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

511–520 of 907 posts

Re: Keep Android Open

#511

Post by franga2000 »

liendolucas wrote: post #283

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…

Because we can't install that on phones and even if we did, we need to use Android apps to do basic daily things.

Phones are not like PCs, you can't "just install a different OS". You also can't just build a phone from parts like you can with a PC, it comes locked in with the OS, with proprietary drivers and advanced cryptographic DRM measures.

And even if we did get things to the level of desktop Linux, we can't run any of the apps we need for everyday life. Most of these things on desktop are web-based, so you can use them on Linux, but this isn't the case for mobile and many things only come in mobile. Bank apps, government services, digital identification, mandatory companion apps for other devices...

If nothing else, we need to keep Android as open as possible because it makes it easier to port those things to other platforms and maybe one day have a proper alternative.

Oh, and it's not like we have a good alternative. The current Linux stack is completely inadequate for mobile use. An average phone has something like 50 apps the need to be able to react to any of a few dozen different local or remote events at any moment, yet also need to use approximately zero CPU cycles to do that. We need a brand new app paradigm if we want mobile Linux to succeed and it's not looking like that's going to happen any time soon.

Re: Keep Android Open

#512

Post by profsummergig »

liendolucas wrote: post #283

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…

This is the correct take.

Let's say we beg Google to keep it open now, and they acquiesce.

So what?

Do you think this same drama won't repeat in the future?

Re: Keep Android Open

#513

Post by Flere-Imsaho »

BeetleB wrote: post #400
TeMPOraL wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Answer: bank/financial apps, enterprise apps, government apps and copyrighted media (music, video, games, books, ...). Those are the players that demand excessive control over end-user devices, and thus the ultimate driver behind the problem we're discussing. It's not that a new mobile platform couldn't possibly succeed. It's an open platform that cannot, because aforementioned players don't want it, and without them…

This. Most of us do not want to carry two phones around. The reality is that there is strong utility for those non-open apps and they will never be replaced by open ones. In some parts of the world, WhatsApp is as necessary as the phone itself. Official business is conducted via it.

I've not managed to read all the comments in this post, so apologies if I'm repeating other people, I also have only a passing understanding of how Google Play works, but couldn't we have:

Linux based phone, running Anbox to support Android apps running within containers. Effort would then have to put into support Play APIs within Anbox. Not a small amount of work, but I compare it to the state of Linux 20 years ago and how well Linux is doing today.

Re: Keep Android Open

#514

Post by MostlyStable »

viktorcode wrote: post #507
TeMPOraL wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Answer: bank/financial apps, enterprise apps, government apps and copyrighted media (music, video, games, books, ...). Those are the players that demand excessive control over end-user devices, and thus the ultimate driver behind the problem we're discussing. It's not that a new mobile platform couldn't possibly succeed. It's an open platform that cannot, because aforementioned players don't want it, and without them…

> Answer: bank/financial apps, enterprise apps, government apps and copyrighted media (music, video, games, books, ...). Those are the players that demand excessive control over end-user devices, and thus the ultimate driver behind the problem we're discussing. Those work perfectly via a browser, on any platform where the browser can run. As long as a hypothetical open OS has a browser capable with bog standard moder…

I tried to log into a banking website on a full desktop browser recently, one that I had previously used with a password. It literally would not let me login until I downloaded their app and set up a passkey. That is now the _only_ way for me to access those accounts. Presumably, I could call in, though I wouldn't be surprised if the person on the phone also asked that I download the app in order to verify my identity, and even if it wasn't the case, they didn't offer that option when I was trying to login. Many bank websites now also require the phone app.

Re: Keep Android Open

#515

Post by TeMPOraL »

viktorcode wrote: post #507
TeMPOraL wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Answer: bank/financial apps, enterprise apps, government apps and copyrighted media (music, video, games, books, ...). Those are the players that demand excessive control over end-user devices, and thus the ultimate driver behind the problem we're discussing. It's not that a new mobile platform couldn't possibly succeed. It's an open platform that cannot, because aforementioned players don't want it, and without them…

> Answer: bank/financial apps, enterprise apps, government apps and copyrighted media (music, video, games, books, ...). Those are the players that demand excessive control over end-user devices, and thus the ultimate driver behind the problem we're discussing. Those work perfectly via a browser, on any platform where the browser can run. As long as a hypothetical open OS has a browser capable with bog standard moder…

Remind me again what video quality Netflix gives you when streaming to an open browser on an open OS?

