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Expanding Fuchsia's open source model

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Re: Expanding Fuchsia's open source model

#221

Post by lalaithion »

taneq wrote: post #202
zlynx wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the first hand, I really appreciate the 30 - 40 hours of battery runtime my Pixel 5 has now. Restricting background apps is a big part of this.

If only there were some way to let the phone's owner decide what apps were allowed to run in the background, we could all be happy.

It takes about 15 seconds of googling to find out that yes, the user can decide what apps are allowed to run in the background. It's just that now, it's not "every app by default" and instead "what apps a user selects".

Re: Expanding Fuchsia's open source model

#222

Post by derefr »

CogitoCogito wrote: post #68
derefr wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In fact, what I'm trying to understand exactly is if I assume that you are correct that there is no difference, then why would Google require the contribution in the first place? The difference isn't relevant 99% of the time, but it comes up if the maintainership of a work tries to re-license the work. Works without assigned ownership cannot practically be re-licensed, as you'd have to get individual consent from a…

> The difference isn't relevant 99% of the time, but it comes up if the maintainership of a work tries to re-license the work. Works without assigned ownership cannot practically be re-licensed, as you'd have to get individual consent from all owning parties. Yeah I understand this. Hence there _is_ a difference and maybe one I don't prefer. I understand why Google would want this, but maybe I view Google's inability…

IIRC in most cases it wasn’t so much that anyone actively disagreed with the licensing change, as that it was infeasible to even get in contact with the literally thousands of contributors — especially since many of them have left no contact details that could be used for legal correspondence.

Imagine a country with direct democracy, where a 100% consensus of all citizens is required for any law to be passed. Now imagine that a single citizen of that country decides to go live in the mountains, out of contact with the rest of the country, but still legally alive and legally a citizen, and therefore legally a "required" vote. The legislative process grinds to a halt!

This is, of course, why no government is run that way. And it's equally silly to run a FOSS project that way. Even if literally everybody likes some change, just one contributor failing to get in contact means you're stuck without the ability to make the change.

Re: Expanding Fuchsia's open source model

#223

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

jasonvorhe wrote: post #123

I don't understand the cynicism here. Android's fragmentation was the original sin that lead to fragmentation and the new that we've seen for years, until Google semi-fixed the mess with a) Play Services (short term) and b) Project Treble. Google were so convinced of the value of open source that they didn't anticipate that almost all OEM's would rather ship their Android forks than to stay close to upstream. If they…

"Is Google still primarily an advertising company that tracks its users? Of course."

A primary reason why I would choose open over closed source is the ability to avoid ads and tracking. Can the user remove all the phone home nonsense from Fuschia. Of course not. This defeats the purpose of open source for me -- control. With this, I have to share control over the computer with Google.

Re: Expanding Fuchsia's open source model

#224

Post by anp »

TACIXAT wrote: post #205
anp wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, use of memory-safe languages doesn't preclude exploitability. It's "just" another way to reduce attack surface. (disclosure: i work on fuchsia, big rust fanboy)

I think you are implying this by putting just in scare quotes, but it is one of the most impactful things we can do for the security of native code.

Absolutely agree. The other thing I guess I was implying is that Fuchsia uses a number of tools to reduce attack surface that work regardless of language.

(edited to make explicit other half)

Re: Expanding Fuchsia's open source model

#225

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

gpm wrote: post #209
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was not commenting on GPLv3. But even so, your first paragraph does not contradict what I wrote. You're also incorrect: there is no transitivity to providing source. Section 6 makes clear that if your offer of source relies on someone else's server (i.e. you are redistributing the work but do not control the location where the source is available): "Regardless of what server hosts the Corresponding Source, you rema…

So we agree we're talking about the second option in GPLv2 then right? Here is the relevant text with the relevant portion emphasized (in italics since hn doesn't have bold). > b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party , for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code…

Yes, if you exercise the seond option, the offer would be open to any 3rd party (i.e. it's a public server / URL).

But you only have to give the offer to whomever you give the object/executable to. So you tell them "you can get the source from foo://bar.baz/phaf" ... this just has to be a publically accessible address with no additional authentication or authorization. You are not required to announce this in any way other than in the written offer which accompanies the object/executable.

So, although in theory any third party has access to the source code, you are not being required to put it in a publically visible location, merely a publically accessible one.

[EDIT: I was saying that GPLv3 also does not have transitivity,so we agree about that ]

[EDIT: I admit that I am misleading in my final sentence ... yes, any third party has the right to access the source code, but you are not required to notify "any third party" of this fact, only those you gave the object/executable to. ]

Re: Expanding Fuchsia's open source model

#226

Post by grishka »

taneq wrote: post #202
zlynx wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the first hand, I really appreciate the 30 - 40 hours of battery runtime my Pixel 5 has now. Restricting background apps is a big part of this.

If only there were some way to let the phone's owner decide what apps were allowed to run in the background, we could all be happy.

