Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Keep Android Open

keepandroidopen.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 907 posts

Re: Keep Android Open

#241

Post by mlnj »

Gud wrote: post #208
mlnj wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmmm. The rise of nazis to power from time to time is evidence to the contrary. Most people, might not be 'stupid'; but complacency in the population is enough to drop the guard down.

I am not arguing for complacency. I am arguing that authoritarian ideologies are won over with arguments, not by outlawing them.

You are arguing as if the two sides are acting in good faith. Authoritarianism almost always isn't. Greed and corruption is is inherently tipping the scales unfairly against the fair system to be imbalanced against the good actor.

You can see it again and again in the success of voter suppression acts and the deceitful tactics played by authoritarians.

Arguments only work when both actors respect good arguments.

Re: Keep Android Open

#242

Post by martin- »

surgical_fire wrote: post #205
microtonal wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 had so many more issues running Windows over the years than Linux. BSODs were a common occurrence, and yearly fresh installs were a thing to keep my computer usable. I moved to Mint almost 4 years ago at this point, running it on a now fairly old Dell G5 from 2019. Runs as smoothly as ever. I had one problem during this 4 year run (botched update and OS wouldn't start). Logging to terminal and getting Timeshift to…

It's the same in every discussion about OS vs OS. People who like one OS will claim that the other OS is full of problems, and vice versa. In some cases I guess people are just lucky/unlucky. Personally, I've been using both in parallel for about 15 years, and while I've never had any issues with Windows (no BSODs), Linux constantly gives me problems. But I'm a developer and much prefer to develop on Linux, so I stick with it.

Re: Keep Android Open

#243

Post by xeyownt »

Gud wrote: post #208
mlnj wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmmm. The rise of nazis to power from time to time is evidence to the contrary. Most people, might not be 'stupid'; but complacency in the population is enough to drop the guard down.

I am not arguing for complacency. I am arguing that authoritarian ideologies are won over with arguments, not by outlawing them.

It's not about outlawing them, it's about not giving them a platform allowing them to rise, like the current major media platforms are doing right now. Social media should be held responsible of the content they publish.

Re: Keep Android Open

#244

Post by gf000 »

franczesko wrote: post #222
gf000 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> You just have to somehow speedrun the decades of development that went into Android to make it decently run on mobile hardware Isn't this mainly due to proprietary drivers and firmware?

No, just take a look at how long and smooth does a pinephone run with "GNU Linux" vs stock android.

Android devs actually backported a bunch of work to the mainline kernel with regards to low-level energy management, but that's only one half of the story. The other is your phone stopping unused apps gracefully, and being able to go back to sleep regularly.

Re: Keep Android Open

#245

Post by galangalalgol »

fainpul wrote: post #98
frankacter wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This is why I switched to Android, just for Google now to pull the rug from under my feet again 1) You can continue to install unsigned APKs via adb with the upcoming update. 2) Signing APKs for sideloading requires a Google development account which is a one time fee of $25, no yearly fees. So still a free sideloading option available, and if you want to avoid adb it is a one time cost that is 1/4 the annual rate o…

I would call it "free developer experience" (using ADB), not "free sideloading". If you want to send your app to a friend to download and install it directly on their phone (without using a computer with ADB), you need to be Google-approved and register your app first.

I think you could use adb over tcp from a chroot in the phone itself? But that doesn't really make it easier from their standpoint, and this is just a step towards full lockdown which is coming.

Re: Keep Android Open

#246

Post by pmdr »

Google is evil. Every single one on here arguing "but muh security improves" is against freedom of computing, plain and simple. There's no middle ground.

Google & others have slowly turned down the freedom dial over the years and we let it happen. People working for Google let it happen. I'm not aware of any inside movement protesting this like they protested against various social issues.

Security that you can't turn off is basically a prison.

Re: Keep Android Open

#247

Post by palata »

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…

> Android was designed more for surveillance and consumption, than for privacy&security and the user's interests

I disagree. The Android security model is better than the Linux one. I am very happy with GrapheneOS, I don't have much to complain about.

The problem is that Google sucks and nobody enforces antitrust laws. But it's not just Google: how many Android manufacturers don't suck, really? Do they contribute to AOSP at all? Probably not. Do they build reasonable devices that could run something like GrapheneOS? Nope. Just relocking the bootloader is often a problem.

Re: Keep Android Open

#248

Post by pyeri »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #210
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…

But Linux is GPL. That didn't stop Google from using it as a basis for something that is not GPL and in fact not even open source (Google Play Services). What leverage does a community of engineers have to insist on anything? Android could be entirely closed source. So could Chrome. It would be naive to assume that the power dynamics in our society can be fundamentally altered by a 10 line software license.

The Linux kernel is a separate system layer here, it's the AOSP parts like the Dalvik Runtime (equivalent of JRE) and components built on top of it (such as Play Store) which are being subject to permissive licensing abuse. If AOSP itself was GPL licensed, it'd have been difficult for Google to create something closed like Play Store as it'd have been considered derivative work.

You're right that broadly speaking, there is very little that could be done to stop this but having a culture of "everything GPL" in an organization definitely helps. For example, Sun was farsighted enough, though they couldn't stop Oracle from acquiring MySql, Oracle was still forced to keep MySql under GPL and they were able to salvage MariaDB too.

Similar was the case with Java. Oracle tried everything in its power to control its use and direction including legal means, it's only thanks to GPL that alternative implementations like OpenJDK and Amazon Corretto still exist. We can't even imagine the state of these software today if Sun hadn't licensed them under GPL originally but used some other permissive license instead!

Re: Keep Android Open

#249

Post by jammo »

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…

I can see why they add the fee, but they would both garner so much goodwill by giving free accounts if the app you publish is open source. I don't think it would be that hard to automate by requiring a GitHub link.

Re: Keep Android Open

#250

Post by immibis »

These things simply do not work. Things that work: legislation (when enforced); lawsuits (when successful and very costly to the company); physical violence of course; people collectively refusing to buy the product because now it has zero advantage over Apple or because someone comes out with a new better competitor; forced interoperability via reverse engineering.
Post reply on HN