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Keep Android Open

keepandroidopen.org

41–50 of 907 posts

Re: Keep Android Open

#41

99% of malware with real world consequences of people losing much or all of their money is from unverified developers. This is a step in the right direction to keep people safe in my opinion. Most people around the world don’t understand the risks.

Akshually 99% of malware with real world consequences comes preinstalled on your phone.

Re: Keep Android Open

#42

99% of malware with real world consequences of people losing much or all of their money is from unverified developers. This is a step in the right direction to keep people safe in my opinion. Most people around the world don’t understand the risks.

[deleted]

Re: Keep Android Open

#43

You can't even develop without the paid dev account? I thought it'd just be for distribution. Like, you can build and run whatever you want on an iPhone without a paid account.

You can develop and install via adb, but you can't just tell the package manager to install an APK you downloaded on your phone. Maybe attestation makes sense to allow Amazon App Store or Epic Games Store to be installed without a warning and to allow companies like Spotify to distribute their apps themselves from their websites without using Google Play Store and without a warning. What's wrong is preventing people from installing apps that haven't been attested by Google straight from their phone, even with a warning.

Re: Keep Android Open

#45

You can't even develop without the paid dev account? I thought it'd just be for distribution. Like, you can build and run whatever you want on an iPhone without a paid account.

You can develop and install via adb, but you can't just tell the package manager to install an APK you downloaded on your phone. Maybe attestation makes sense to allow Amazon App Store or Epic Games Store to be installed without a warning and to allow companies like Spotify to distribute their apps themselves from their websites without using Google Play Store and without a warning. What's wrong is preventing people…

I get that requiring attestation for downloaded apps is wrong too, it's just this website says "it will no longer be possible to develop apps for the Android platform without first registering centrally with Google" which seems incorrect from what you're saying.

Edit: Oh I get it, "develop for the platform" means develop and distribute. Maybe it's just me, but seems like an important difference.

Re: Keep Android Open

#46

Before buying a smartphone I tried to find an inexpensive model that supports open source OS, but I couldn't. What open OS support is ether expensive Pixels, or outdated models. The solution, I think, would be a regulation that forbids manufacturers of any chip or device CPU from making obstacles to reprogramming the device (using fuses, digital signatures, encryption etc). So if you buy a device with CPU and writabl…

Most vendors (at some level) allow flashing custom distributions, as long as you didn't buy that device from carrier: https://github.com/zenfyrdev/bootloader-unlock-wall-of-shame...

You will lose DRM-based apps (e.g. Netflix), Payment apps, and bank apps though.

Re: Keep Android Open

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This works now, but good luck in 10 years time when the radio chip requires a digital signature from the host OS signed by google or apple and your current phone is deprecated by 6g or whatever.

when the radio chip requires a digital signature from the host OS signed by google or apple China will never let that happen.

The irony, software freedom is now dependent on China.

Re: Keep Android Open

#48

99% of malware with real world consequences of people losing much or all of their money is from unverified developers. This is a step in the right direction to keep people safe in my opinion. Most people around the world don’t understand the risks.

That's rich knowing that both Apple and Google get most of their store money from dubious casino like games which I'm uncomfortable giving to my family.

Before they are allowed to make any comment on scams, they should clean up their own store first.

Re: Keep Android Open

#50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is for developers. Abandoning Android for Linux is not viable for software developers who need to eat. Sure, we can use Linux smartphones ourselves, but if the software we make has a grand total of three people who ever lay eyes on it, that's less than ideal. And given how The Year of the Linux Desktop has gone, I think it'd be strongly preferable if we managed to stave off the tightening of control over…

The Year of the Linux Desktop is kind of happening. Not at the scale that the meme implies, but I've never seen anywhere near as much adoption of the Linux desktop as this year. The combination of Valve's efforts, more usage of Linux gaming handhelds, distributions like Bazzite that have strong selling points for Windows gamers, and Microsoft pissing everyone off with everything that is Windows 11, the Linux desktop…

Especially considering how much software these days on Windows are all Electron/Web. So is not a hard switch as it once was.

I switched from Windows to Linux it's been 2 years. One of the few things I missed on Windows, was the native WhatsApp app, as the Web WhatsApp it's horrible. Then a few months Meta killed the native app and made into a webview-app :)

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