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Uncomfortable Questions About Android Developer Verification

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Re: Uncomfortable Questions About Android Developer Verification

#81

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

beardyw wrote: post #60

I know I risk being down voted remorselessly but I have to put this in context. Where in the real world is anonymity considered ok? If I only put a flyer through someone's letterbox here in the UK, I have to identify myself. If I sell a physical product I not only have to identify myself but take on serious legal liability. An author can take on a pseudonym but only via an identified publisher. In fact that latter ex…

Tell you what: Sign your post with your full legal name and address, and we'll talk.

Re: Uncomfortable Questions About Android Developer Verification

#82

Post by pjmlp »

gorgoiler wrote: post #46
Almondsetat wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux is 30 years old, and still it has a laughable percentage of desktop usage. Plus, the only reason it's even usable is because of the relentless work by thankless developers for reverse engineering device drivers. On smartphones this is orders of magnitude more difficult. How do you properly profile and debug a random modem in a phone? What about the cameras? So, how can anyone expect FOSS mobile OSs to ever exis…

I know this isn’t what you meant but it’s important to remember there is some hope. Thirty years ago I was required by my CTOs to use Windows, Borland, AIX, and Solaris. Linux, FreeBSD, and Free dev environments were viewed with deep suspicion. In 2025 you’d be viewed just as much suspicion for not building your stack on Freedom. I still have hope that we’ll get there with phones, too, some day.

In 2025, we all use Windows and macOS laptops around here, Linux is something we run on cloud environments, mostly the distributions of the cloud vendors themselves, which certainly don't upstream everything.

The use of managed language runtimes, and SaaS products with low code/no code, makes the OS kind of irrelevant, and many times we don't even consider Linux on the cloud vendor, it is seen as an implementation detail, as many workloads are done via managed deployments like Vercel, Netlify, Azure Web App Service, and similar services.

Re: Uncomfortable Questions About Android Developer Verification

#83

Post by lioeters »

generic92034 wrote: post #49
p0w3n3d wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meanwhile: VW is already limiting horsepower when the yearly subscription is ceased to be paid It's already happening. The greediness of vendors, the ignorance of users...

Do not forget the inaction and/or corruption of lawmakers.

Now is a time in history where any corporation worth its ill-gotten billions should take advantage of the government's whole-hearted encouragement to push through anti-competitve and anti-consumer decisions to dominate the market and the public.

Re: Uncomfortable Questions About Android Developer Verification

#84

Post by kelnos »

csomar wrote: post #72
teekert wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it so complex to have a foss mobile OS. I only have Linux PCs (laptops) and servers, 100% of my work and personal stuff is done there (though for work I do need to hop into MS365, Google Workspace, Zoom, etc, hooray for browsers, my final firewall between me and the walled gardens, though we can have a whole discussion on that). For mobile, we have PostmarketOS, Phosh, Ubuntu Touch. I really must try living in…

Mostly because the "web" was sabotaged. I use archlinux and my only GUI application is a web browser. On mobile, I need an email app, maps app, food delivery app and a communication app. Even whatsapp doesn't work on the web (on purpose). If the web was enabled, app stores wouldn't be possible and you could run anything without an installation. But somewhere along the line both Google and Apple realized that this isn…

> I use archlinux and my only GUI application is a web browser.

Debian here, and... yup. It's so weird to realize this. I have lots of browser windows open with lots and lots and lots of tabs open, but the only other app I have open is a Matrix client (which honestly is not that great; Element's web version has more features and better polish), and a terminal. If you can call a terminal a GUI app.

Sure, I do use native apps sometimes. A calculator app, GnuCash, VLC, some others. But they're not open all the time; they're infrequent-use apps. And a lot of my VLC use has been replaced by streaming on the web.

It's incredibly sad.

Re: Uncomfortable Questions About Android Developer Verification

#85

Post by bigstrat2003 »

mettamage wrote: post #23
sschueller wrote: post #2

The requirement of verification to side-load any app is fascist control. It is clear as night and day. Shame on Google and Apple, it was always clear this was the end goal and next up is also your PC. Right after will come the removal off apps they don't like and there is nothing you can do about it. Stallman was right

I asked an LLM, so I think I get it but could you try to mention what is meant with "Stallman was right"? The reason I'm asking you and not posting the LLM answer is because it still feels a bit icky to post an LLM answer for everything I don't understand [1]. [1] Feel free to discuss this too, if you want. I'm developing my opinion on it.

