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Android now forces apps to include proprietary code for push notifications

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Re: Android now forces apps to include proprietary code for push notifications

#131

Post by enitihas »

throwayEngineer wrote: post #60
deogeo wrote: post #18

Perhaps it is time to treat Google as the enemy, because that is how it is treating us.

Google puts 1 restriction, they are the enemy. Apple has created priopritary connectors, closed off systems, paid barriers to entry, and banning apps from their store. Where is Apple and Microsoft on the scale from Friend to Enemy?

Absolutely correct. HN somehow is fixated on google because google was maybe very good once and now maybe they aren't so good. The entirety of the App store is GPL hostile, so much so that the vlc devs had to rewrite a lot of vlc code to relicense just to make sure it could be distributed on the app store. Was the iOS notification lib ever open source, I don't know but I guess not.

The same with Microsoft. People keep bringing up dragonfly, while conveniently forgetting that bing already works and censors in China.

Re: Android now forces apps to include proprietary code for push notifications

#132

Post by izacus »

kartan wrote: post #26

> Problem: The Firebase Android client library is proprietary, meaning FOSS apps can not use it. Apps that do not comply are reported to the user as "using too much battery". This is a standard on the industry. From 1999: https://www.theregister.co.uk/1999/11/05/how_ms_played_the_i... It doesn't matter how much money Google is going to have to pay in the future as a fine for this practice. The amount of money that th…

> It doesn't matter how much money Google is going to have to pay in the future as a fine for this practice. The amount of money that they will get for kicking out the competition is going to be way higher. That is a learned lesson from Microsoft (and probably others before them).

The competition in this case is Apples iOS, for which even HackerNews users love to harp over and over and over again how amazing it is and how little battery it uses because it doesn't allow apps to use anything but APNS, run anything in background or even include GPL source code.

This is what's Android competing against - an completely locked down operating system which cannot deliver any kind of GPL code. And every time it allows more freedom to developers it's punished in the market by losing against iOS and mocked on this very website about how it allowes their app developers to drain battery and access data.

What exactly do you expect Google to do here?

Re: Android now forces apps to include proprietary code for push notifications

#133

Post by astazangasta »

striking wrote: post #82
pfortuny wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, if I understand correctly, the GPL prevents you from using a non-free library in your code? (Asking honestly: I have tried to find this elsewhere but the FSF page on the GPL is rather ... convoluted). If that is so, then this is obviously a killer and quite seemingly arbitrary requirement. Your MS example is quite good.

Your code is no longer completely FOSS when you do that. It depends on a binary blob that you can't see into.

Dependencies are different than source code. You can write FOSS that runs on Windows, which is a dependency and not FOSS.

Re: Android now forces apps to include proprietary code for push notifications

#134

Post by shawnz »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #51

So to summarize, to save battery all notifications on Android (since two versions ago) have to go through a single notification service (rather than each app having the option of continuously running in the background and maintaining a connection with its own notification service). Recently Google killed their GCM notifications service in favor of Firebase Cloud Messaging, which (unlike GCM) unfortunately doesn't hav…

> Despite Google's misleading warnings, there is no difference in battery usage between v4.6 in "true background" and v4.9+ with notification.

This doesn't sound like the right comparison to me -- shouldn't they be comparing FCM against the background app/persistent notification approach? Here, it sounds like they are comparing the background app approach against the persistent notification approach, but those are AFAIK basically the same technique, except the latter shows an annoying notification whereas the former didn't. So of course the performance would be the same.

EDIT: After reading the original post it is clear they are indeed not comparing against FCM. They are just comparing two different methods of running in the background. See: https://github.com/Telegram-FOSS-Team/Telegram-FOSS/blob/mas...

Re: Android now forces apps to include proprietary code for push notifications

#135

Post by gubbrora »

izacus wrote: post #132
kartan wrote: post #26

> Problem: The Firebase Android client library is proprietary, meaning FOSS apps can not use it. Apps that do not comply are reported to the user as "using too much battery". This is a standard on the industry. From 1999: https://www.theregister.co.uk/1999/11/05/how_ms_played_the_i... It doesn't matter how much money Google is going to have to pay in the future as a fine for this practice. The amount of money that th…

> It doesn't matter how much money Google is going to have to pay in the future as a fine for this practice. The amount of money that they will get for kicking out the competition is going to be way higher. That is a learned lesson from Microsoft (and probably others before them). The competition in this case is Apples iOS, for which even HackerNews users love to harp over and over and over again how amazing it is an…

An ideal platform would use a foss compatible framework. It would allow the user to configure which server to use to push notifications(one server for all apps, since that is needed for battery reasons). Notifications would be encrypted with the apps key.

