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Android's sideloading limits are its most anti-consumer move

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Re: Android's sideloading limits are its most anti-consumer move

#81

Post by iszomer »

kspacewalk2 wrote: post #39
mixologic wrote: post #19

If you want to install software on your Microsoft Windows computer, it has to be signed by a verified developer, otherwise you get an overridable warning that the developer cannot be verified, the software may contain malware etc. If you want to install software on you MacOS machine, the same thing applies. It must come from a verified developer with an apple account, otherwise you get a warning and must jump through…

I'm okay with overridable warnings, having to open system settings to override the verification, etc. It's a "huge safety win" for the 80% of users who don't really know what they're doing, security wise. But not for me. I won't be using any OS that doesn't allow me to step outside its walled garden, if I have any alternatives at all. With macOS it's quite simple - the second they won't allow apps from unverified/uns…

Or you can try not updating Android or continue using a device already EOL. Can't have your cake and eat it too on releases and security patches.

Re: Android's sideloading limits are its most anti-consumer move

#82

Post by user2722 »

freefaler wrote: post #60

Yes, it's a very unfriendly decision by Google. However, I don't think they haven't measured the number of users installing apps outside of the Play store. May be they just don't care about the small % of total users who are a large % here on HN. This is a part of a bigger trend, Cory Doctorow spoke about 13 years ago in his "The coming war on general computing": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUEvRyemKSg And this w…

Check Stallman's The Right to Read short story.

Re: Android's sideloading limits are its most anti-consumer move

#83

Post by IlikeKitties »

gruez wrote: post #46
la_fayette wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's see what will the future of Graphene be, since Google is not publishing the device tree anymore for Pixel devices...

That's a non-issue for them: https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/115299586595207105

It's not a non-issue i'm sure it's quite annoying to deal with, they just work around it. I hope the deal with their unnamed OEM works out and we get a native GrapheneOS Device. I'd buy it day one.

Re: Android's sideloading limits are its most anti-consumer move

#84

Post by voxl »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #38
blaze33 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure virus creators could just pick a real ID leaked by the "adult only logins" shenanigans, whereas legit app developers probably wouldn't want to commit identity fraud.

If it gets that bad; Google can do what they already do with business listings - send a letter to the physical address matching the ID, containing a code, which then must be entered into the online portal. Do that + identity check = bans for virus makers are not easily evaded, regardless of where they live.

Can you imagine what you're suggesting for a Linux machine? It's absurd. My box my rules, I'll run any damn code I please.

Re: Android's sideloading limits are its most anti-consumer move

#85

Post by mariusor »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #63
spookie wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fail to see the link, businesses come and go. Their software dies with them.

Businesses die. Cathedrals don't. IBM is 114 years old. Microsoft is 50. Google is 27. Disney is 101. Nintendo is 136 (they'll outlive Steam and the next nuclear war at this rate). The COBOL running banks is 65 years old. Windows NT architecture is 32. The platforms become infrastructure, too embedded to replace. How many bazaar projects from even 10 years ago are still maintained? Go through GitHub's trending repos…

Any of the BSDs (well 2BSD is the oldest on a quick search), the linux project, the GNU C lib and GCC, etc. Just because you can't think of it, it does not mean it doesn't exist.

Re: Android's sideloading limits are its most anti-consumer move

#87

Post by api »

HiPhish wrote: post #4

We need to stop calling it "sideloading", we should call it freely installing software. The term "sideloading" makes it sound shady and hacky when in reality it is what we have been able to do on our computers since forever. These are not phones, they are computers shaped like phones, computer which we fully bought with our money, and I we shall install what we want on our own computers.

I always found this term utterly bizarre. It first showed up in the early days of the mobile "revolution" and felt astroturfed, since no developer would think we need a fundamentally new term for downloading software. It felt like something some dark patterns team came up with to discourage free installation of software on your own device.

