21–30 of 128 posts
No need to listen. We all know how evil the intentions are. This will kill the platform, for better or worse.
What do the OEMs have to say about this? A lot of them, including Samsung, have their own app stores. Surely they'd not be willing to cede control?
Microsoft does this for Windows apps if you don’t want scary warnings popping up everywhere. Apple doesn’t even let you sideload at all for iOS and for macOS they do the forced trash malware thing unless you run commands to allow the app in the terminal.
Am I missing how this is different from what we already have on most platforms? Is it because you can’t force it to install the apps? Is there not a developer mode that lets you install unsigned apps, or a way to root the device to install apps?
I know both are objectionable in their own way, but these two scenarios are quite different and I want to understand this better.
Googles decisision to add developer verification killed my interest in handset development entirely. But hey, at least I know what to focus my time on rather than third party app development ie. F-Droid. I look at my android phone differently now that its on the table which sucks but hey they made me switch my development time to linux drivers now instead.
Just wished there was a viable* FOSS Linux based mobile OS project out there that I could offer my time and energy to instead.
Can an non-profit LLC verify itself and submit apps on behalf or anonymous developers after vetting their code? If so, that would probably a nice middle-ground. The reaction to this change has truly changed my opinion that developer's opinions on a lot of subjects affecting the public's safety and security shouldn't be valued much (and yes, I realize I am on HN). If this is a bridge too far, then why should anyone li…
It's hard to see how you could get the necessary level of careful code review with just volunteer effort. But I suspect that most developers who don't want to register with Google are also unlikely to pay money to a third party to work around this.
This makes no sense at all.
It doesn't take much effort to enable Developer Options, plug into a laptop and run "adb install whatever.apk". It's kind of like the floppy disk era again, having to physically insert things into one's computer to install software. Not a big deal.
This mostly confirms that it's exactly as bad as we thought. The only clarification is that building from source and installing via adb will continue to be allowed. For now.
> We want to make sure that if you download an app, it’s truly from the developer it claims to be published from, regardless of where you get the app. Verified developers will have the same freedom to distribute their apps directly to users through sideloading or through any app store they prefer. This makes no sense at all.