On Mon, Sep 05, 2016 at 04:28:44AM +0530, Amit Kucheria wrote:

> The vendors depend on Google providing an Android common tree[1] to
> build their BSP on top of. Currently, there isn't anything newer than
> a 4.4-based common tree from Google. It'll be early 2017 by the time
> 4.9 LTS is released and the Android common tree is available on it

It's not just having an Android tree either, it's having an Android tree
that they're confident is actively used and tested by Google.  Simply
making a tree available wouldn't be enough, that was tried in the past.