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GitHub Should Start an App Store

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Re: GitHub Should Start an App Store

#221

Post by rascul »

chrisco255 wrote: post #197
Phemist wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have developed a rekindled hatred for M$ in the past few weeks trying to install firefox on a fresh installation of windows 10. I counted 5 seperate scare tactics employed by M$ to keep you using Edge. I thought they were successfully sued for monopolistically coupling Internet Explorer to Windows and had a flow in their installation menu's for installing competing browsers. I was surprised that this is now totally…

That's terrible and all, but you can't even really install a different browser on your phone. They're either Safari wrappers or Chrome wrappers (even Firefox).

From what I understand, that's a limitation of the iPhone and is not the case on Android.

Re: GitHub Should Start an App Store

#222

Post by mechEpleb »

whatshisface wrote: post #116
simias wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This is situational and opportunistic. It can change any day. In fact, managing an important app store is exactly one way to re-(un)-balance this relationship. I agree. Sorting huge, multinational, publicly traded companies in friends and enemies list is so obviously bogus and immature that it baffles me that this is so prevalent. Microsoft is not your enemy. It's not your friend (unless you're one of the shareholde…

It's repeated very often that companies maximize shareholder value, but that's not really true. Companies follow the personal interests of their management and employees, in proportion to their power within the institution, which sometimes involves shareholder value.

But there are strong incentive structures in place that introduce a correlation between the interests of these individuals and the company's success at driving up share price or even making money. It's not as straightforward as that in reality, but a noisy profit/shareprice maximizing agent is not the worst approximation of a corporation you could come up with.

Re: GitHub Should Start an App Store

#224

Post by einpoklum »

GitHub is a US company, or rather part of one (Microsoft). It iss subject to US government diktats, like National Security Letters, NSA spying, US sanctions banning certain countries and people/users, etc. Indeed, GitHub has already acted upon such pressures or commands, as has been covered here on HN if I'm not mistaken.

So GitHub will not be fundamentally better than Google in this respect.

Re: GitHub Should Start an App Store

#225

Post by jfk13 »

webmobdev wrote: post #195
john_alan wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would "Apple" be blocked? You can run arbitrary software on macOS.

Not on ios. And soon that will also change on macOS.

> And soon that will also change on macOS.

You have a source for that claim?

Re: GitHub Should Start an App Store

#226

Post by GekkePrutser »

rrdharan wrote: post #120
GekkePrutser wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Samsung isn't much better than Google on the privacy side. They're just replacing all the standard apps to make them more in line with OneUI in terms of UX. But things like Samsung health send data home too unfortunately. They are stepping back from cloud services a bit now and letting Microsoft step in, also not privacy driven but more financial I think.

Samsung security, privacy and general software qualify are all a joke as far as I can tell and it’s amusing anyone would put them in even the same ballpark as Google. Dog bites man is not news, and neither are most of the Samsung software travesties ranging from software supply chain debacles to TV spying to data breaches. Nobody even cares in the tech community because no one expects anything of them.

We were just talking about privacy, in that sense I think Samsung is roughly at the same level (considering it can't get much worse than Google :) ).

I think Google is doing a good job with their Pixel phones indeed in terms of security, though they need longer support IMO. Samsung seems to just call everything 'knox' but not really specify what exactly they're doing. So from a security point of view I agree.

Re: GitHub Should Start an App Store

#227

Post by heavyset_go »

coconut08 wrote: post #213
forbiddenvoid wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument really doesn't resonate with me. Like, if people want to download trash on their Windows computer, who am I to stop them? You can do that on your Mac and Linux devices too. People don't need to be protected by App Stores. I'm not only concerned about that, though. The standard 30% cut of revenue flowing through the app if it was downloaded from the app store is also an issue. In general, App Stores crea…

i agree that you should be able to do whatever you want with you device. if you want to download malware or try to manage it all yourself, then you should be able to do that. i think that out of the box, by default, having things managed by a package manager makes sense, especially for normies. this app store monopoly doesn't exist on android. you can very easily install fdroid or any other app store whenever you wan…

> this app store monopoly doesn't exist on android. you can very easily install fdroid or any other app store whenever you want.

This isn't true. Other app stores cannot compete with the Play Store on feature parity due to limitations Google put in Android. For example, F-Droid cannot implement background installation of apps, batch installations, or automatic upgrading without first having root.

Re: GitHub Should Start an App Store

#228

Post by Irishsteve »

freeone3000 wrote: post #168
Irishsteve wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I meant is - GitHub could create a Google Play store. The supply side (Devs) are on GitHub in abundance, so they could have a big catalog. If GitHub could somehow solve the demand side (Phone users) they'd be sorted.

It's a large pile of open source software. It's able to be redistributed freely, by design. Everyone is in the position to take advantage of the catalog, if they can somehow solve the demand side -- that's what the entire problem of a store is about. F-Droid has been trying for years!

Companies host their private code in private repos.

I’m not saying it’s the best thing for GitHub to do, but...

Let’s say 15% of Android top 1000 apps are sitting in private repos on GitHub. With their build tools GitHub make it possible to automatically push builds to this imaginary store, they offer devs 50% discount on whatever cut google take if on the play store.

Re: GitHub Should Start an App Store

#229

Post by tester756 »

Phemist wrote: post #155
syshum wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This really is a generational divide, those of US that were around for the 90's and early 00's Microsoft crap still have a bad taste for the "new Microsoft" that claims to love FLOSS (while still showing many signs of EEE.. ) During that time Google was very friendly to FLOSS, and open protocols (remember when GChat was just a XMPP client) Today MS and Google seems to have flipped, Google now is fully embracing Embra…

I have developed a rekindled hatred for M$ in the past few weeks trying to install firefox on a fresh installation of windows 10. I counted 5 seperate scare tactics employed by M$ to keep you using Edge. I thought they were successfully sued for monopolistically coupling Internet Explorer to Windows and had a flow in their installation menu's for installing competing browsers. I was surprised that this is now totally…

Blame Libre installer then?

Re: GitHub Should Start an App Store

#230

Post by tester756 »

MereInterest wrote: post #189
Phemist wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have developed a rekindled hatred for M$ in the past few weeks trying to install firefox on a fresh installation of windows 10. I counted 5 seperate scare tactics employed by M$ to keep you using Edge. I thought they were successfully sued for monopolistically coupling Internet Explorer to Windows and had a flow in their installation menu's for installing competing browsers. I was surprised that this is now totally…

Don't forget about the shady and underhanded ways to prevent you from making a local account for a new installation of Windows. The first screen you see asks for a WiFi password, and I assume that it is going to start downloading updates in the background. Instead, it prompts you to enter an email address for a Microsoft account. The "Learn More" button says that you can make an offline account later, but right now t…

What kind of version did you try to install?

I never had this bullshit on PRO versions, but I'm connected through cable tho.

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