this would just kill the pace of growth.
Android without the mothership
71–80 of 167 posts
Re: Android without the mothership
#72Android is a lost cause, all the man power being donated to the project is just going to line google's pockets and lock us further into closed hardware and barely opensource phones. The only future is a real linux phone, debian or ubuntu mobile, where one day there will be effortless desktop/tablet/mobile unified development. Why push for developers to waste time porting between c++ and java?
I have to call bullshit on this one.
Google has open sourced a fully featured mobile operating system, with an already free kernel, an optimized and secure app runtime for mobile applications that they keep on improving, a completely functional and usually well-liked user interface, open development tools and even a set of open source core applications needed for basic smartphone functionality. As this article demonstrates, Android is perfectly usable if you can get over the first world problem of no direct access to Google's services.
People have been absolutely free to do whatever they want with this complete OS what they want for years, and Android comes with no obligation whatsoever to lock down phones. There is absolutely no reason why any alternative to Android, including Ubuntu and FirefoxOS, would be any different at all if or when they gain enough popularity. Phone vendors and carriers will continue to lock down the hardware they sell and be reluctant to share code. There is just nothing different about these alternatives compared to Android.
The problems of locking down and shitty attitude towards open source is a problem with the market, not with Android.
> all the man power being donated to the project is just going to line google's pockets and lock us further into closed hardware and barely opensource phones.
Nobody except Google (and some minor contributions from phone vendors) contributes to core Android. It's an example of an extreme cathedral model[1], where only members of the Open Handset Alliance[2] have access during development. There are many open source forks/derivatives that only help you in increasing the freedom with what you can do with your phone.
> Why push for developers to waste time porting between c++ and java?
Because there are considerable advantages to running in Android's runtime when it comes to resource management, security, and because one consistent application framework is better than many competing libraries creating an inconsistent mess on desktop Linux.
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cathedral_and_the_Bazaar
Re: Android without the mothership
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
Only if apps don't matter to that target user base. Most people will probably not want to go without Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Pandora, Netflix, etc., and devs won't build for a small user base (just ask Microsoft or Blackberry). A Google-stripped Android phone would at least be able to run Android apps.
How many of those apps actually run without Google integration, though, and how many will continue to in the future? Google's moving more and more core functionality into their proprietary components.
Functionality isn't normally being moved there, it's being added and apps take advantage of that.
If you look at the dividing line between proprietary and open source stuff coming out of Google, the usual deciding factor is whether it relies on their (proprietary) server side components to operate. Google is all about the cloud so a lot of useful stuff does rely on that. In Play services we see things like Maps (needs the servers), Wallet and in-app billing (needs the servers), G+ (needs the servers), multiplayer gaming (you get the idea), GDrive, ads, cloud messaging etc. There's one or two things in there that maybe don't rely on the cloud (I don't know enough about Cast to say) but that's mostly it.
So if you find all your apps are relying on Google Play Services what it really means is that the bar has simply been raised, and now people expect apps that deeply integrate with services provided by huge, expensive datacenters.
Ideally Play Services would be a shim that different providers could satisfy. It isn't, but Android has lots of support for building such things like intent resolution, so if a realistic competitor emerged and developers cared enough to support it, the OS would certainly help them.
Re: Android without the mothership
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Why push for developers to waste time porting between c++ and java" Yes, using something like C# and Mono would be a huge win.
What would be really nice would be seeing a language-agnostic device. Based on linux, with the same APIs available to everyone, so that as on desktop linux, a thousand languages can bloom, and everyone can use the development language of their choice (including yet to be invented languages). GUI bindings would be the issue here of course, but it is not insurmountable. It's a shame that the software landscape is so do…
Great idea! It would make sense to define a high level yet minimalist type system, a large standard library, and a CPU independent bytecode format that many languages and compilers could target. They could then add to that basic type system as they wished whilst still retaining interoperability.