Re: Keep Android Open

#516

Post by glitchc »

liendolucas wrote: post #283

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 difference is hardware. A large part of the explosion around Linux in desktop computing is based on the fact that IBM's patents for desktop architecture expired and IBM clones proliferated in the marketplace. Also, busses like ISA/PCI/AGP and ports (serial, parallel, ethernet, USB) were all standardized.

In short, Linux was possible because the underlying hardware was open and standard.

Re: Keep Android Open

#517

Post by torben-friis »

mindcrime wrote: post #496
TeMPOraL wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm happy to have a bit higher friction to check my bank's balance for example. I find this to actually be a great litmus test for the overall problem. Bank account balance is a basic piece of information that's about me, and that I need to keep track of to effectively live in our modern times. I should be able to access that information non-interactively at any time. But I can't. Ask many banks, you'll get as many…

It's a trivial and non-critical need, but it's also exemplifying the basic user freedoms being denied to us: the ability to freely process information on my own device. I hate to risk sounding like I'm beating a dead horse, but when I hear this I flash back to Attack Surface by Cory Doctorow. I interpreted his message in that book as something approximately like "you can't out-tech the bad guys", where "bad guys" can…

I see your point, but I disagree that you need direct involvement in the legal process.

Companies are moved by money, if your tech is popular enough companies will dance to your tune.

Say that you get to a point where 90% of desktop users are on linux. Is there any doubt that banks, messaging platforms and the like would have their own linux apps? no matter how many hoops you make them pass through, they won't let that piece of the cake go.

The problem is that the current way of doing things will never reach those numbers, because we give up on the tools that companies use. UX, user research, graphic design, marketing and similar roles are pretty absent from these communities; I think changing that is the mising piece.

Re: Keep Android Open

#518

Post by BeFlatXIII »

torben-friis wrote: post #133
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…

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 socially conditioned to assume that anything free is a scam or illegal

Piracy is technically illegal, but that didn’t stop us.

Re: Keep Android Open

#519

Post by luisml77 »

pietro72ohboy wrote: post #483
luisml77 wrote: post #477

The discussion between open-source and closed-source is essentially a discussion between communism and capitalism. Anything that reaches a certain threshold of value to society and requires enormous effort to build and maintain has to fall back to a capitalist, for-profit, closed-source structure. That's all that's happening here. Of course, small stuff like a software library that doesn't require much effort to buil…

> I personally think this obsession with open-source software is simply an obsession with communism and getting things for free, and not wanting getting rewarded for the value of the stuff you build, etc. Except that both platforms (iOS as well as Android) were either born out of OSS or are still reliant on active development in such projects. They created nothing, they took something from the commons, polished it an…

> they threatened to choke all competition and trap and rent-seek the entire world

They did so legally and didn't break any rules. This is the game of capitalism, and the fact is, IOS and Android are extremely well built and developed, and no open-source project would ever come close to the hundreds of thousands of paid engineers that built IOS and Android.

You can either have capitalism and IOS and Android, or you can have communism and a society that is 10+ years behind in development. Do you really want to give up IOS 26 for a blackberry?

Re: Keep Android Open

#520

Post by TeMPOraL »

senko wrote: post #509
BeetleB wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Most of us do not want to carry two phones around. The reality is that there is strong utility for those non-open apps and they will never be replaced by open ones. In some parts of the world, WhatsApp is as necessary as the phone itself. Official business is conducted via it.

So what. Enough of us do that it just might be feasible. I've used Linux for a loong time before some business-critical software ran on it. I had to have a Windows VM for years for netbanking, or before that, dual-boot for gaming. If we're all too spoiled to give a free alternative a chance because it might be slightly inconvenient, we don't deserve the free alternative.

> Enough of us do that it just might be feasible.

Not nearly enough. Not by three orders of magnitude for the market to care.

This isn't the 1990s. Computers are now mainstream.

Post reply on HN