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Keep Android Open

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Re: Keep Android Open

#291

I'm going to say something that probably will get me down votes: Why do we have to beg Google to keep Android open? Seriously. So many open source projects have risen out of real and concrete needs and successfully made their way into our every day lives. A new platform needs to rise that breaks out completely from Google. I've given PostmarketOS a go (with a PinePhone) and while today I can't say it isn't a daily dr…

Likely there just aren't enough of the right people to support such a project, sans a sustained revenue model.

Re: Keep Android Open

#292
post #208
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.

“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.” - Jean-Paul Sartre

Re: Keep Android Open

#293
post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

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

I think a better critique is that these cold-war political basis vectors don't adequately describe today's political landscape (and neither do the revolution-era idea of the left wing vs the right wing; arguably they didn't back in 1950 either).

Best example of how the communist/fascist/liberal democracy triad completely falls is looking at China, which has facets of all three and none at the same time.

This makes it difficult nigh on impossible to have a real political discussion, as they fail to amount to more than connotative terms to be applied to outgroups, and do not map to political reality in any meaningful sense. Anyone can turn into the fuzzy outline of a nazi if you squint really hard.

Nuances needed to make any sort of sense of 21st century politics, especially its newer entries, are the tensions between cosmopolitarianism vs communitarianism and technocracy vs populism.

The problem with using such an outdated political map is that many of our contemporary problems are missing from it, and go unresolved until enough frustration builds that there is an ill-conceived popular upheaval that forces the issue. Rather than addressing the technocratic European Union's lack of accountability to its citizens, we get Brexit instead, which could likely have been avoided if the political map wasn't so out of touch.

Re: Keep Android Open

#294
It's time for a new non-Google OS frankly. Not sure if HarmonyOS would be the one, but I don't see a lot of Mobile OS development going on anymore

Re: Keep Android Open

#295

I'm going to say something that probably will get me down votes: Why do we have to beg Google to keep Android open? Seriously. So many open source projects have risen out of real and concrete needs and successfully made their way into our every day lives. A new platform needs to rise that breaks out completely from Google. I've given PostmarketOS a go (with a PinePhone) and while today I can't say it isn't a daily dr…

The problem is that a new project and even a fork would need buy in buy companies like Samsung. Otherwise a project LineageOS would be much more popular. This is hard to do without serious money.

Why is popularity a concern? I'm writing this on a Librem 5 with PureOS that I've been daily driving for the last few years and which gives me a much better experience than Android could. Why would it matter to me as a user whether it's popular or not? The only thing I can think of is availability of native applications, but this would just hide the actual problem with interoperability and pass it down for the next underdog project to worry about.

Popularity is important when we consider whole societies, but it's not particularly relevant for individuals. I don't need a buy in of Samsung to use GNU/Linux on my phone.

Re: Keep Android Open

#296

I'm going to say something that probably will get me down votes: Why do we have to beg Google to keep Android open? Seriously. So many open source projects have risen out of real and concrete needs and successfully made their way into our every day lives. A new platform needs to rise that breaks out completely from Google. I've given PostmarketOS a go (with a PinePhone) and while today I can't say it isn't a daily dr…

The problem is that a new project and even a fork would need buy in buy companies like Samsung. Otherwise a project LineageOS would be much more popular. This is hard to do without serious money.

Yes, agree 100%. It's not only Android the problem. It's the cartelization between them and hardware manufacturers. But then that means that we will be doomed to the current duopoly between Google and Apple.

The very first step I believe needs to be taken is to pass strict laws to allow devices to be reflashed with whatever we want. Until we do not have that in place we will always be stucked like this. Once people can truly install from scratch whatever they want then the game should change completely.

Re: Keep Android Open

#298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[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.

What you quoted is just the person restating the paradox of tolerance. It's totally nonsensical once you get past "one-dimensonal evil" cases (or perhaps cases like software, a category is more narrowly and cleanly delineated).

He's right that freedom requires restriction. The problem with the paradox of tolerance is that it masquerades as a meaningful principle while leaving the actual restrictions unnamed.

P.S. it also is worth noting that, to the extent that the GPL works, it's precisely because it doesn't rely on vague principles. It's specific about what's restricted, when, and how.

Re: Keep Android Open

#299

Are there any alternative mobile OSes actively developed? I remember Ubuntu Touch was the thing and something from Firefox, but not sure if they are continued?

There's HarmonyOS [1], which is developed by Huawei, and which has a similar mix of open (OpenHarmony) and proprietary components. I haven't used it, but it's supported by quite a few phones and sort of surprised it wasn't mentioned anywhere on this thread.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HarmonyOS

Re: Keep Android Open

#300
post #143
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…

I have a "weakly held strong opinion" on this subject. I think open source has been a disaster for the state of software for normal people. On the one hand exploited developers making peanuts or nothing for their hard work. On the other hand exploited users losing control of their devices and social networks.

The era when people paid an affordable fee for software they could use however they wanted was much better. But it got squeezed out by free software on the one side and serf-ware on the other.

The proof is in the pudding and the pudding is rotten.

Edit: then again maybe it's unfair of me to blame the decline in paid for software on open source.

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