We could call the infrastructure that makes this possible ... a virtual machine:
Re: Android without the mothership
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Presumably if developers only distribute their app via the Play Store, they aren't too worried about whether their app users are using the Play Store.
presumably, as a programmer, you check return values. Especially if they could be a null reference
Any reference in Java can be null, as is the case in most languages. So developers only check the ones they know "could" be null, in normal operation. If you only distribute your app via the Play Store, attempting to access it will never fail, thus there's no more point in checking for null pointers than there is in checking the result of String.split: it will never fail, short of something wacky and unexpected like a broken JVM.
Re: Android without the mothership
#76It's getting harder and harder to not give up your privacy in order to use new technology. Android without all that Google goodness is a hard sell to an average customer today.
Does an average consumer have good reason to not use them though?
Probably not. The article does admit this in fairness. It says the primary reasons you might want to do this are not trusting Google (but most people have had pretty reasonable experiences with them, especially considering the price), concern over a future management change (a very real concern but one that's very distant and hard to anticipate at the moment), and concern over governments and criminal enterprises. Governments, it seems, take what they want anyway regardless of whether you use Google or not.
Re: Android without the mothership
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm also eager to drop ownCloud ('pwnCloud', I keep hearing), but I think I'll replace it with Seafile + Fastmail's CardDav/CalDav. CardDav is not yet available but promised soon. I wish there were a trustworthy source of prebuilt pure AOSP ROMS, like the source images Google release. Compiling them is no small feat and I'm worried I'll brick my device. With a stock AOSP ROM + Fastmail contacts & calendaring, I think…
Did you use GMail before Fastmail? I'm not sure I want to give up push email yet. Do you find that you're missing emails or that IMAP IDLE uses too much battery?
I did. I had three GMail accounts, deleted one, moved one to Fastmail, and now use K-9 mail for both the GMail and Fastmail accounts. Performance is great and definitely no issues with battery life or missing emails. Google have recently put their regular email app on the Play Store, so it's possible to keep an apk copy for sideloading if K-9 isn't your preference.
My only problem in the past was absolutely horrid syncing and GPS battery drain with Cyanogenmod. I keep going back to try, since first running it on my HTC G1 about 4 years ago. No other ROM gives me trouble, only Cyanogenmod. This is why I'm interested in a 'plain vanilla' as possible AOSP ROM. I'm back on stock 4.4 (rooted) and looking to move back to a non-gapps version soon.
Re: Android without the mothership
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't TextSecure already built into Cyanogen SMS app? And anyway dependent on the Google Play Services?
TextSecure uses Google's push service because there is no viable alternative available.
Than, what's the point of using a secure communication app if you must also install a spying rootkit to make it work? For me it makes the whole TS not viable.
Re: Android without the mothership
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
presumably, as a programmer, you check return values. Especially if they could be a null reference
Any reference in Java can be null, as is the case in most languages. So developers only check the ones they know "could" be null, in normal operation. If you only distribute your app via the Play Store, attempting to access it will never fail, thus there's no more point in checking for null pointers than there is in checking the result of String.split: it will never fail, short of something wacky and unexpected like…
> So developers only check the ones they know "could" be null, in normal operation.
Not the good ones. Normal operation isn't when you're dealing with a mobile device, there could be any number of reasons why your app can't reach a certain service delivered by some API so better to be prepared for that eventuality.
Re: Android without the mothership
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
How many of those apps actually run without Google integration, though, and how many will continue to in the future? Google's moving more and more core functionality into their proprietary components.
Google is moving more and more core functionality into their proprietary services . A different more open operating system is quite irrelevant if google services are needed for the phone to be...you know...useful.
The 240000+ applications in the Amazon App Store that work without Play Services show that this is not a problem. Both Microsoft's Nokia X line and Amazon's Fire Phone are useful phones running Android without Play Services. Those are just examples in the west - many devices sold in China run Android without any Google stuff on them.