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Keep Android Open

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Re: Keep Android Open

#91

Post by paxys »

microtonal wrote: post #81
paxys wrote: post #73

The fundamental problem is that we are relying on the good graces of Google to keep Android open, despite the fact that it often runs run contrary to their goals as a $4T for-profit behemoth. This may have worked in the past, but the "don't be evil" days are very far behind us. I don't see a real future for Andrioid as an open platform unless the community comes together and does a hard fork. Google can continue to d…

A hard fork is not needed. Non-Google Android do not have to enforce this requirement. It's more important to get as many people on alternatives like GrapheneOS as possible. And fund them by donating to them. If every ~0.5 million GrapheneOS users donated 10 Euro per month, they would be very well-funded.

There is no such thing as non-Google Android. At most you have people applying tiny patches on top of AOSP, but 100% of the code in the underlying project is still Google-approved, and none of the alternatives have control over that.

It's the same as the situation with Chrome/Chromium. There are a million "de-Googled"/"privacy focused" alternatives to Chrome all using the same engine, and when Google pushed manifest v3 changes to block ad-blockers every single one of them was affected.

Re: Keep Android Open

#92

Post by microtonal »

fermigier wrote: post #62

It is a disgrace how Google has managed this situation. To recap the storyline, as far as I understand it: last August, Google announced plans to heavily restrict sideloading. Following community pushback, they promised an "advanced flow" for power users. The media widely reported this as a walk-back, leading users to assume the open ecosystem was safe. But this promised feature hasn't appeared in any Android 16 or 1…

The impact is a direct threat to independent AOSP distributions like Murena's e/OS/ (which I'm personally using).

I don't think this is true, right? An AOSP build can just decide to still allow installing arbitrary APKs. Also see this post from the GrapheneOS team:

https://mastodon.social/@GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social/116103...

Re: Keep Android Open

#93

Post by dangus »

nimbius wrote: post #25

This isnt going to be a popular post because the HN crowd is very much a "China bad" crowd but I hypothesize China will likely step in and offer a fork that's compatible with open ecosystems not under the direct control of the us state department. This might be in the form of commits and investment in fdroid and pinephone, or a tiktok like alternative to the wests walled garden. Edit: this will likely exist "uncensor…

I don’t think China will do that at all. They’ll move to HarmonyOS.

Re: Keep Android Open

#95

Post by paxys »

handity wrote: post #87
paxys wrote: post #73

The fundamental problem is that we are relying on the good graces of Google to keep Android open, despite the fact that it often runs run contrary to their goals as a $4T for-profit behemoth. This may have worked in the past, but the "don't be evil" days are very far behind us. I don't see a real future for Andrioid as an open platform unless the community comes together and does a hard fork. Google can continue to d…

A hard fork doesn't matter when the vast majority of phones have a locked bootloader.

Google's own phones do not have a locked booloader. You can buy a Pixel and put GrapheneOS on it in like 10 minutes. But basically no one does this, because no matter what people say in online forums they actually value ease of use and shiny features over privacy and software freedom.

Re: Keep Android Open

#96

Post by mistercheph »

jerf wrote: post #48
nimbius wrote: post #25

This isnt going to be a popular post because the HN crowd is very much a "China bad" crowd but I hypothesize China will likely step in and offer a fork that's compatible with open ecosystems not under the direct control of the us state department. This might be in the form of commits and investment in fdroid and pinephone, or a tiktok like alternative to the wests walled garden. Edit: this will likely exist "uncensor…

Not a chance. A fork that is under China's control, maybe, but not an "open" fork. They don't even pretend to have that as a value. You may theoretically find it advantageous to use such a system anyhow. To a first-order approximation, the danger a government poses to you is proportional to its proximity to you. (In the interests of fairness, I will point out, so are the benefits a government may offer to you. In thi…

https://arena.ai/leaderboard/text?license=open-source

Re: Keep Android Open

#97

Post by firegodjr »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #75
tux1968 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? It's their operating system, and they're trying to balance quite a few competing priorities. Scammers are not a threat to dismiss out of hand (i've had family who were victims). For it to be truly considered open source, you should be able to fork it and create your own edits to change the defaults however you wish. Whether that is still a possibility or not, is a completely separate issue from how they proc…

> Why not? It's their operating system It's my phone.

100%. If I buy something, it's mine. I should be able to resell it, modify it, or generally work on it however I see fit. Licensed digital media bound to platforms is different (barring some kind of NFT solution?) but an OS that my phone cannot function without (and that cannot be replaced in many cases) absolutely must be under my jurisdiction.

Re: Keep Android Open

#98

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

Ir0nMan wrote: post #47
lm28469 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Half, or more, of the world thinks exactly the same in regards to the US

If 50% of the world started running the CCP backed fork and 50% of the world ran the US backed fork, which one would you choose for your phone?

The Chinese one, obviously.

Re: Keep Android Open

#99

Post by microtonal »

paxys wrote: post #91
microtonal wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A hard fork is not needed. Non-Google Android do not have to enforce this requirement. It's more important to get as many people on alternatives like GrapheneOS as possible. And fund them by donating to them. If every ~0.5 million GrapheneOS users donated 10 Euro per month, they would be very well-funded.

There is no such thing as non-Google Android. At most you have people applying tiny patches on top of AOSP, but 100% of the code in the underlying project is still Google-approved, and none of the alternatives have control over that. It's the same as the situation with Chrome/Chromium. There are a million "de-Googled"/"privacy focused" alternatives to Chrome all using the same engine, and when Google pushed manifest…

At most you have people applying tiny patches on top of AOSP, but 100% of the code in the underlying project is still Google-approved, and none of the alternatives have control over that.

You are making an orthogonal point. Yes, Google maintains AOSP. No, that does not mean that AOSP OSes that are not in Google's Android program (calling it that to avoid semantics games) have to adopt this change. If you want to hear it from the experts: https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/116103732687045013

Re: Keep Android Open

#100

Post by mistercheph »

RussianCow wrote: post #69
colordrops wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they close things up with no alternative, the free open source software will likely start to catch up. it will take a few years though. This could be a blessing in disguise.

There is just no reasonable way that the open source community can compete with a $3.8T company. And before you say something along the lines of, "But they don't need to compete, they just need to be good enough", that still requires business to put their apps on some open source app store and make them compatible with the open source OS, and there is close to zero incentive for them to do so.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux

MSFT Market cap: 2.951T AAPL Market cap: 3.883T

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