551–560 of 907 posts
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idk, I was just giving a name for "Linux but not Android on a smartphone".
It's called GNU/Linux.
The overwhelming majority of users call it "Linux" and don't care what the operating system's pronouns are.
Many Linux systems are running today without GNU coreutils or userland.
It's time to stop posting this flame bait.
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Because money. Yes Android is open source, but Google is spending billions of dollars a year paying engineers to develop it. If you want Android to be "free" find alternate funding, with no strings attached.
See: linux
Oh, the irony. I still remember how in the early days of Android vs iOS discussions, the main point was "but it's OPEN!". The word "open" was used as a comma by Google people. It was The Thing. The Difference. Good vs Evil and all that.
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…
> Why do we have to beg Google to keep Android open? We don't! Instead, we go to regulators. Though I suspect your question really is "Why bother with salvaging Android at all?" Mobile platforms are hard - famously, Microsoft failed to make Windows phone a viable platform, and John Carmack successfully argued that Meta didn't need a custom OS. Mozilla's Mobile OS that had OEM partners making real phones spluttered ou…
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You're right. Especially with the rise of agentic AI. You could have hundreds of contributors, all using agents, working on different modules, according to existing spec and tests, create a new OS, or Web Browser or anything. It's the end of monopolistic control of software. But, I think the giants already know and accept this. The moat now is compute. A centralization of power back to the server, the rise of thin cl…
> You could have hundreds of contributors, all using agents, working on different modules, according to existing spec and tests The current problem with "Linux on phones" is the locked down nature of the hardware. For example, looking at PostmarketOS's support device list [0], sensors, Wifi, even phone calls don't work. Would what you're saying enable faster implementation of those support modules? (This would be rea…
In that case (ie, if in order to be free we need to free the hardware, too), we need to create a hardware company that builds a phone from the modem/radio on up and owns every layer.
Obviously non trivial hahahahaha :)
AI is letting the world of bits move faster than before by exponentially reducing rework and sharing around the benefit of network effects from collective human knowledge. It's not touching hardware in the same way, and doesn't give us the same superpower.
edit: I guess the "easier" play is to convince an existing full stack phone hardware company to make us an OpenPhone that we can hack on because they believe in the inevitabilities of trends and consequences from AI and want to invest in that future. That would be cool? Any takers? Reach out cris@dosaygo.com
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…
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…
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…
Need security before doing a $1000 transaction because everything so far was $10? Sure, ask for a physical token 2FA, NOT a YubiKey implementation.
Obviously though if I was working at Google or Apple and paid for the success of my company via incentives, e.g. stock, I would fight tooth and nail to let banks know that only MY solution is secure.
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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 th…
Some of the bigger open source communities, like GNOME, do some amount of these things. But I think very few people are excited enough about user studies or marketing to do them as a hobby, unlike writing code. It's hard to see how you could beat Google/Apple/Microsoft at their own game like this without a lot of money. Red Hat is probably the biggest company that might be interested in this, but still about 2 orders of magnitude smaller than the giants.