Stallman has a long history of being very abrasive and ideological. He is the kind of guy who makes zero concessions for practicality, and he insists on prioritizing user freedom because he has always feared that otherwise users will be locked out of having the ability to truly control their computers. It's always been kind of easy to laugh at his crusade because of how zealous he is, and how absurd the scenarios he warns about seem to be. The thing is... he seems to have been right the whole time. Companies really do want to lock you out of controlling the devices you own, and do so at the first opportunity. So... Stallman was right.

Re: Uncomfortable Questions About Android Developer Verification

#86

Post by pjmlp »

sschueller wrote: post #2

The requirement of verification to side-load any app is fascist control. It is clear as night and day. Shame on Google and Apple, it was always clear this was the end goal and next up is also your PC. Right after will come the removal off apps they don't like and there is nothing you can do about it. Stallman was right

PC only turned out open, because IBM never saw it coming, and when they tried to get control back it was too late.

Re: Uncomfortable Questions About Android Developer Verification

#87

Post by teekert »

ajb wrote: post #68
teekert wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because of hardware standardization Linux has become a pre-competitive layer, a commodity we have decided not to compete on. And it turns out that such a commodity by definition is private, because we don't want any one party to reap all the benefits of a commodity project (we'd rip it out before using it anyway), in the same sense that we don't want want 1 company sitting on all our water consumption data for exampl…

The Android stack, right back to the pre-aquisition "Danger" stack, ripped out everything GPL'd above the kernel, and Google has been investing in their "fuschia" project to make a non-GPL'dv kernel as well. Gradually making more and more of it proprietary was the plan. Google is a big company and there may have been some factions pushing to make android an open ecosystem, but I don't see that that was ever the compa…

So the real question is: Why are people so social and pleasant, and why are companies so egoistic (and I mean egoistic in the cancer/parasitic/enshitifying way, not in the Ayn-Rand/social/We-are-all-equal way).

Is it the lack of deep, DNA encoded morality? What are we going to do about this? What is the DNA of an organization anyway?

How, as a society can we take away these stimuli that make it so natural to consume individual freedoms when we grow our tribe-size?

Maybe we need more freedom, more freedom to say: "F-this I'm out of here, I just like the set of rule of this other society better." Maybe we are still too constrained. By our ways of generating income, by our countries, continents and ultimately our planet. We have 1 lifetime, we have to make do with what we find.

Re: Uncomfortable Questions About Android Developer Verification

#88

Post by kuschku »

beardyw wrote: post #60

I know I risk being down voted remorselessly but I have to put this in context. Where in the real world is anonymity considered ok? If I only put a flyer through someone's letterbox here in the UK, I have to identify myself. If I sell a physical product I not only have to identify myself but take on serious legal liability. An author can take on a pseudonym but only via an identified publisher. In fact that latter ex…

That's not even true for physical products. I can give away stuff anonymously at hackspaces, or in many other settings.

Identification is only required if I want to sell stuff, at large scale.

Google's plan would also utterly destroy fdroid and similar projects.

Re: Uncomfortable Questions About Android Developer Verification

#89

Post by godelski »

Mordisquitos wrote: post #71
beardyw wrote: post #60

I know I risk being down voted remorselessly but I have to put this in context. Where in the real world is anonymity considered ok? If I only put a flyer through someone's letterbox here in the UK, I have to identify myself. If I sell a physical product I not only have to identify myself but take on serious legal liability. An author can take on a pseudonym but only via an identified publisher. In fact that latter ex…

> Where in the real world is anonymity considered ok? I am allowed to invite guests into my home even if their identity isn't pre-registered with my landlord.

Personally I'm a big fan of not registering with the police every time a use a public restroom.

Re: Uncomfortable Questions About Android Developer Verification

#90

Post by pjmlp »

bambax wrote: post #77
swe_dima wrote: post #18

There goes one of the main arguments why I've been using Android over iPhone

Yes, and that may be something Google does care about in the end. If Android becomes as closed and as controlled as iOS, why Android??

Because most of us live in countries where an iPhone is two months salary at least, or a contract bound to several years before it can be cancelled, while Android is usually half of that, with the freedom of pre-pay.
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