It’s funny how the “Google doesn’t control it it’s open source” crowd has gotten very quiet as of late. See also chromium and manifest 3
Keep Android Open
121–130 of 907 posts
Re: Keep Android Open
#122Oh, the irony. I still remember how in the early days of Android vs iOS discussions, the main point was "but it's OPEN!". The word "open" was used as a comma by Google people. It was The Thing. The Difference. Good vs Evil and all that.
Re: Keep Android Open
#123Back in the 2007 or when it came out in Sweden I bought the iPhone and started developing for it. This was cool, new and exciting and it was fine as long as my company was paying the $100 fee every year. But then I switched jobs and worked at a company which produced mostly open source code. Suddenly I would have to pay $100 every year just to be able to put my own software on the phone ... This is why I switched to…
Ironically, somewhere around 2014, Google was doing the exact same style "keep Android open" campaign, recruiting developers around the world - including me, to help lobby for keeping Android "open" and tell the horror stories of issues that random OEMs caused by forking Android, breaking compatibility and security.
Made sense to me at the time and they were really into "Android should be open source" vibe, so I supported it.
10 years later, I'm also rugpulled. Their vision has dramatically shifted into trying to build a walled garden on top of Android, but now they are haunted by their open source roots, and the walled garden is just a really tall pile of bricks laid around it.
So many times we've been promised things, only for them to be delivered in a half-baked state with half of the parts open source while other parts were closed only to Google and Google approved apps.
So many times the issue trackers for different parts of the platform ecosystem have changed, that some issues are impossible to debug without using web archive. And just as many times, they have been closed, ignored for years or unnoticed, being ping-ponged among team members until they forget about it.
Yet, even with all of the closed and privatized parts of the ecosystem, they are still not able to deliver on an ecosystem promise.
They control my email, my photos, my cloud, my browser, my phone - yet cannot keep a single thing properly in sync. Still, I download something and I do not know where it went. Still, I cannot Airdrop things without a 3rd party service. Still, I take a photo only for it to appear on the cloud 5 minutes later. Still, I cannot have a "sandbox" account for testing that just works, but have to juggle multiple accounts, causing their auth system to break 80% of the time when testing.
As a developer, I do not plan to support Android anymore. I recently got an iPhone, and am now fully switching to it. Even tho I am long on $GOOG stock, because the money printer go brrr, I will be spending that money in the Apple's ecosystem from now on.
Re: Keep Android Open
#124Earlier 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…
It really isn't. This is a temporary sugar rush that comes after pretty much every time Microsoft does something awful. After a while the buzz will fizz out and the majority of those PC gamers that looked to switching go back to Windows.
IME a lot developers don't even use Linux on their desktop machine. I've met three developers that use Linux professional IRL. A lot of devs have a hard time even using git bash on Windows.
I am always called up by people at work because I am "the Linux guy" when they have a problem with Linux or Bash.
Sure, there are a lot of people that use Linux indirectly e.g. deploy to a Linux box, use Docker or a VM. But if someone isn't running Windows, 9 times out of 10 they are running a Mac.
More generally the thing that has paid the bills for me is always these huge proprietary tech stacks I've had to deal with. Whether it be Microsoft's old ASP.NET tech stack with SQL Server, AWS, Azure, GCP, what pays the bills is proprietary shite. I hate working with this stuff, but that what you gotta to pay the bills.
Re: Keep Android Open
#125Stallman was right.
He usually is, given time.
Re: Keep Android Open
#126Back in the 2007 or when it came out in Sweden I bought the iPhone and started developing for it. This was cool, new and exciting and it was fine as long as my company was paying the $100 fee every year. But then I switched jobs and worked at a company which produced mostly open source code. Suddenly I would have to pay $100 every year just to be able to put my own software on the phone ... This is why I switched to…
Ironically, somewhere around 2014, Google was doing the exact same style "keep Android open" campaign, recruiting developers around the world - including me, to help lobby for keeping Android "open" and tell the horror stories of issues that random OEMs caused by forking Android, breaking compatibility and security. Made sense to me at the time and they were really into "Android should be open source" vibe, so I supp…
It doesn't make sense to choose between a snake that bit you and another that bit you earlier.
