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Keep Android Open

keepandroidopen.org

181–190 of 907 posts

Re: Keep Android Open

#181
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I can just take about any Linux distro, install it to about any computer and have an extremely nice device to work, play games, and handle almost any daily task with. I call that a huge success.

Yet, still 1/4th of the time my ThinkPad with Linux wakes with a Thunderbolt display connected it dies with a kernel panic deep in the code that handles DDC (no matter what kernel version). And the latest gen finger print scanner only works between 10-50% of the time depending on the day, humidity, etc., no matter hof often you re-enroll a fingerprint, enroll a fingerprint multiple times, etc. And the battery drains…

I have had worse experiences on each and every count with various Windows installs on various laptops, and yet it is the "de facto" desktop OS.

Re: Keep Android Open

#182
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…

> Android is such a massive code base, and was designed more for surveillance and consumption

I disagree. I have been using de-googled / de-spywared Android for a decade now and I really love it. Once you remove google mobile services and rely on open source applications Android feels really good.

Also its questionable if projects such as purism or even the pinephone will ever offer such good security and privacy as a de-googled Pixel with GrapheneOS will.

https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/112712864209034804

Re: Keep Android Open

#183
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…

The hope is lost for Android, there is no moving forward with google antagonizing its foss roots. Libre phone it is. We have to forcibly remove the bandage.

AOSP is open source so it could be forked.

Re: Keep Android Open

#184
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…

Im a millennial dev which happens to have a Gen Z brother who also chose this profession. Seeing him walk my steps 15 years later has been eye opening for the brutal cultural change. They’re socially conditioned to assume that anything free is a scam or illegal, that every tool is associated with a corporation, and that learning itself is going through certain hoops (by the uni, the certificator or whatever) so that…

They're right. Embrace, Extend, Extinguish and Enshittification have been the core experiences of digital life with corporations in charge of platforms.

My hope is that LLMs will help open source developers provide reasonable alternatives to the gatekeeping and spyware that corporations are now making their bread and butter. Example: Recent tried to use Unity LTS for a small project - the software is a joke now, basic functionality is broken out of the box. A couple of hours with an LLM and I had all the features I needed using a more lightweight library, monogame. Not an operating system, but I'm hoping the pattern will continue as LLMs get more proficient at code - the moat of "this is hard and laborious to do" will be drained.

Re: Keep Android Open

#185
post #89
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I can just take about any Linux distro, install it to about any computer and have an extremely nice device to work, play games, and handle almost any daily task with. I call that a huge success.

The odds of having just about any Linux distro work "out of the box" without manual tweaking on just about any computer are still pretty low I'm afraid (by "work" I mean "support all of the functionality"). For instance, the laptop I'm writing this on connects without problems to a Bluetooth mouse, but won't for the life of me work with my Bluetooth headphones.

> The odds of having just about any Linux distro work "out of the box" without manual tweaking on just about any computer

Well, show me that magic OS that works on "just about any computer", because I am sure Windows ain't that. OSX only works on their select devices, and Windows have its own way of sucking. Let's be honest, there are shitty hardware out there and nothing will work decently on top. People just try to save these by putting Linux on top and then the software gets the blame.

Re: Keep Android Open

#186

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…

But this isn't about the store. It's about being able to install apps even without going through the store.

Re: Keep Android Open

#187

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…

I'm not talking about putting the App into the Store, just installing it on my phone.

Re: Keep Android Open

#188
post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This situation would have been avoided if we, as community of engineers, had insisted on full and uncompromised open source (Stallmanist or GPL way) right from the start instead of going the ESR way of half-hearted open source where it's technically open but corporates get to have a free lunch and make abuses. Like most coders, I also prefer the permissive MIT/Apache/BSD licensing for most software projects but incid…

[flagged]

Yeah, this is pretty much the rationale behind the Paradox of Tolerance, which you alluded to. Just as a tolerant society cannot tolerate intolerance without eventually just becoming intolerant, this clearly demonstrates that the same is true for Free Software. If we tolerate the use of Free Software for the use of the non-free software, eventually one loses the freedom in Free Software.

It's of course not a perfect analogy since the original Free Software still exists, but since in practice the dependency was from free towards non-free, like in this instance, it still works. Google and its anti-freedom practices are still in effective control of the Android ecosystem even though it's still technically free by way of AOSP.

And just as how some people argue that intolerance of the intolerant by a tolerant society is bad, so do some people argue that things like the GPL is bad because it prevents downstream modifications etc. going from free to non-free. Maybe this will help re-evaluate the culture around this stuff.

Re: Keep Android Open

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes that is annoying - I hate Apple anti side loading stance. But that still doesn't make 100$ fee to apply for distribution/integration with their ecosystem unreasonable.

Are you even reading the comments you are replying to, or ? You need to pay $100 to execute code on a device that you own. Without a 7 day time limit. And only if you have the technical expertise to do so. This is not a fee for distribution/integration. This is feudal rent.

Are you reading what I am saying ? 100$ for distribution access on the store is reasonable. Side-loading prevention is shit. Both can be true at the same time.

Re: Keep Android Open

#190
post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This situation would have been avoided if we, as community of engineers, had insisted on full and uncompromised open source (Stallmanist or GPL way) right from the start instead of going the ESR way of half-hearted open source where it's technically open but corporates get to have a free lunch and make abuses. Like most coders, I also prefer the permissive MIT/Apache/BSD licensing for most software projects but incid…

[flagged]

Just because we “allow nazis” doesn’t mean society will turn into an authoritarian dictatorship.

People are not stupid.

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