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> Devices become outdated because shitty vendors refuse to open source and mainline drivers for their components.

YES. This one of the major reasons of the Android versions fragmentation.

However, most of them don't even have mainline-able drivers. See Amlogic which got rejected because of "shitty code".

https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-33/p...

For some fun reading, 357 CVEs in the linux kernel in 2017, 191 of them remote root, 95%+ of the total in closed source ARM drivers. (basicly everying labeled broadcomm and qualcomm).

For those keeping score, 2017 ALONE has produced 1/3rd of the linux kernel vulnerabilities ever observed.

We need to demand vendors do better.

Amlogic is being supported in the mainline kernel, see the work going on for the Odroid C2 for example, which uses an Amlogic S905. See this[1] site for more information and the incoming patches page[2] for a more up-to-date view on what's being worked on.

[1]: http://linux-meson.com/doku.php [2]: https://patchwork.kernel.org/project/linux-amlogic/list/

Yes, and this is awesome, but this still ongoing and was not always the case [1] [2]. Following the "shitty code" debacle, Amlogic announced a two year effort to mainline their drivers.

[1] https://github.com/steeve/linux-amlogic

[2] http://www.cnx-software.com/2016/08/19/amlogic-releases-linu...

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