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Keep Android Open

keepandroidopen.org

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Re: Keep Android Open

#211

Post by xorcist »

28304283409234 wrote: post #99

I just bought a fairphone6 hoping this phone would last me a decade with security patches and lineageos support. Naively I was assuming Google would keep Android open for that period. Now I might as well switch to Apple so I'm in sync with the rest of my family. Ugh.

You will probably run some kind of community Android distribution on that phone, like Lineage or Graphene, and those will likely not include this limitation. The world will be worse off, but you and I will be unaffected. Worst case is that future Google will decide to kick us out of the Play Store, but there has been plenty of workarounds for that before.

Re: Keep Android Open

#213

Post by xorcist »

userbinator wrote: post #6
999900000999 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which brand do you suggest ? Google wants my apartment lease to let me distribute free games, so I just won't support their platform. This is not about security, it's about control.

This is not about security, it's about control. Of course we know, but they always spin it as being about security.

They are just careful not to say whose security.

It's not a lie if it is to secure their cashflow.

Re: Keep Android Open

#214

Post by xorcist »

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.

That's a bit overblown. Almost all banking apps work fine. You might be one of the unlucky few of course, but there's no need to scare others from running free software.

Re: Keep Android Open

#215

Post by throwaway75 »

survirtual wrote: post #156
pyeri wrote: 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]

> We accept everyone who accepts everyone.

If we were to accept and enforce this rule, billions of followers of some major religions would not be eligible to be part of a free and open society.

Re: Keep Android Open

#216

Post by torben-friis »

courseofaction wrote: post #184
torben-friis wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, basi…

An issue is that it’s not only the corpos, there’s also an increase of individuality that has become the norm.

For example, try to learn from an online resource and you’ll see that the most popular sources (YouTubers, twitchers, etc) are all preparing a rug pull to a non free resource, slipping undisclosed ads as content or straight up selling snake oil.

I grew up assuming that a random guy on the internet had always genuine intentions, even those who were assholes. Now the default is either a paid account, a bot, or someone trying to grind for personal gain. Everything’s adversarial.

Re: Keep Android Open

#217

Post by fcpk »

nvdr wrote: post #86
maxloh wrote: post #46

Earlier 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.

Most DRM / banking apps work fine for me through the browser and you can add them to your home screen. Android / Samsung Pay will stop working, but if you have a Garmin watch, you can still pay with that.

But this is changing. Already in multiple countries(and soon possibly EU wide) there will be only play integrity(strong verdicts) to enforce availability of many services(if not using ios, which is the same locked in syndrome).

Yes some banks still allow classic clunky 2FA(sms, card readers, sometimes SIM generators) but it'll all eventually go away in favor of "locked and favored" os unless legislation fights against it.

Re: Keep Android Open

#218

Post by VagabundoP »

pyeri wrote: post #143
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…

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…

Would that have really stoped google having its own cloud/app layer on top of the base system? OEM could still lock the bootloaders.

Unless, maybe the EU, enforce a right to repair and tinker we'll be at the mercy of these companies with their walled gardens.

Re: Keep Android Open

#219

Post by pjmlp »

broodbucket wrote: post #18
anonymous908213 wrote: post #12

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…

Not really, because Proton is Win32, kind of.

Re: Keep Android Open

#220

Post by pjmlp »

pimeys wrote: post #40
broodbucket wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

As long as it isn't a gamer laptop.
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