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Why do commercial firms contribute to Android open source project if they are not bound to. They can build their own version of android and use it with their products under any license. Samsung uses Tizen in its products but at the same time contributes to Android. Why? What is the benefit of doing so?

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There a few benefits I can imagine in making such contributions.

First, from a practical point of view, I'm guessing such companies have their own patches they'd want to rebase on top of the upstream as it moves forward, in order to consume new features, performance improvements, and bugfixes. The larger these patches are, the harder this rebasing is - so it may sometimes (often?) make sense to donate a patch upstream instead of creating it behind your closed walls.

Second, it's important to support the community. Even if a company has it's own Android fork, it's customer probably don't use just its software - they install third-party apps and games. These third-party apps are usually developed by developers who develop apps for Android, and not for a specific company's Android fork (although they probably test it on several models of the main manufacturers). To ensure this community continues growing, it's important for these companies to make sure the Android market, as a whole, gets a steady stream of new features and bugfixes - and the way to do so is to contribute to the upstream Android.

Third, I can assume there's an HR component here. A lot of developers [this one included] like contributing to open source - it's often a fun experience, it allows for a lot of professional growth (as you're able to get feedback on your work from a wider circle than your immediate coworkers), and it improves your own visibility and personal brand. Companies may recognize this and allow some of the work to be done upstream as a type of benefit for the employee.

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  • Since I am a student of social sciences I do not fully understand the first point. could it be elaborated in a simpler form.Second and third points are well taken.
    – Rahul
    Sep 8, 2018 at 17:28
  • @Rahul in short - a company with it's own "flavor" of Android takes the upstream Android and applies a series of changes (patches) to it. Each time a new version of Android is available, it needs to take that newer version of Android and apply the these changes (or a modified version of them that are appropriate for the new version). The less changes it needs to apply (since these change were incorporated in the upstream Android), the easier this task is.
    – Mureinik
    Sep 8, 2018 at 17:37
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    @Rahul As a simple example, suppose mainline Android has a getLocation function that uses available physical sources and guesses the device's physical location. Foo Corp has a modified version that improves getLocation with their own additional logic. Later, Android eliminates the getLocation function and replaces it with getGeneralLoc and getPreciseLoc -- Foo Corp cannot update to this new version of Android until they figure out how to apply their change to the old getLocation to the new set of functions. If they had shared their changes, this would have been solved already.
    – apsillers ♦
    Sep 9, 2018 at 20:40

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