There is. You can disable battery optimizations per-app, if that's what you mean.

Re: Expanding Fuchsia's open source model

#227

Post by bregma »

jcranmer wrote: post #138
outworlder wrote: post #110

> Fuchsia is a long-term project to create a general-purpose, open source operating system Why do we need this? We have Linux. It works. It is open-source, general purpose. It needs more support to become more mainstream (like what Valve has done with Proton). Don't like Linux? Start with one of the BSDs. Heck, start with Haiku. Any of these projects are lightyears ahead of anything that's just starting. The most lik…

There is definitely room to innovate more fundamentally in operating system design. POSIX is effectively a 50-year old API, and there are definitely places where the API it provides is far from optimal. For something that interests me personally, the POSIX idea of ptrace and signals for debugging is a fundamentally broken and obtuse API that just don't work very well with how modern software is designed, and requires…

ptrace is a Linux thing. POSIX is not Linux.

Re: Expanding Fuchsia's open source model

#228

Post by aravindet »

actuator wrote: post #81
cute_boi wrote: post #75

Google and Opensource a joke of century. Chrome -> Make chromium opensource but add spyware that phones home on every second and with new manifest v3 make sure extensions like ublock origin don't work Andriod -> Make tip of iceberg opensource but force every vendor to use Service and lock down whole ecosystem around it. And make sure there is no way to block ads on youtube for andriod. Fuchsia -> Initial Stage make p…

> Make chromium opensource but add spyware that phones home on every second Chromium homes every second? That seems interesting. It has been a long time since I last used Chromium. Does it also come with Google auth now? > Make tip of iceberg opensource but force every vendor to use Service and lock down whole ecosystem around it. If they add Google specific services into core Android is it not worse? Companies like…

> If they add Google specific services into core Android is it not worse?

Not necessarily. Take for example push notifications - the push notification client could be part of the OS, with build configurations to specify a server or disable this altogether.

Or, given OS update issues, Google Play Services could be a separate open source project with the Google URLs and keys supplied as build configs.

Re: Expanding Fuchsia's open source model

#229

Post by phh »

Inhibit wrote: post #220
phh wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Project Treble didn't fix anything (I'm very happy with Project Treble, because it lets me hack stuff I couldn't begin to imagine with 4 yrs ago, but that's just hack). It didn't even fix Nexus/Pixels that still have the same upgrade track record as a Samsung 100$ device. (Pixel 1 and Pixel 2 users, feel free to come and use my Generic System Image, I'll keep upgrading you as long as I can with my bare hands!) ATM OE…

Ah, then nothing's changed (re the messiness) since Android 2/4/5. Sounds like they're still moving toward locking down everyone's hardware to ensure their ad platform revenue. The couple of devices I've broken down a release for and rebuilt just to clean out Trojans included in the firmware were devilishly difficult. And does it ever piss me off that there's nothing generic and updated to run on them.

As a hacker, Android feel much more free than before. Because I can flash whichever ROM on pretty much whichever device I want. (assuming OEM didn't lock down bootloader unlock, which is pretty rare those days) I have my own ROM on small device (kTouch i9), long device (Qin 2 Pro), keyboard device (Unihertz Titan), device with a FLIR and endoscope (Ulefone Armor 9), assistant/speaker (Archos Hello 7), comfortable in hand device (Pixel 5), premium device (ROG Phone 3). Those devices (except those last two) wouldn't ever have seen custom ROM. But here we are, thanks to Project Treble, the same ROM works on all of them without breaking a sweat. Nowadays when I buy a device to hack with, the only question I have to ask is "can the bootloader be unlocked?" (small photo to make my case https://twitter.com/phhusson/status/1308299188153643008/phot... )

As a user, however, it is severely locked down. Installing apps from 3rd party app store was okay-ish years ago. Nowadays, Android just frightens you as much as possible so that you don't install 3rd party apps. The battery thing that has already been mentioned is an issue as well. Nowadays you can't even use an alternate Camera app, you have to stick to whatever OEM gave you.

Re: Expanding Fuchsia's open source model

#230

Post by dhodell »

ajanicij wrote: post #216
dhodell wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's kind of unfortunate because existing developers have the privilege of experience with the systems and where they're going that external contributors simply don't have, and it will take a non-trivial amount time for interested parties to develop that knowledge. At the same time, it is an active project with active development that are informed by goals and processes not all of which are open. And really, while th…

> However, the "bazaar" is also a bit of a myth in this regard. I'm not really aware of any open source projects where I can go submit a PR without talking to anybody and have the expectation that it'll be merged without discussion. I am aware of one, but an important one: ZeroMQ. Thanks to the late Pieter Hintjens, this project has C4 model. I have not seen any other project where I submitted a PR and maintainer acc…

Neat, thanks for that info. I really appreciated Pieter and his work; it's nice to hear his community and project are still well.
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