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Ask HN: Any legal way against forced software upgrades and feature removal
21–30 of 81 posts
Re: Ask HN: Any legal way against forced software upgrades and feature removal
#22The way to fight this has been out there since before most of these companies and products have existed – use FOSS. If you want more convenience and polish then just remember that you are trading it for privacy and autonomy. There is no middle option.
Calling it "more convenience and polish" is a bit of an understatement. My experience with open-source software is that if it breaks or it's missing a feature and you want your needs to be addressed then you will have to hack on it yourself. While this is great for people who enjoy hacking it's not great once you get bored of it. I always enjoyed macOS (at least pre-Catalina) because it's Unix but without the require…
I've needed 0 Seconds of hacking since using Fedora for 2 years.
Linux has evolved in the last 14 Years
Re: Ask HN: Any legal way against forced software upgrades and feature removal
#23Dropbox I wish I could just use Dropbox as it existed 10-years ago. "Just a folder that syncs". I don't need Paper and all the other features that have come since then. Note: I'm not knocking Dropbox, there's just some products that are great and don't need enhancing. I wish I could buy that version.
I use rsync.net for this. Just a remote ZFS. Accessable anywhere ssh is usable.
Re: Ask HN: Any legal way against forced software upgrades and feature removal
#24Yes, FOSS.
Re: Ask HN: Any legal way against forced software upgrades and feature removal
#25Switch to android and become a happy power user! It's an open and better ecosystem for almost everyone involved - users, developers and phone makers.
I think you forgot the /s tag? As a longtime android user, google is one of the worst offenders in this. One of the recent OS updates broke my bluetooth connection to my car, and that was the only new "feature" that I noticed. Both platforms have their own problems unique to them, but both platforms do share this issue.
Actually no. Google is merely the developer of AOSP (Android Open Source Project). The actual implementation and pushing of updates is up to your OEM or phone maker. Some OEMs are graceful in pushing updates, others aren't. But none to my knowledge pushes forced updates that user can't disable? Besides, you can always Flash/Root/etc. in the Android world with the power user shoes when something goes wrong, you can't do that in the Apple world.
Re: Ask HN: Any legal way against forced software upgrades and feature removal
#26I wish there were legal protections against this kind of thing. Even worse, I’ve had updates break stuff that might never get fixed. For example, I have Roku TVs and a recent update broke CEC. The updates aren’t for my benefit, because my TVs worked fine from day one. Instead, the updates are to push more and more advertising and recommendations. It’s to the point where my TVs are slow, bloated, half broken trash. Th…
Roku is the worst thing to happen to TVs since motion smoothing.
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Re: Ask HN: Any legal way against forced software upgrades and feature removal
#27[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: Any legal way against forced software upgrades and feature removal
#28Switch to android and become a happy power user! It's an open and better ecosystem for almost everyone involved - users, developers and phone makers.
Android and Google Android are the different things.
I just was nagged to deinstall an app because Google, despite disabled Google Protect, d€termined it knows better.
Re: Ask HN: Any legal way against forced software upgrades and feature removal
#29As others have said, stop using software that has that capability, or at minimum treat all SaaS (broadly defined) as a hostile actor and conduct yourself accordingly. It's miserable, but that's the ecosystem we've created. As long as we continue to incentivize companies by giving them money, they're going to keep treating us this way. It's actually to tech companies' benefit to actively alienate customers that don't want to fit the mold of how they want them to behave so they can maximize unit profitability.
Also, a shout out to Duolingo who did exactly what is described here. I paid for the app and woke up one day to find I was forced to upgrade and when I did the app became something completely different where the previous "game" I was playing was gone. They of course ignored my complaints about it, and their app sucks anyway for learning so in a way I'm glad they broke the cycle. It's still a terrible way to treat customers.
Re: Ask HN: Any legal way against forced software upgrades and feature removal
#30Switch to android and become a happy power user! It's an open and better ecosystem for almost everyone involved - users, developers and phone makers.
Let’s please not turn this into a flamewar. There are dozens of reasons to not use Android, like there are dozens of reasons to use it. It’s a personal choice. When someone asks “how can I avoid this one thing”, the answer isn’t “switch to this alternative which has seventeen different problems you’ll dislike more”. The OP is asking a question on Hacker News. Surely they have heard of Android. They might even use it,…
Given that the OP is asking about a problem caused by not having enough control over the software they're running, it's entirely valid to respond by suggesting software that gives the user more control.