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Keep Android Open

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Re: Keep Android Open

#171

Post by microtonal »

dmitrygr wrote: post #127
microtonal wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not how the European Union works. One of the core goals of the EU is to guarantee the European single market. One of the core principles of the single market is the Freedom to establish and provide services [1]. The Apple/Google duopoly have effectively created a market within the single market where the core principles of the single market do not apply anymore. Tech has a strong tendency to favor outcomes wi…

Yes. I am effectively asking you what the moral justification for DMA is. I understand that lawmakers can make whatever law they want. I understand they made it. I am curious how people who agree this should be possible think of this from a moral angle, especially as engineers who make their living by creating intellectual property and probably wouldn’t want to see control of it seized randomly

There are no absolute morals. But I think in general healthy societies are arranged around the ideas that people should have: the basics of living (housing, food, vacation, and some luxory), agency, and equal opportunities.

It should be clear that having a small number of companies murder all competition and personal freedoms (like doing what you want to do with something you own like a phone) are in contrast to these basic values.

---

Or the alternative, more blunt answer: it does not require a moral justification. EU citizens directly elected the EP, the EP ratified the DMA. So Google can either comply or leave the EU as a market (which they wont do because it's too large and others would be happy to take it).

Re: Keep Android Open

#172

Post by gkoz »

dmitrygr wrote: post #105
ruuda wrote: post #8

I contacted the EU DMA team about my concerns and got a real reply within 24 hours. Not just an automated message, it looked like a real human read my message and wrote a reply. I'd urge other EU citizens to do the same.

[flagged]

Are we still talking about massive companies with power to arbitrarily decide how billions of people use the personal computers they bought? Who's doing the feeling? Why would we presume all of their conduct to be moral?

Re: Keep Android Open

#173

Post by Atlas667 »

mistercheph wrote: post #102
Atlas667 wrote: post #49

Capitalism is the privatization of human needs. As long as these tech platforms are owned privately they will be used to police and make money. This view NEEDS to be central to the tech freedom rhetoric, else the whole movement is literally just begging politicians and hoping corporations do the right thing... useless.

Copyleft fixes this.

They have the incentive to never chose this.

If we force it upon them by begging politicians, corporations still have the incentive to find a way to remove it or circumvent it.

Youre playing the cat and mouse game because you've been taught that solving it is too extreme (thats not a coincidence).

We dont need to endlessly fight a whole class of people, capitalists, for them not to use the things we require against us. Only socialism can solve that.

Re: Keep Android Open

#174

Post by tadfisher »

hparadiz wrote: post #68
tadfisher wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even with the sandboxed Play Store, Google Pay disables NFC payments as it requires hardware attestation against Google's root keys.

No inherent reason all that stuff can't work on an open platform. It works just fine on my Linux box with yubikeys, fido2, and smart cards. Gcloud even let's you authenticate with them only to put a medium lived token in plaintext into a sqlite file on disk.

No inherent reason, just Visa/Mastercard requirements around host card emulation for payment cards.

Re: Keep Android Open

#175

Post by good8675309 »

fermigier wrote: post #62

It is a disgrace how Google has managed this situation. To recap the storyline, as far as I understand it: last August, Google announced plans to heavily restrict sideloading. Following community pushback, they promised an "advanced flow" for power users. The media widely reported this as a walk-back, leading users to assume the open ecosystem was safe. But this promised feature hasn't appeared in any Android 16 or 1…

Personally I'm excited about the death of Android, now resources can be put toward mainstreaming and maturing the Linux Phone ecosystem

Hopefully 2026 or 2027 will be the year of the Linux Phone

Re: Keep Android Open

#176

Post by dmitrygr »

anp wrote: post #155
dmitrygr wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not their fault, though. I can see how you could complain to the people who mandate you use B’s products. Otherwise what you’re saying is that control of any intellectual property can be stolen from its owners simply by becoming popular outside of their control

> any [] property can be [taken by the state] from its [original] owners simply by [those owners becoming more powerful than the state wants] When rephrased like the above, I think what you’re describing is pretty common in history. Many industries and assets have been nationalized when it serves the state’s interests. IMO the moral justification is that there is no ownership or private property except that which is…

Brutal, but understandable and well-argued. Thank you.

