The vision of those who created the Replicant custom ROM was a truly open-source Android OS. As you may know, Android forks and ROMS have to mix the open source code with proprietary files delivered by vendors, and as such, Android is actually not as “free” as we think it is. Developers behind Replicant sought to change all that, and they now have a Marshmallow ROM released.
Developers of normal Android forks have no access to the source code for many hardware components and have to ship their ROMs with so-called proprietary blobs. Technically speaking, this reduces the reputation of Android of being truly open source, because some elements are not. With Replicant, the vision is for a fully open-source operating system that replaces ALL proprietary Android components with open-source counterparts.
This is why progress is slow, because changes are made mostly in the C programming language, as developers have to re-write drivers and Linux kernel. But they’re happy to announce that Replicant 6.0 – based on Android Marshmallow – is now available. Unfortunately, Replicant 6.0 is still just available for the Samsung Galaxy S2, Samsung Galaxy S3, and the Samsung Galaxy Note 2.
The developers say that adding support for more devices is their top priority for the next few updates. Replicant is still in testing phase, so before you go and flash, know that some elements are not working on these ROMs. But the idea for the ROM is there – to show what phones would look like if everything was truly open source.
SOURCE: Replicant
