Android used BlueZ in the earlier versions, but they changed to bluedroid for reasons I don't know, but I believe it was (in part?) developed by broadcom and thus was probably better supported (licensing probably played a huge part, too, since bluedroid uses a more permissive license)
Part of the reason was that Broadcom could directly support the connectivity guys. We just didn't realize how awful it was, but given that the the Android team didn't have that big of a connectivity team at the time, it seemed like a good idea.
The Glass connectivity team (of which Zach and I were a part of) actually had a few more engineers than the main Android team did, and given that connectivity was absolutely critical for our device, we had the strength to stand up to this mess and plumb its depths, and Zach was a key driver in most of the rework. Lots of our changes made it into mainline, and when Glass ended, I left Google and Zach kept up the fight, moving closer to Android proper.
BlueZ, btw, has its own problems all throughout the stack, and unfortunately suffers from political issues w.r.t. the hardware vendors.
I don't have the foggiest about the politician issues. I was shocked to hit up the bluez repo copyright in the README[1], from the beginning 2000, to 2001, then a Qualcomm email address for one Max Krasnyansky until 2003. Practically ancient history but still a very interesting detail to me that I would never have guessed
I really really really appreciate you writing in. It feels.lile there is so little to go on, so little available to understand the weird twists & turns of how the world, the software world especially, developed. A little bit of background & insight is so refreshing to hear. Thanks again!
