So are we, fans of FOSS, all-in on the Librem phone at this point?
I'm just waiting to find out if someone will get Librem 5 working with a Verizon approved networking module before I jump in. But yes, very excited.
Android now forces apps to include proprietary code for push notifications
171–180 of 284 posts
Re: Android now forces apps to include proprietary code for push notifications
#172So 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…
The phrase "running continuously" makes it sound like they are doing something... but they aren't: they are blocked reading on a socket. The only time they would run is if they receive information, which is exactly when they would run anyway (as they got a notification). The difference in battery usage would essentially be down to subtle effects caused by the private memory of that process (which might be negligible)…
GCM/FCM will delay low priority notifications, in order to batch as many together as possible.
On top of that, the cell networks don't allow keeping a socket open for more than a few minutes without sending keepalive packets. Unlike on desktop, keeping a socket open isn't "free" on mobile.
Waking up the cell radio has a significant penalty on battery life.
(And yes, Android batches up process wakeups as well. See the docs on "Doze Mode": https://developer.android.com/training/monitoring-device-sta...)
Re: Android now forces apps to include proprietary code for push notifications
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
>The response time of my simple notification system was nearly instantaneous, but OK google, I'll play your game. I put together something that used FCM and it can take 15 or 20 MINUTES to get even a "high priority" message from FCM. Letting your phone actually sleep is the battery saving feature. Also, you get throttled for high volume so check that as well. If you think your messages are so important to have a cons…
Some types of messages do require immediate attention of the user, or are of highest value if delivered immediately. Instant messaging apps have been using notifications for a long time and did not require a foreground service. Expecting instant delivery of that class of messages is not abusing the system.
While it's not really possible to do this in your own background service any more, GCM still supports this use case. This is the deprioritization the grand parent is talking about. If there's already a notification showing you won't get instant follow up responses. It's a compromise to be sure but if you want to break that compromise you have to make a foreground service.
Re: Android now forces apps to include proprietary code for push notifications
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
A GPL app can absolutely link to proprietary software and still be covered under the GPL. From the GPLv3 itself. > The “System Libraries” of an executable work include anything, other than the work as a whole, that (a) is included in the normal form of packaging a Major Component, but which is not part of that Major Component, and (b) serves only to enable use of the work with that Major Component, or to implement a…
But Firebase is not a "kernel", "window system", it is just third-party proprietary library (not essential part of Android as I understand).
I personally would consider notifications and the ability to run in the background to be essential but there's a better test which is the reason that this exception exists in the first place.
From copyleft.org:
> The system library exception is designed to allow copylefted software to link with these libraries when prohibition of that linking would hurt software freedom more than it would hurt proprietary software.
This is really the core of it -- who is hurt more by disallowing this linking: Google or FOSS apps?
Re: Android now forces apps to include proprietary code for push notifications
#175> 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…
> What exactly do you expect Google to do here?
Let app developers and users have a choice.
Re: Android now forces apps to include proprietary code for push notifications
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
That something is configurable doesn't negate the ability to have sane defaults that most people won't touch.
Often times even having configuration options creates surface for security issues. A good example of this is that there were scams that involved having people paste some script into their chrome devtools and steal data. This worked fairly effectively. Facebook ended up doing some magic to show a warning message in the devtools console to tell people that no, you really shouldn't paste random stuff here, it will do ba…
I very much doubt that Google is making the GCM push code proprietary for these reasons.
Re: Android now forces apps to include proprietary code for push notifications
#177I was confused for a moment because I thought the Firebase SDK was open source. Interestingly, though, the Android version appears to be only partly open source. I did not find an explanation as to why some of the source is not available, it is mentioned on the Github repository but not explained. In any case, I don’t see the code for Cloud Messaging in there. It may not be that it is done out of secrecy, though. A c…
[Firebase team member here] Our goal is to open source all of our SDKs, and we have steadily open-sourced more of them over time. The SDKs you see on GitHub right now are all standalone, they don't require communicating with Google Play services running on the device. Our bar for moving an SDK to GitHub is that it has to be more than a source dump, it must be the source of truth for that team's development. Right now…
Thanks for the clarification, seems pretty straightforward to me.
Re: Android now forces apps to include proprietary code for push notifications
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 use…
> 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.
Is this not the happy medium Google is trying to hit?
Power users can unlock their bootloader and do whatever they want. This is still officially supported, with vendor blobs officially provided.
By default things are restricted to deliver a happy user experience in the context of the average person that just wants a product that works. But you're free to do whatever you want. There's (usually) even controls to remove restrictions from apps manually without doing the custom ROM route, but there is always the ultimate power user toggle there of "flash a custom ROM"
Re: Android now forces apps to include proprietary code for push notifications
#179This has been coming for a while. We attempted to create a push-based notification system based on MQTT. It worked well, then the notifications started getting lost. Turns out, the receiver service was getting killed in the background. We found out the best way to get reliable notification was through Google's own GCM (which has now moved to Firebase Cloud Messaging. We learned its incredibly difficult, if not imposs…
> there are open source libraries
Thanks for the link, but IDK. I don't see FCM in that collection. What am I misunderstanding here?
Re: Android now forces apps to include proprietary code for push notifications
#180> 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 use an iPhone currently but I'm wishing for an Android instead, precisely because Android allows some Free Software apps that have no equivalent for iPhone.
But yes, I agree, Android's competition is iOS and that's freaking sad.