If you don't want to be bitten, get out of the snake pit.
Re: Keep Android Open
#127Oh, the irony. I still remember how in the early days of Android vs iOS discussions, the main point was "but it's OPEN!". The word "open" was used as a comma by Google people. It was The Thing. The Difference. Good vs Evil and all that.
It looks like eventually any company will start squeezing customers for what they are worth.
But only once the company is powerful enough. We don't call Google a monopoly, because there is Apple, but taken together they certainly behave as one. Both create expectations, create expected momentum in a certain direction, people build (companies, lives) on those assumptions and boom, you can't get out and now the company changes the deal.
Is it just our assumptions that get us in trouble? Or do we need to do more?
I'm not sure how to regulate this, other than to stimulate open source, as the "for the people by the people" solution. But also that will just lead to poor expensive solutions (the market created some nice FOSS though). So the law it should be... And we're back to the problem of lobbying...
Perhaps there should be contracts: Google advertises Android as open: They should sign a contract: For how long will Android be open? Define "Open". The contract can be enforced. Or perhaps we, the people, sue now, for false advertising, although that will just make them flex their legal and lobbying muscles... And they didn't sign any contracts.
Re: Keep Android Open
#12899% 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.
Having a trustworthy channel for verified app loading is a vital security tool. F-Droid is such a channel; the Google Play Store is not. F-Droid inspects the source code of the applications they build, removes malware and other antifeatures from them, and compiles them from source to ensure that the binaries they deliver correspond to the source code they've inspected. The Google Play Store doesn't do any of those th…
I'm not sure about the NewPipe angle, as Grey Jay exists (Backed by FUTO/Louis Rossman) on the Play store, which has ad-block and sponsor block incorporated into it.
Google is just being malicious towards opensource and privacy, under the guise of security
Re: Keep Android Open
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Even phones from Motorola require you to literally ask permission to unlock your bootloader via a form on their website, which they then unlock remotely or you enter some generated code. Other manufacturers do the same, where you have to wait a period of like 45 days before being able to unlock, and then have to ask permission on their website to unlock your bootloader.
And good lock unlocking anything over 5 years old because the updated website doesn't support what you've got. Been there, it sucks.
Re: Keep Android Open
#130Back in the 2007 or when it came out in Sweden I bought the iPhone and started developing for it. This was cool, new and exciting and it was fine as long as my company was paying the $100 fee every year. But then I switched jobs and worked at a company which produced mostly open source code. Suddenly I would have to pay $100 every year just to be able to put my own software on the phone ... This is why I switched to…
100$ a year for a dev in Sweden - that's like money you wouldn't notice if it got lost in your pockets - and I am sure it cuts down on spammers and covers administrative cost. I have no problem with a store having a small admission fee - that's perfectly reasonable and they do have operational costs. It would be nice if they had some way to waive the fee for popular OSS to garner some god will with the devs. Taking a…
> 100$ a year for a dev in Sweden - that's like money you wouldn't notice if it got lost in your pockets
For someone who is making money from it, sure, but that's exactly who this isn't about. The way they get screwed is by the 30%.
A fixed fee -- in any amount -- is screwing the people who aren't in it for the money. Because to begin with, it's not just the fee, it's the bureaucracy that comes with the fee.
You're a kid and you want to make your first app, but you don't have a credit card.
You live in a poor country and maybe the amount you can lose without noticing when you're rich isn't the same there. Or even if you can get the money, you may not have a first world bank account and the conglomerate isn't set up to take the local currency.
You're a desktop developer and you're willing to make a simple mobile app and give it away for free as long as it's not a bother. The money is nothing but the paperwork is a bother so you don't do it, and now the million people who would have used that app don't have it and have to suffer the spam-laden trash alternative from someone who is only in it for the money.
And suppose the amount is as trivial as you propose. Then why does a multi-trillion dollar conglomerate need that pittance from a million ordinary people?