The Backstory:

Bliss has been a part of my life since 2012/2013. I had initially started as a graphic designer with Team Bliss through kbell, a developer on XDA that was maintaining the tablet I was using (Galaxy Note 10.1 I think), and I was very much a noob trying to help the community with answers to their questions. I eventually met the rest of the team, just after they had split from Beanstalk ROM, into a new team, Bliss ROM.

This team was so much more helpful in my learning how to work with Linux and Android source than any of the famous guides their members have produced over the years ever have been. They cared about the teammates first, then the product of that teamwork second. That mentality helped to foster some great ideas as other projects started from members of the team, such as Nicholas Chum’s, Substratum, and a few other projects due to our open discussions about technology and the future potentials of Android.

The first few years of working with Team Bliss was a blast, with many successes as well as drawbacks. Noticing how a majority of the issues we were facing on the team were due to conflict of opinion or bad judgment when it came to direction, we decided to decentralize how the team operated and how our infrastructure worked. That is where I got the initial vision for starting a non-profit 501c(3) organization to take over the tasks of worrying about the “how” in keeping the team running, and let the team members focus on what they enjoy the most. This was how Bliss Family of ROMs was born, and has since been renamed to BlissLabs. This non-profit allowed our team to grow into many teams with very different projects, but they all shared Android, Linux and treating eachother as family at the core.

Accomplishments within the team:

I initially started off on the team learning as much as I could, and eventually started the BlissRoms-x86 project (Bliss x86 for short). I based it off what I learned by picking through the Android-x86 projects source commits. While maintaining Bliss x86, I also joined the Android-x86 team, and we all started working together, but still keeping projects separate, while cross promoting each other’s work, and helping in each other’s community.

Over the following years, we offered the active members of Android-x86 project a space on our Slack server, access to Android build servers, and together we grew, attributing our work to Android-Generic Project to make things easier to work with for the community, and the patches refined from there, back into Android-x86 project when ready.

This move has allowed us to continue development on Android-x86 project past Android 9, and into Android 10, 11 & 12, and allowed Bliss OS 11, 12 & 14 to act as the testing ground for all the experimental changes that had the potential to wind up added to the Android-x86 project, while helping to provide all the test cases needed to automate the processes, patchsets, and customization options, and wrapping them up into Android-Generic Project.

This is where we started having an even greater impact on the community, allowing other ROMs an easier way to apply the work we’ve done onto their projects and benefit from it. This is what helped bring Project Sakura and a few others to PC’s, and provided the base for the Android 11 release of Prime OS. We also started working on a web based (Django) frontend for what Android-Generic Project was doing through terminal and Linux GUI, and automate it for users through a frontend web UI.

Then Waydroid hit the scene, I also saw a need to help on that project, so I dove right in, reworking the patching system to be more like what Android-Generic Project was using and organizing things to work better for x86 & x86_64 targets, as well as make it compatible with other ROMs, including /e/, Bliss & Project Sakura. We also ended up adding Waydroid target support to Android-Generic Project, since it fit neatly within that project’s vision for Android on all hardware. Waydroid also shared quite a few things under the hood with Android-x86, so the work there wasn’t too different. The work we did through Waydroid was an instant hit with the community, and allowed BlissLabs the ability to Level Up its ability to help the rest of the community by becoming a fiscal host on Open Collective.

What’s Ahead:

Along this path I have been on with BlissLabs, a few companies have started to approach me and ask for my assistance in their projects which either work with my previous efforts, or use very similar methods to get their own work done. I have always given each one a conversation, my time and thoughts. Recently though, one of these companies, Esper has made an offer that would help not just my family and my personal life, but it would also provide more resources for running BlissLabs and supporting the future of Android on x86 development.

The only downside is that I would have to give up code contributions to Bliss OS, Android-x86, Android-Generic Projects, and others, while enabling me to continue managing the projects, but not contribute code towards them. While I was conflicted about this idea, I have to also take the time to recognise that I have reached a point where I have very few options available to me where I can turn to and learn from in the open-source community. I feel that further progress in the Android Desktop vision needs experts that just aren’t available to the FOSS community. Working with Esper could allow access to such experts, and also allow access to other learning opportunities that I do not have available currently. So, while the decision was difficult, I have decided to sign on with this company and continue my future work on Android for x86 platform from there.

What does that mean for BlissLabs and the projects? Well, you can expect the next few months (or longer), to be quite the transition phase. We are looking for new volunteers who would like to help in the development of all of these projects, and more.

With me leaving the coding side of these projects, it is making room for the great minds of @jackeagle, @hmtheboy154, @axonasif, @utzcoz, @erfanoabdi, and others to take over. I will focus on my leadership skills and hopefully fine tune a future vision of the Android on PC’s that we’ve all loved working on so far.

Don’t worry about BlissLabs, or the future here. The universe has a way of working things out for those that stay true to their dreams, and I know I haven’t given up on mine yet. :)