Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

voys.co.za

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 296 posts

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

#71

Post by secretsatan »

fsflover wrote: post #57
asdff wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In a way, but not for your reasons, they want to create mass market devices that if you give one to your grandma, little nephew can twist their arm for the root password to install this totally harmless fun app

Apple realised that far more than google imho

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

#73

Post by TheCapeGreek »

tsimionescu wrote: post #58
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.

To give the benefit of the doubt, knowing nothing else about this company:

This is clearly a South African based company. GDPR and cookie may be important compliance but it's not top of the totem pole - the local South African equivalent law (POPI) is more about data processing than cookies. Plenty of sites have not updated their cookie UX for the newer regulations.

I've even noticed some sites serve different forms of cookie consent depending on where you're accessing from. I only started seeing the ability to reject cookies entirely when I travelled to EU recently - before it was always hidden in dark pattern UX.

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

#74

Post by int_19h »

Andrex wrote: post #29
squarefoot wrote: post #9

The mobile ecosystem has been built with the sole intent of milking users through targeted advertising, media consumption and unnecessary services subscription, so I find normal that corporations behind the OSes fight hard to maintain the platform as closed as possible (proprietary or seemingly open OSes, closed drivers, locked bootloaders etc). Their deepest fear is seeing their ecosystem conquered by Open Source, o…

Oh man, you should have seen the mobile sphere before Android...

Before Android and iOS, the dominant smartphone/PDA platforms were Windows Mobile and Symbian. And whatever their usability issues were, I don't recall there being a problem with downloading (or even buying boxed) third-party software directly from the authors and installing it directly.

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

#75

Post by pwg »

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?

Does Linphone (https://linphone.org/) not meet that need of cross platform (website claims versions for all major OS'es) and open source (https://gitlab.linphone.org/BC/public/linphone-desktop)?

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

#76

Post by enriquec »

r_hoods_ghost wrote: post #65

Ahh a privacy oriented company, that won't allow you to opt out of their analytic cookies this breaking the law in the EU. Or in other words, not privacy oriented at all.

europe's cookie fiasco is so idiotic - why don't you just disable them in your browser if you care?

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

#77

Post by ipaddr »

secretsatan wrote: post #48
asdff wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They keep making them but they keep failing, because people want phones that work without needing a computer science degree to understand what is safe and what isn’t. And myself being an apple guy with a dev account, i can install pretty much what i want

The initial barrier of getting grandma on an iphone is over and the need to dumb down devices to the lowest iq to gain marketshare should be over. It is time to raise the collect iq and at least offer a way to drop the training wheels

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

#78

Post by bakugo »

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…

So why not just remove the Contacts API entirely then? If it exists, "shady operators" can misuse it. Oh and, camera apps made by "shady operators" could be sending your pictures to questionable places so why not remove the Camera API as well? And we can't forget that "shady operators" could be snooping through your files so let's remove the filesystem API too.

Actually now that I think about it, any app could be malware, so let's just deal with the root of the problems and remove support for installing third party apps entirely. Everyone should just use apps made by google and nothing else, that way you know there aren't any spooky shady operators hiding under your bed.

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

#79

Post by Traubenfuchs »

MaxikCZ wrote: post #25
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?

IIRC: At least in Europe, they needn't ask for essential cookies. They need to ask for cookies used for tracking, profiling, fingerprinting and consent to share collected info with third parties. The rules also state that the path to reject those cookies must be as easy as it is to accept them, so if they have "accept all" button, they are required to also provide "reject all" button, that has similar visibility and…

That‘s what I thought. I just started a prolonged burnout vacation. How do I hold them accountable / sue them? I will look it up.

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

#80

Post by RobotToaster »

Andrex wrote: post #29
squarefoot wrote: post #9

The mobile ecosystem has been built with the sole intent of milking users through targeted advertising, media consumption and unnecessary services subscription, so I find normal that corporations behind the OSes fight hard to maintain the platform as closed as possible (proprietary or seemingly open OSes, closed drivers, locked bootloaders etc). Their deepest fear is seeing their ecosystem conquered by Open Source, o…

Oh man, you should have seen the mobile sphere before Android...

I don't remember having these problems on windows mobile 5.
Post reply on HN