Of course maybe I'm overthinking it. It's common for people deep in the bowels of an industry to invent pointless jargon, like "deplane" for getting off an airplane. Anyone know where the term "sideload" was coined or by whom?

Re: Android's sideloading limits are its most anti-consumer move

#88

Post by api »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #42
ta1243 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when in reality it is what we have been able to do on our computers since forever You do realise that's been changing right? Slowly of course, there's no single villain that James Bond could take down, or that a charistmatic leader could get elected could change. The oil tanker has been moving in that direction for decades. There are legions defending the right to run your own software, but it's a continual war of…

If you want a real blackpill (I think this is the right word), consider the famous Cathedral and the Bazaar . I recently had a realization: I can name Cathedrals, that are 800 years old, and still standing. I can't name a single Bazaar stall more than 50 years old around any Cathedral that's still standing. The Cathedral's builders no doubt bought countless stone and food from the Bazaar, making the Bazaar very usefu…

The title also correctly describes the relationship between FOSS and cloud SaaS. FOSS is the bone yard and parts catalog that devs go to when building closed platforms to lock in users. It largely exists today to be free labor for SaaS and training data for AI.

I'm not there yet, but I am perilously close to tipping over into believing that making open source software today is actually doing harm by giving more free labor to an exploitative ecosystem. Instead you should charge for your software and try to build an ecosystem where the customer is the customer and not the product.

I stress today because this was not true pre-SaaS or pre-mobile. FOSS was indeed liberating in the PC and early web eras.

Re: Android's sideloading limits are its most anti-consumer move

#89

Post by iamnothere »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #63
spookie wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fail to see the link, businesses come and go. Their software dies with them.

Businesses die. Cathedrals don't. IBM is 114 years old. Microsoft is 50. Google is 27. Disney is 101. Nintendo is 136 (they'll outlive Steam and the next nuclear war at this rate). The COBOL running banks is 65 years old. Windows NT architecture is 32. The platforms become infrastructure, too embedded to replace. How many bazaar projects from even 10 years ago are still maintained? Go through GitHub's trending repos…

> How many bazaar projects from even 10 years ago are still maintained?

Uhh, all the big ones in common use? GNU’s massive portfolio of software, Linux, multiple BSDs, Apache, Firefox, BusyBox, PHP, Perl, the many lineages of StarOffice, LaTeX, Debian, vim, fish, tmux, I mean this barely scratches the surface. Are you kidding me?

How many startups have failed over the last decade? I would argue that the norm is for any project to eventually cease. Only useful things with an active community (whether that community is for-profit or not) tend to last, until they are no longer valued enough to maintain. This goes for things in the physical world just as it does for software.

Re: Android's sideloading limits are its most anti-consumer move

#90

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #67
nerdsniper wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are definitely bazaars which have a very old history. Being that the word "bazaar" has middle-eastern origins it feels appropriate to highlight middle eastern bazaars. Al-Madina Souq in Aleppo is one such bazaar with quite a few shops/stalls/"souqs" dating back to the 1300's or 1400's, such as Khan al-Qadi (est. 1450). Khan el-Khalili in Cairo has its economic marketplace origins rooted in the 1100's-1300's.

Name a single bazaar vendor that's still going more than 50 years in any of them. The bazaar as an institution remains, as it does today, but there's no permanence with a bazaar, just as open-source will never have a permanent victory without becoming a cathedral. Bazaars persist through constant replacement, churn, not victory. Windows NT will be with us longer than systemd and flatpak.

Windows NT is younger than Unix. I'd say the smart money is on the Unix-derived line of operating systems outliving Windows NT by a considerable amount.

However ... the domain of operating systems is subject to weird constraints, and so it's not really appropriate to make some of the observations one might make in other domains. Nevertheless, I thought the point was that we want things to improve via replacement (a "bazaar" model), rather than stand for all time. We don't actually want technology "cathedrals" at all, even if we do appreciate architectural ones.

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