After nearly 8 months in preview, Android 14 has finally been released. On October 4, 2023, Google began uploading the source code for Android 14 to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP).
When people usually talk about the Android OS, they’re typically referring to forks of AOSP that bundle Google’s proprietary suite of applications called GMS. Distributing builds of AOSP that bundle GMS requires obtaining a license from Google, but GMS is not required to have a fully functional operating system based on AOSP.
This is because Google publishes Android’s source code to AOSP under the Apache 2.0 license, a permissive license that allows anyone (including Esper) to freely use, modify, and distribute software based on AOSP. Indeed, today’s release means that we can begin the work to rebase Esper Foundation for Android on top of Android 14. Provisioning an off-the-shelf device running Android 14 is already possible, however, as demonstrated by Keith Szot, our SVP & Chief Evangelist.
Today’s release is only the initial public source code drop. Google will continue to update the codebase each month for the next several years with security fixes. In addition, quarterly platform releases (QPRs) of Android 14 will bring functional improvements (but not new public APIs) before the release of Android 15 next year. The public beta for the Android 14 QPR1 release in December 2023 is already underway, but there will also be an Android 14 QPR2 release in March 2024 and an Android 14 QPR3 release in June 2024.
Platform developers interested in viewing Android 14’s source code can do so by navigating to android.googlesource.com or downloading the source code to a local or remote development machine. Syncing with one of the android-14.0.0_rX tags or the android14-release branch will pull the source code. Visit the Android 14 developer site to see a complete list of changes in the new release.