Re: Keep Android Open

#177

Post by good8675309 »

arcanemachiner wrote: post #148
fermigier wrote: post #62

It is a disgrace how Google has managed this situation. To recap the storyline, as far as I understand it: last August, Google announced plans to heavily restrict sideloading. Following community pushback, they promised an "advanced flow" for power users. The media widely reported this as a walk-back, leading users to assume the open ecosystem was safe. But this promised feature hasn't appeared in any Android 16 or 1…

If this finally pushes adoption of truly open Linux phones, then this will end up being a good thing, and the greatest favor that Google could do for the open source community. Tragically, Linux phones have languished and are in an absolute state these days, but a lot of the building blocks are in place if user adoption occurs en masse. (Shout out to the lunatics who have kept this dream alive during these dark years…

Until Android is crippled it will continue to take resources away from Linux Phone development and companies that will launch phones for it

Re: Keep Android Open

#178

Post by pfix »

dmitrygr wrote: post #127
microtonal wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not how the European Union works. One of the core goals of the EU is to guarantee the European single market. One of the core principles of the single market is the Freedom to establish and provide services [1]. The Apple/Google duopoly have effectively created a market within the single market where the core principles of the single market do not apply anymore. Tech has a strong tendency to favor outcomes wi…

Yes. I am effectively asking you what the moral justification for DMA is. I understand that lawmakers can make whatever law they want. I understand they made it. I am curious how people who agree this should be possible think of this from a moral angle, especially as engineers who make their living by creating intellectual property and probably wouldn’t want to see control of it seized randomly

At some point free markets become fiction. There's no financially viable way to start competing businesses in markets as entrenched as mobile OSes. Otherwise this would have happened. And if that becomes anti consumers, then the consumers start changing the rules the companies operate under. Because in a democracy we have more consumers than CEOs,so they vote with majority.

(This obviously simplifies things, but ultimately we as humans still haven't found the one and only true philosophy or moral, and maybe that's not possible (I'm no philosopher))

Re: Keep Android Open

#179

Post by microtonal »

paxys wrote: post #110
microtonal wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At most you have people applying tiny patches on top of AOSP, but 100% of the code in the underlying project is still Google-approved, and none of the alternatives have control over that. You are making an orthogonal point. Yes, Google maintains AOSP. No, that does not mean that AOSP OSes that are not in Google's Android program (calling it that to avoid semantics games) have to adopt this change. If you want to hear…

Unless these different Android flavors all have the resources to indefinitely rewrite AOSP and remove all Google code they don't agree with - no, they pretty much have to adopt the changes (see the earlier Chromium example). And if they do somehow manage this after a point all the patching basically becomes a fork, which is exactly what I started the conversation with.

I see your point, but it all hinges on when you consider the changes to be a patch set and when a fork. I don't think there is a very clear definition, except I don't think most of these projects would call themselves AOSP forks.

At any rate, this particular Google anti-feature does not require a large patch (or maybe none at all).

Re: Keep Android Open

#180

Post by greatgib »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #15
tadfisher wrote: post #7

Just to put out what Google actually said in their blog post [0]: > We appreciate the community's engagement and have heard the early feedback – specifically from students and hobbyists who need an accessible path to learn, and from power users who are more comfortable with security risks. We are making changes to address the needs of both groups. > We heard from developers who were concerned about the barrier to ent…

> We heard from developers who were concerned about the barrier to entry when building apps intended only for a small group, like family or friends. We are using your input to shape a dedicated account type for students and hobbyists. This will allow you to distribute your creations to a limited number of devices without going through the full verification requirements. In classic Google fashion, they hear the compla…

Even restricting the mitigation to "students and hobbyists" is bad.

I should have the right to have parents, friends or anyone use a "free" store that is not under control of Google if the user and app developer wish so. But also, somehow there should be something done to avoid the monopoly forcing to use the Google services. Like major institutions like bank, gov and co being forced to provide alternatives like a webapp when they provide app tied to the Google play store.

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