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Keep Android Open

keepandroidopen.org

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671–680 of 907 posts

Re: Keep Android Open

#671

Post by jb1991 »

array_key_first wrote: post #615
jb1991 wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That 100 dollars is just the fee to even make an app. Even if your iPhone never has an Internet connection. And even if you literally load the app via USB to your iPhone only. This is incorrect. You make it sound like you cannot even get started unless you pay a $100 fee. You do not need to pay Apple any fees to make an app and put it on your own device. You have to pay the fee once you want to distribute it on the…

This is incorrect. If you want to load the app on your own phone WITHOUT the app store, you MUST pay Apple 100 dollars. Unless you want to rebuild the app every 7 days, which any reasonable human will conclude is a stupid ass arbitrary limitation. Again, it cannot be justified with any technical means. Please, don't even bother trying.

You are contradicting yourself in your comment.

Re: Keep Android Open

#672

Post by TeMPOraL »

jofla_net wrote: post #491
fooqux wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"just use a second phone" cannot be the answer because 99% of people will just scoff at that. Instead of buying a second phone, why not just buy one that works? And that's to say nothing of the environmental impact.

> "just use a second phone" cannot be the answer Not That i want to kick the can down the road, but the ultimate solution (barring actually fighting for our privileges over the systems we buy) is to have that second phone, and control it either via vnc, or via a kvm which presents vnc. I know, its really absurd, complexity wise, what with tunneling and figuring out where to house said setup. However, the latter is ul…

It's not a solution because VNC is already nerfed and will be the first thing to go, if people try to embrace the idea.

Providers of all the service types aren't driving this because they believe locked down phones are a Good Thing. They're driving this because they explicitly don't want you to do the very things you'd want to do with your VNC idea.

Re: Keep Android Open

#673

Post by TeMPOraL »

torben-friis wrote: post #517
mindcrime wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

Here's the thing: we had that already. It was called Android.

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

We're having this discussion precisely because this is not true. If your tech is popular enough, companies will use their money and influence to subvert it so it serves their bidding.

Re: Keep Android Open

#674

Post by subscribed »

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…

You're saying I can use Revolut in the Firefox on, say, Fedora?

People have genuine reasons to stay with the provider / platform and usually browser doesn't cover half of their use cases.

For example I have to use Revolut because it's one of the very few banks that allow me to use Garmin Pay and work (reluctantly) on my phone without Google rootkit. Can't use, say, Curve because their privacy policy is alarming (and I had a very very weird/disappointing interaction with their compliance team).

And you've already got a good example with Netflix.

Re: Keep Android Open

#675

Post by TeMPOraL »

pjerem wrote: post #371
fooqux wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"just use a second phone" cannot be the answer because 99% of people will just scoff at that. Instead of buying a second phone, why not just buy one that works? And that's to say nothing of the environmental impact.

> "just use a second phone" cannot be the answer because 99% of people will just scoff at that. Here we are talking about installing PostmarketOS/Linux on a smartphone. The next milestone is not to get everyone on it. First we need a base of early adopters that are willing to use it despite the drawbacks. The more user those alternatives will get, the more they will be developed, the better it will get. Sure, for the…

What you're saying already existed. Linux on a smartphone was called Android. It ended up where it is today. If you were to somehow make another Linux on a smartphone competitor, it too would end up where Android is today, for the same reasons.

Re: Keep Android Open

#676

Post by codethief »

I wish¹ the page would also raise awareness for all the other stuff that's been going on w.r.t. Google & Android recently:

- AOSP is no longer developed in the open (if it ever was) – source releases & security patches have been severely delayed lately.

- Pixel devices will no longer be the reference devices for AOSP, and it seems Google will no longer release their device trees in the future. In addition, Google could also lock down the Pixel's boot loader and thereby prevent installation of custom ROMs.

¹) Of course focus is important, so I get why they kept the page short & sweet. Besides, while the side-loading topic is an issue that might be interpreted as anti-competitive and that institutions like the EU might be able to do something about, with the other issues it's not as clear-cut, I think.

Re: Keep Android Open

#678

Post by jraph »

fsflover wrote: post #504
jraph wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you can fight for anything I suppose your mean't you "can't". I know, m'y life is full of compromises because of my various political opinions. > https://puri.sm/posts/the-danger-of-focusing-on-specs/ I agree and I intend to keep my current phone at least ten years (and I hope it will be able to run Linux at some point, it's very close!), but the Librem was released with outdated specs and that was 5 years ago. It…

Fair enough. See also: https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/docs/community-wiki/-/wikis/F... > I suppose your mean't you "can't". Thanks, yes, fixed.

Interesting link, thanks for sharing!

Re: Keep Android Open

#679

Post by spookie »

tredre3 wrote: post #637
NewJazz wrote: post #630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source on most of China/India not having heard of libreoffice?

Kingsoft recently announced that WPS Office has 620M MAU users, the bulk of which is in China. Microsoft has even more Office users in China https://finance.yahoo.com/news/chinas-microsoft-office-rival... So if China has heard of LibreOffice, they clearly didn't like what they've heard...

It's the product of a government owned company... in China. What do you expect?

Moreover, what you write is monitored, and you may loose documents based on what you write [1].

[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-frozen-document-in-china-unle...

Re: Keep Android Open

#680

Post by bhewes »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #435
dangus wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bingo, this right here. Linux desktop wasn’t a daily driver until one day it was. Although the only problem with this strategy is that Linux got that way because of a lot of private companies that actually wanted that. Valve didn’t want to be locked in with Microsoft. Many of Microsoft’s direct competitors also don’t want to be locked in. IBM famously switched to Mac, Google has been using Mac and Linux workstations…

It's a transient state. Food for thought: how much of Linux being a daily driver depends on you having a modern Android or iOS smartphone ? If you need a locked down phone that passes remote attestation to authenticate yourself to a remote service, then whatever you use to access the service UI doesn't really matter: the only device that's necessary to have to use the service is the one you don't fully control, and w…

My daily driver is Rocky 10, but my control plane is a Pixel 6 on the ATT network but I control almost nothing on that layer. It is why I have been moving most of my core workloads off SaaS and back to local.
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