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Keep Android Open

keepandroidopen.org

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Re: Keep Android Open

#171

Post by navigate8310 »

thecupisblue wrote: post #123
jeena wrote: post #58

Back 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…

> 10 years later, I'm also rugpulled. Their vision has dramatically shifted into trying to build a walled garden on top of Android

Abrupt abandoning of their Nexus line for overpriced Pixel hardware was the watershed moment. The exact moment when their executives decided to ride free on open source labor.

Re: Keep Android Open

#172

Post by frostyel »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #130
rafaelmn wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You bring up several important issues and I agree with you 100%. A lot of good application/utilities in the past were from engineers who needed the tools themselves, developed them, and then released it open source.

But I can also see the clutter argument. Windows app store has been and still is a nightmare to use.

It feels like we had a good system, but then lost it. I have no idea what it takes to get it back.

Re: Keep Android Open

#173

Post by gf000 »

thecupisblue wrote: post #123
jeena wrote: post #58

Back 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…

> Still, I cannot Airdrop things without a 3rd party service

Well, it hardly works between Apple devices themselves to begin with (sending a bunch of pictures over to a 4 years old iphone works like 1 times out of 10 trial..). At least I can use regular old Bluetooth to send stuff to any kind of device from Android without the cruel gatekeeping of only Apple devices.

So yeah, both platforms have their own ways they suck in.

Re: Keep Android Open

#174

Post by AnthonyMouse »

rafaelmn wrote: post #153
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Then why does a multi-trillion dollar conglomerate need that pittance from a million ordinary people? Because the store gets spammed by million of bot applications ? Having a small fee for store review is probably a decent noise floor. You can still develop apps on your devices without a dev license - the week long cert is annoying, they probably want to avoid people side-loading via this mechanism (which I am agai…

> Because the store gets spammed by million of bot applications ?

They're a search engine company. They can't figure out how to put real apps on page 1 and spam apps on page 500?

Also, then why are they charging the fee if you use someone else's store?

> the week long cert is annoying, they probably want to avoid people side-loading via this mechanism

It seems like you understand their underlying motives, so then why are you defending them?

Re: Keep Android Open

#175

Post by user34283 »

giamma wrote: post #145

While I understand the reasons behind this campaign, I have mixed feelings about it. As an iPhone user, I find it frustrating that deploying my own app on my own device requires either reinstalling it every 7 days or paying $100 annually. Android doesn't have this limitation, which makes it simpler and more convenient for personal use. However, when it comes to publishing apps to the store, I take a different view. I…

If the manufacturer wants to offer verification of developers, this should be an optional feature allowing the user to continue the installation of applications distributed by unverified developers in a convenient way.

Making this verification mandatory is an absolute non-starter, ridiculous overreach, and a spit in the face of regulators who are trying to break Google and Apple's monopoly on mobile app distribution.

Re: Keep Android Open

#176

Post by gf000 »

codedokode wrote: post #162
constantcrying wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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). Why would you make essential security features illegal? Do you want to fly on a plane where the flight control software was maybe overwritten? >So if you buy a device with CPU and writable memory, you should be able to l…

> Do you want to fly on a plane where the flight control software was maybe overwritten? I don't understand it. Whoever owns the place can replace any part of it, including computers. So being able to overwrite software doesn't change it. Furthermore, plane computers are not a consumer hardware. You could make a better example with patched car software. > The problem is Google and Apple locking down their Operating S…

On pixel devices you can add your own signature to be checked and thus can use secure boot with a custom OS - that's how GrapheneOS works.

No need to strip out every wall, we just have to think about the problem and put doors at necessary places so we can enjoy both freedom AND security.

Re: Keep Android Open

#177

Post by baobun »

28304283409234 wrote: post #105
lern_too_spel wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can still run an Android build that doesn't require a Google signature for apps. You'll just lose access to Play Integrity APIs, which you wouldn't get from non-Android Linux phones either. A better technical solution is to set up a federated replacement for Play Integrity that third party ROM developers can opt into and a library that can use that or Play Integrity for app developers that want it to use.

Banking apps will not work then.

I think the "one smartphone for absolutely everything" era is over. Either switch banks (there are many who don't do this nonsense) or have a dedicated Android/iOS device for banking.

Re: Keep Android Open

#178

Post by 63stack »

blindriver wrote: post #10

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.

A ton of malware is pushed through Google's adsense network, which already requires some level of verification afaik. It doesn't stop jack shit. You are naive if you think more verification is somehow going to stop this.

Re: Keep Android Open

#179

Post by gf000 »

neilv wrote: post #7

No matter how this turns out, I'm sure GrapheneOS will make a smart effort. https://grapheneos.org/ But long-term, Android is such a massive code base, and was designed more for surveillance and consumption, than for privacy&security and the user's interests. I think getting mainline Linux on viable and sustainable on multiple hardware devices is warmer, fuzzier foundation. (Sort of a cross between Purism's work on t…

> think getting mainline Linux on viable and sustainable on multiple hardware devices is warmer, fuzzier foundation.

You just have to somehow speedrun the decades of development that went into Android to make it decently run on mobile hardware.. never really understood this "throwing out the baby" direction - the UNIX userspace model simply doesn't work on mobile (I would wager it also doesn't work on desktop anymore), has no security (everything runs as your user which made sense when you ran some batch job on a terminal with multiple other users, but nowadays when a single user has as many processes as all the user had back then it effectively means no security between any of those programs), there is no real resource control, no lifecycles, so the device will burn scorching hot and have terrible battery life.

On Android (and iOS) apps were always living in a world with lifecycles so if they wanted to operate correctly, they had to become decent citizens (save state when asked, so they can be stopped and resumed at any moment). This also fits nicely with sandboxes and user permissions, etc.

So without developing an alternative user-space for "GNU-Linux", it's simply not competing with android in any form or shape.

And even if you do, now every GNU app has to somehow be ported to that userspace API (you can't just kill GIMP or whatever Linux process)

Re: Keep Android Open

#180

Post by preisschild »

Whats also an issue is that Android seemingly has stopped publishing the source code for Android (AOSP). Android 16 QPR1 has been out for months but still no source code released.
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