,
exploring.
They said, okay, we're going to be there.
And they were also able to attract the manufacturers.
So they were able to bring together.
And this is what makes a platform good.
A platform brings different sides together.
And Google did this with Android.
Android is a platform.
Yeah.
So that other device manufacturers could use Android
and just use, have a bit of a customized version.
But they are then also part of this.
And Google is like there providing the services.
Yes.
But here's the trick.
Because as soon as you license your operating system
as free and open source software,
this gives them the permission to market, you know,
they can market and they can have their own version of it.
Right?
And well, we could have.
Right?
And I think this is the beauty of free and open source movement.
We can have, you know, many, many of them.
Right?
But then, and this only became clear in 2018.
Because, you know, it was in 2018, where the world understood
how Google have this strategy around our speed that, you know,
that didn't allow alternatives to strive.
How they have to network and control, basically.
Yes.
And so via agreements with manufacturers, side agreements, right?
So it was not on the license, you know,
it was side agreements on the compatibility side.
You know, so Google said, okay, so we wanted to be compatible
with Android.
You know, we have to sign this agreement with me, this side agreement.
So we have the license here on one hand,
but there is the agreement on the other hand.
And these agreement, there were clauses forbidding manufacturers
to fork Android.
So it was called anti-forking agreements.
You know, if you are, if you decided to fork Android,
then you would not be allowed to install the Google suite.
And what is the Google suite?
Google suite is their Google Play Store.
The security aspects of the Play Store, you know,
and all the apps that Google in the old history has developed
and has acquired YouTube, Chrome, and many, many other apps
that people, well, they like to have on their smartphones, you know.
You mean like the Google services that they...
The Google services, the Google service, you know.
And this was a very strong, disincentive
and very strong threat to manufacturers, you know.
Otherwise, they would go back pre-2007 when they had to develop
their own operating system, you know.
And it's super, super cool.
I mean, cool in one hand as a researcher to read about it,
but in other hand, it's very sad.
But because they were managed to keep basically
the entire ecosystem of Android manufacturers
into this very strict locking.
Until 2018, when the Commission said,
man, this is super anti-competitive, you know.
And there's a problem there, you know.
And on a side note, it's very interesting,
because you can read several analysis in 2007
that historically, Microsoft was able to do this
with laptops of computers.
And in 2008, the vice manufacturer said,
we don't want it to have a Microsoft 2.0 in our lives.
And that's why we need an open source solution.
And Google came with an open source solution,
but Google were able to...
But on the positive side of things, you know,
not to be standing that the device manufacturers
got locked in in this environment, you know.
The nature, the free open source nature of iOSP
allowed for fork if you were not a manufacturer.
So, you know, if you don't have a device
and you don't want it to enter in these compatibility agreements
with Google, you could fork, you know.
And you could create custom ROMs.
Yes, exactly.
What changed then with the release of Android 16?
So, what, like, this was before 2025.
But what happened afterwards, like, with Android 16,
there was a policy ship.
Yes.
Precisely.
And this is completely related now to alternative ROMs.
And what is alternative ROMs?
For audience, audience that is hearing this term for the first time.
You know, technically, this is not a correct term
to alternative ROMs, because we're not talking about ROMs,
precisely.
But basically, alternative operating systems
that are based on Android.
So, there is Android stock that is developed and controlled by Google.
But then you can fork this and then you can make your own customized,
you know, altered version of Android.
There are several of them.
You know, there are the very privacy-oriented ones like Grafino AS,
there are ones that are intended to allow a great deal of compatibility
with different types of devices like LanoAjo AS.
There are other ones like Morena, EOS.
There are many of them out there.
Many, you know.
We also have them with the free-your-and-work initiative.
We have a page.
We can link that in the show and other people can look it up.
Yeah, yeah.
So, they come in different flavors.
But I think security and privacy are the main drivers.
People, they want their Android devices to be a little bit more secure
than they search for these alternative Android operating systems.
But again, I would like to highlight that these are not Linux phones.
They depend on Android.
And they depend on how information is made available on Android.
And this shift that you just mentioned is Google hindering
a big deal of interoperability information inside OSP
that can create a big struggle for these alternative ROMs to survive.
You know, so it's basically enclosing,
it's a step on enclosing more of a OSP restricting these alternative ROMs.
And together with my research group, we work on this,
we think that this is not compatible with this law
that we mentioned in the beginning of our podcast, Digital Market Act.
We do believe that interoperability, mandating this law is very broad.
And this shifts what answering is that Google is stopped to provide
some type of information that are very important for alternative ROMs.
For example, interoperability information regarding the device,
called the device trees, interoperability information
regards to the source code history, you know, and also hardware drives.
So this were type of information that Google decided to hinder
or to publish later, sometimes they blocked,
but sometimes they decided to publish later.
So it created barriers for these alternative operating systems
to compete with Google stock Android.
This does this, like, hinders them to continue to developing
those alternative ROMs or will there be a way around?
