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Google is forcing us to make our open source VoIP app worse

voys.co.za

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Re: Google is forcing us to make our open source VoIP app worse

#51

Post by earleybird »

Marsymars wrote: post #14
Traubenfuchs wrote: post #10

> Analytics cookies are installed on this website to enhance your browsing experience. Such cookies are only used to optimise this website’s performance and enhance user experience. It is not possible to disable analytics cookies on this website. Now that's just a lie and you know it. Is this legal?

“It is not possible” isn’t used by companies to mean “it isn’t physically possible”, it’s used to mean “it isn’t supported by our processes”. (I’ve been in a frustrating back-and-forth over the past couple days with a company who’s quoting me an outrageous shipping fee, and keeps telling me it’s “impossible” to ship with a different delivery service.)

Can't vs won't.

Re: Google is forcing us to make our open source VoIP app worse

#52

Post by yuvalr1 »

SpaceL10n wrote: post #17
mvletter wrote: post #2

The power they have vs the responsibility they take is completely out of balance.

That can be good thing, imo. Young people have little power to change the world around them, yet they take responsibility for "making the world a better place". I find it inspiring when companies do this too.

Alas Google does the exact opposite - they have a lot of power (they essentially verdict an app to life or death, which sometimes means the death of the business), but take very little responsibility for their actions towards app developers.

Re: Google is forcing us to make our open source VoIP app worse

#53

Post by donmcronald »

thatguy0900 wrote: post #35
AlexandrB wrote: post #16

With the exception of Signal, I never give apps access to my contacts. If you think that's paranoid, remember how apps like LinkedIn used this kind of information in the past[1]. Thankfully on iOS apps almost always work without contact access (is this mandated by App Store rules?). It's not clear from the article if the app just asks for access to contacts or requires it, but if you can't make your Voip app work wit…

Seems like a lost fight to me, if a few friends have these apps your social web is already known to a great extent anyway

Yep. I was just looking at a voicemail / spam blocking one last night and their privacy policy said they use / share and contacts you upload (aka that they upload). The average person has no idea that’s happening.

Re: Google is forcing us to make our open source VoIP app worse

#54

Post by captainzidgel »

pomatic wrote: post #28

I was intrigued by the prospect of a foss voip phone app that's cross platform - but was unable to find the repo. for the app (libary repos are available and obvious, just not the app as a whole). Anyone know where it lives?

The website calls it the Voys app but I think it's actually called Vialer: https://github.com/open-voip-alliance/vialer It's the only full app in their repo and it fits the description they gave on the website.

Re: Google is forcing us to make our open source VoIP app worse

#56

Post by nemothekid »

asdff wrote: post #46
secretsatan wrote: post #40

I kinda sorta see google’s side. There are just too many shady operators out there who will swear blind they’re completely honest, and maybe they are, but they also employed a third party to write code or maybe just imported a 3rd party lib (i am in no way saying this is the case) As to, why don’t they look at the code? bugger that being standard practise, i’m not handing over my code to google or apple. Even if they…

At the same time, why not just release at least one phone that is developer friendly? People can handle it. All these issues are present on computers that are able to run unsigned code, have sensitive personal info stored on them, etc. Yet the sky is not falling with all this going on with everyone's computer on earth, like how people fear the sky will fall if we opened up the mobile phone.

>Yet the sky is not falling with all this going on with everyone's computer on earth, like how people fear the sky will fall if we opened up the mobile phone.

This is because everything was moved to the web and users were beaten over the head with a hammer to never install anything on their computers. The sky was falling and subsequently the desktop software platform hardly exists today.

Re: Google is forcing us to make our open source VoIP app worse

#57

Post by fsflover »

asdff wrote: post #46
secretsatan wrote: post #40

I kinda sorta see google’s side. There are just too many shady operators out there who will swear blind they’re completely honest, and maybe they are, but they also employed a third party to write code or maybe just imported a 3rd party lib (i am in no way saying this is the case) As to, why don’t they look at the code? bugger that being standard practise, i’m not handing over my code to google or apple. Even if they…

At the same time, why not just release at least one phone that is developer friendly? People can handle it. All these issues are present on computers that are able to run unsigned code, have sensitive personal info stored on them, etc. Yet the sky is not falling with all this going on with everyone's computer on earth, like how people fear the sky will fall if we opened up the mobile phone.

>why not just release at least one phone that is developer friendly?

Google and Apple want to control their users, they don't want to give you an open phone. Instead have a look at Librem 5 and Pinephone, which run GNU/Linux.

Re: Google is forcing us to make our open source VoIP app worse

#58

Post by tsimionescu »

secretsatan wrote: post #40

I kinda sorta see google’s side. There are just too many shady operators out there who will swear blind they’re completely honest, and maybe they are, but they also employed a third party to write code or maybe just imported a 3rd party lib (i am in no way saying this is the case) As to, why don’t they look at the code? bugger that being standard practise, i’m not handing over my code to google or apple. Even if they…

Not to mention, given their cookie policy, they claim that they are "very privacy conscious" is dubious at best (no button to directly reject all non-necessary cookies, navigation to a different page to configure cookie preferences, claiming that analytics cookies are required).

I'm going to go ahead and say that probably they are misrepresenting what is happening.

Re: Google is forcing us to make our open source VoIP app worse

#59

Post by jonas21 »

asdff wrote: post #46
secretsatan wrote: post #40

I kinda sorta see google’s side. There are just too many shady operators out there who will swear blind they’re completely honest, and maybe they are, but they also employed a third party to write code or maybe just imported a 3rd party lib (i am in no way saying this is the case) As to, why don’t they look at the code? bugger that being standard practise, i’m not handing over my code to google or apple. Even if they…

At the same time, why not just release at least one phone that is developer friendly? People can handle it. All these issues are present on computers that are able to run unsigned code, have sensitive personal info stored on them, etc. Yet the sky is not falling with all this going on with everyone's computer on earth, like how people fear the sky will fall if we opened up the mobile phone.

On most (if not all) Android phones, you can tap the version 8 times to put it into developer mode and then install whatever you want.
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