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Android without the mothership

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Re: Android without the mothership

#121

Post by ksk »

DCKing wrote: post #119
ksk wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AOSP is still open source for that reason, presumably. Yeah..AOSP "works".. if you happen to have the driver binary blobs (which are not open source), which only work for some android builds on a handful of devices which are blessed by google. Open source indeed. Oh and those binary blobs.. those are LICENSED. You are not allowed to make an android build and distribute it, if it contains those blobs. And without th…

> Google have taken the Open Source ideology and bastardized it to fit their commercial needs. Ah you're one of the people that thinks open source also comes with a mandatory ideology. That it's not good enough if source is released for everyone unless there are also other strings attached. We can leave this in disagreement then. > Feel free to explain this clause in Google's privacy policy. You have to redefine a lo…

>Ah you're one of the people that thinks open source also comes with a mandatory ideology.

Now, who is redefining words?

>That it's not good enough if source is released for everyone unless there are also other strings attached.

Where can I find the source for those binary blobs?

>You have to redefine a lot of words if "sharing aggregated non-personally identifiable information" is to mean the same as "selling your data"

Thankfully, no redefinition is needed. That information is MY DATA. Sharing DOES NOT exclude monetary transactions. My general experience has been that companies do not share anything of value for free.

>(e.g. statistics of "how many people aged 18-25 are seeing my ad?")

e.g. aggregated statistics of people aged 20-21 living in the zipcode XXXXX who have lung cancer. Oops.. turns out, its just one person.

>We don’t sell users’ personal information.

Tell that to Google. They're contradicting themselves.

Re: Android without the mothership

#122

Post by aw3c2 »

mbq wrote: post #78
aw3c2 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Please see http://support.whispersystems.org/customer/portal/articles/1...

If you can suggest viable alternatives, I am certain that the team would love to drop Google from it.

Re: Android without the mothership

#123

Post by dublinben »

iamshs wrote: post #11
privong wrote: post #2

I have been running this setup (Cyanogenmod + f-droid, no google apps) for the past 9 months and have been quite happy. I use owncloud for keeping my calendar, contacts, and files sync'ed. K9mail + APG for (signed/encrypted) email. As the article notes OsmAnd is workable, but the what is available through f-droid is 2 versions behind (apparently with low chance of future updates due to difficulties building it). Many…

This is really informative post for separating Android from Google, to the maximum extent for conscientious people. Location, contacts, wifi access points getting shared with Google very much annoys me. But I was even more peeved of Android when there was no way to store contacts locally. No option to store on the phone, but instead you had to save to google account. I am not doing that. So I went the whole hog and i…

I haven't had this problem, but I literally cannot create a calendar event on my phone without adding a Google account. I can't make just a local calendar event without adding a fake CalDAV account, or hooking up a real one with Owncloud.

Re: Android without the mothership

#124

Post by atoponce »

I just recently discovered this setup. I've been running Cyanogenmod for a few years, but was always under the impression I needed Google to use my phone, such as making calls. After my most recent install, I decided to go with F-Droid rather than with Google Play, and realized I could live entirely Google-free with zero effort.

Apps in F-Droid have been lacking, and there are some FOSS apps in Google Play that are not in F-Droid, which is unfortunate. However, I have had a pleasant experience living Google- and proprietary-free on my Android phone. Really, the only thing I miss is Maps.

Re: Android without the mothership

#125

Post by dublinben »

DCKing wrote: post #80
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Amazon, Nokia, and the rest have largely had to build replacements for Google's services in order for their devices to work. As much as we might wish it weren't the case, pure AOSP without someone's proprietary baggage just doesn't work.

Re: Android without the mothership

#126

Post by iamshs »

nly wrote: post #53
iamshs wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am using Nexus 4, so no touchwiz. Only way (or the one in my knowledge) is to disable Google Contacts Sync. The problem with this one is if the switch somehow gets enabled one day, there goes your privacy.

When you disable the backup option on your phone, it warns and asks you to confirm that you want your data to be erased from Googles machines. So there's that. But yes, it's terrifying that millions of home WiFi passwords are stored on Google servers.

No. I did not receive such prompt. The prompt I received was, disabling it can affect other apps. And the two contacts I accidently saved, are still in the gmail account, so there is that. The gmail account was a burner one for the phone.

Re: Android without the mothership

#127

Post by iamshs »

aestra wrote: post #96
iamshs wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is really informative post for separating Android from Google, to the maximum extent for conscientious people. Location, contacts, wifi access points getting shared with Google very much annoys me. But I was even more peeved of Android when there was no way to store contacts locally. No option to store on the phone, but instead you had to save to google account. I am not doing that. So I went the whole hog and i…

> No option to store on the phone, but instead you had to save to google account. I am not doing that. I have no problems whatsoever storing contacts on my device...and my friend puts all his on his SIM card.

I am using Nexus 4 with latest and stock Android version. I am not the unique one with this problem either. http://android.stackexchange.com/questions/24331/add-contact...

Re: Android without the mothership

#128

Post by dublinben »

dotnick wrote: post #56

> ... CyanogenMod is free; it is mostly a build of the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) release with a bunch of added goodies. Google's proprietary user-space apps and utilities are available, but they must be downloaded and installed separately. Interesting. Isn't this against any Google terms?

The Google Apps are no longer distributed directly with CM and other ROMs, which seems to have satisfied Google. They've reached an unofficial agreement to let users flash their own GApps package, as long as it's distributed by itself.

It's really not in Google's interest to prevent users from putting GApps back on their devices.

Re: Android without the mothership

#129

Post by DCKing »

dublinben wrote: post #125
DCKing wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Amazon, Nokia, and the rest have largely had to build replacements for Google's services in order for their devices to work. As much as we might wish it weren't the case, pure AOSP without someone's proprietary baggage just doesn't work.

Pure AOSP doesn't provide cloud services. That's right. Developers need to think of the libraries they're using, whether they are Google's, Amazon's or Microsoft's.

In the end, I think it's a good thing that AOSP doesn't have a dependency on some cloud service, be it Google's or someone else's. The unfortunate downside is that developers might forget that the cloud service they want is not available.

Re: Android without the mothership

#130

Post by personZ »

king_jester wrote: post #116
DominikR wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that an app shouldn't crash, but piracy is a problem. Google In-App purchases are safe, so if that's how you monetize, I don't see why the app should be allowed to work anywhere else but in Google's environment. It's different if the app is open source or you don't need to monetize (sadly, not everyone can afford that luxury), but even there it depends on how important those Play Store API features are to the…

Apps that are provided with for free on Google Play, IAP or no IAP, don't have any fear of piracy from being installed from another source. If Google Play is not available when your app runs, if the user could use that app for some purpose, it is a really good idea to make sure it doesn't crash. Indeed, most free apps with IAPs don't require you to buy the IAP immediately at launch, you can use the app to some degree…

don't have any fear of piracy from being installed from another source

Even if they're currently fully unmonetized, many such apps exist on the Play store because they can be updated at any time to include in app purchases, etc.

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