Re: Android now forces apps to include proprietary code for push notifications

#136

Post by petre »

pzmarzly wrote: post #22
jmkni wrote: post #6

I'd love to know just how different/bare bones AOSP (Android Open Source Project) is to regular Android. As an experiment, I'd love to compile it, put it on a spare phone and use it as my daily driver for a week.

I was using clean LineageOS for over 2 years, recently switching to LineageOS+microG. I'm using APKPure and F-Droid for apps, Chrome for browsing (as in Firefox, last time I checked, one tap separates you from losing all open tabs). Some apps refuse to work or break (e.g. Bitwarden does not sync), some have degraded functionality (e.g. WhatsApp sometimes does not ring when someone is calling you), many are just spamm…

What phone are you using? I'm looking to replace my aging Nexus 5 running LineageOS with something newer capable of running it which isn't huge.

Re: Android now forces apps to include proprietary code for push notifications

#137

Post by jtbayly »

neves wrote: post #58
Ajedi32 wrote: post #51

So to summarize, to save battery all notifications on Android (since two versions ago) have to go through a single notification service (rather than each app having the option of continuously running in the background and maintaining a connection with its own notification service). Recently Google killed their GCM notifications service in favor of Firebase Cloud Messaging, which (unlike GCM) unfortunately doesn't hav…

I think they said they aren't using any more battery than they were using before. Sure they could implement their software using less battery, but these Google warnings could apply to anything. This app could perform better. This app could be smaller. This app could have less bugs. The only thing that they can't say is: "This app could be more secure."

It is my understanding that if it could have "less bugs" then it could be "more secure." Aren't bugs the cause of most security breakdowns?

Re: Android now forces apps to include proprietary code for push notifications

#138

Post by izacus »

FreeFull wrote: post #108
izacus wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should also be added that the whole backend is proprietary (and was for GCM as well) and is being maintained and paid for by Google. Having said that, making firebase-messaging GPL-compatible library seems to be something that should make a lot of sense for Google to allow GPL apps to be released on the platform.

Probably LGPLing or MITing it, so closed-source apps can still use the library too.

Doh, yes, of course. Reworded the post :)

Re: Android now forces apps to include proprietary code for push notifications

#139

Post by tialaramex »

buildzr wrote: post #114
mtgx wrote: post #94

And through this, the FBI/GCHQ will get their much-wanted "targeted" malicious updates vector for which they've been asking for a while. If Signal has to implement it, I assume the FBI will ask Google for the ability to insert itself in the proprietary code in some updates from day 2.

Signal has sworn by GCM the entire time they've been running on Android, it took a lot of whining from the community to get them to allow anything else.

The reason to do this is security principle: Don't Stand Out.

If Bob uses Bob's personal notification system for Signal, a passive observer can see that Bob was notified by James. If everybody uses Huge Corp notifications the passive observer can only tell that James was notifying somebody about something and that Bob was notified about something.

Re: Android now forces apps to include proprietary code for push notifications

#140

Post by soulofmischief »

izacus wrote: post #132
kartan wrote: post #26

> Problem: The Firebase Android client library is proprietary, meaning FOSS apps can not use it. Apps that do not comply are reported to the user as "using too much battery". This is a standard on the industry. From 1999: https://www.theregister.co.uk/1999/11/05/how_ms_played_the_i... It doesn't matter how much money Google is going to have to pay in the future as a fine for this practice. The amount of money that th…

> It doesn't matter how much money Google is going to have to pay in the future as a fine for this practice. The amount of money that they will get for kicking out the competition is going to be way higher. That is a learned lesson from Microsoft (and probably others before them). The competition in this case is Apples iOS, for which even HackerNews users love to harp over and over and over again how amazing it is an…

I don't think you're focusing on the entire picture.

Some people here like iOS for the reasons you described. However I'm willing to bet, unless you can show me otherwise, that it's a vocal minority. I don't know of anyone personally who is happy that Apple disallows GPL code.

Comparing Apple's digital Fort Knox with Google's unsupervised free-for-all is a false dichotomy.

There exists a happy medium, where power users get all the freedom they want but apps are still by default beholden to certain restrictions. And this is orthogonal to a proprietary API.

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