Like, because you did some any research,
you highlighted, you did some interviews with developers,
as far as I understood.
And like, what was their reaction towards this?
So their reaction was quite negative and very worrisome.
And they're saying this puts high loads on us
to reverse engineer this type of information.
And the thing is that outside of this law,
this would create already competitive issues.
But then the difference between competition law
and this particular law, the DMA that we're talking about,
is that in competition law, we need to wait until we see the harm.
So we have to wait some years, and then...
Oh, yes, indeed, there are some harm in the community.
But this law is different.
There is already a do-and-don't list.
We don't need to wait.
I think that blocking this type of interoperability information
is already against this law.
And that's why we tried to build a legal argument for this.
Look, we do believe that inside Google,
there's a lot of people that believe in free and open-source software.
Google is a company that was founded on these ideals.
They have a very strong Ospo.
They have a very strong food on the community.
And therefore, we do believe that this type of work
helps them to re-evaluate their practices
and to let alternatives inside the free and open-source movement to thrive.
I hope it will.
But was this also like the researchers in the interviews also see this?
Or was it more like that they are afraid that they will have to stop?
I mean...
Sorry, not researchers, but developers.
Yes, exactly.
So I think that when you depend on a platform,
any platform, there is an imbalance.
And this is normal in any platform.
Unless the platform is really democratically governed.
But otherwise, there is always this imbalance.
And we are trying...
Like the hierarchy.
Yes.
And we are trying with regulation to level a little bit more the playing field.
So at least we can have alternatives inside this ecosystem.
So end users can choose and can have more competition among themselves,
among alternative ROMs and stock Android itself.
So I really don't want to have only one provider of Android.
I think Android is a marvelous technological speaking operating system.
And since it is fundamentally free and open source on its core,
I think that this alternative ROMs they should thrive.
They should allow people to have alternatives to install on their Android devices.
And this is the goal of our work in the DMA is to inject more competition into Android ecosystem.
Do you think there is an actual chance that a DMA can help us here to predict
Free Software developers or is it a two-flastiger?
No.
No, I do think it's a viable instrument to search for.
But look, it's not a miracle's instrument.
Nowadays, in the EU...
I want to have that because make it like that.
Look, we are talking about digital sovereignty.
We are talking about democratization.
We are talking about the next generation of the internet.
We are talking about the future of the web.
The DMA is only one instrument.
And I am a legal person.
And that's why I talk a lot about the DMA.
But if you go to any other strategist in the FSC in my research group at the university,
there are people looking into other aspects.
So we need to talk how to fundamentally change digital markets to a more democratic one.
But DMA can help certainly, but alone it cannot do.
So we need funding for Free Software.
We really need funding for Free Software.
And not only VC type of fund, we need a really public money type of fund
that will enable collective effort on our society to Free Software.
That is a public good.
Free software is a public good.
It's digital commons.
Think about a park in our city.
Think about a highway.
Think about a railroad.
They are public.
And Free Software is the same.
So therefore, we need to diversify the sources of funding.
We need to diversify the strategy in order to make the digital markets more democratic.
DMA can help, but we need many, many other venues and instruments.
I absolutely agree.
We need strategic and long term funding, especially.
So it does not need to be short term.
It needs to be really long term so that others can rely on it.
And that it will be there.
What's the European Commission's perspective on this?
Do you know if they think they will act up on the shift in the Google policy?
Yes, we will talk with them.
They are monitoring this.
And we are also monitoring their activity on this.
A very good news I can share is that last week the European Commission started a new regulatory process
to help Google to comply with the digital markets act in relation to interoperability and AI.
AI falls a little bit out of scope of what we are talking about here,
but the interoperability part for sure is included on the scope of this.
And we will make sure on our research that the university
or in our monitoring type of work that we do in the FSFE,
to have DMA being forest on a Free Software developer friendly way.
This is good to know.
I'm very happy that there's a goal for us.
So to finalize this, do you think that the DMA can actually help here?
Like that it's protecting Free Software developers?
Yes or no answer?
Yes.
Perfect.
Thank you so much.
I'm very much looking forward to this.
How can the community help now?
Oh, that's perhaps the most important question.
And I'll try to be very concise on this.
I'm very, very grateful for the Android developers from different operating systems that help us to understand all of this.
And they were so nice.
And I will make sure that in our next I love Free Software today to have a very beautiful message to all of them out there.
But how the community can help is with technical advice to us,
you know, spreading the world about this and leveraging our position together.
So we have a coalition.
We have an allies together and say, look, this is important for the whole movement.
Thank you, Lucas.
Thank you so much for being here.
Thank you so much for walking us through this.
And yeah, thank you for taking the time.
The pleasure is always my thank you so much.
This was really interesting.
I'm, yeah, I'm now really much looking forward to the community coming back to us and letting us know what they think as well.
Thank you also for the first live edition of the software freedom podcast.
Thank you so much for being here.
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Thank you so much for listening.
Bye-bye.