Keep Android Open
keepandroidopen.org
Keep Android Open
1–10 of 72 posts
Re: Keep Android Open
#2Hypothetically, if Pixel phones became the go-to phone on Android, would G be less or more likely to keep it open? I have a bad feeling that the former is more accurate. The fragmentation somewhat forces the openness, or at least a baseline of openness. If pixels went to 98% market share, a rug pull seems easy and desirable for the management classes.
I'll admit that my cynicism is in no small part to having seen Android team members at G carrying around iPhones. It kills me to think that the bad parts of Apple are so interwoven into Android through cultural assimilation.
Re: Keep Android Open
#3Somewhere along the way, installing became side-loading and the rot started taking hold.
Re: Keep Android Open
#4We need a financial way to reward the resistance. Big corps do not care, as we saw them cave to Apple.
Anyway, I did my part, basically I only use FDroid. I filled this out: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfN3UQeNspQsZCO2ITk...
>Combat astroturfing: when you encounter suspect posts on community forums and social media in support of the policy (“Well, actually…”), challenge them and do not be shy.
Someone contact Dang, because this is now allowed. I have been suspicious HN has actively supported astroturfers over the years for some sort of financial or mutually beneficial gain.
Anyway I basically changed to web apps. They are much easier to deal with and develop.
Re: Keep Android Open
#5It feels like there is a wide open opportunity for some new OS's to enter the mainstream marketplace. I see nothing but dissatisfaction with the incumbents.
Re: Keep Android Open
#6The detail that keeps getting lost in these threads: the "advanced flow" for power users is delivered through Google Play Services, not the Android OS. That's the whole game.
It means the safeguard is not part of AOSP. It ships as a closed component that Google can narrow, gate, or remove in any Play Services update, with no Android version bump, no OEM coordination, no user consent beyond the usual auto-update. "Open platform with an escape hatch" is load-bearing in the PR; "closed escape hatch bolted onto an open kernel" is what's actually shipping.
The second tell is timing. It's five months from enforcement and the flow has not appeared in any beta, dev preview, or canary build. We're being asked to treat a blog post and UI mockups as a functional guarantee. No other platform change of this scope lands without a shipping preview this late, and Google knows it.
The third piece most devs skim past: registration requires uploading evidence of your private signing key. Whatever you think of the verification program in principle, that specific requirement changes the threat model of every Android key in existence, including the ones protecting apps people already depend on.
"Sideloading still works" is only true in the narrow sense that some ceremony remains. The mechanism protecting that ceremony is owned by the party with the strongest incentive to eventually close it.
Re: Keep Android Open
#7Hypothetically, if Pixel phones became the go-to phone on Android, would G be less or more likely to keep it open? I have a bad feeling that the former is more accurate. The fragmentation somewhat forces the openness, or at least a baseline of openness. If pixels went to 98% market share, a rug pull seems easy and desirable for the management classes. I'll admit that my cynicism is in no small part to having seen And…
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Re: Keep Android Open
#8It feels like there is a wide open opportunity for some new OS's to enter the mainstream marketplace. I see nothing but dissatisfaction with the incumbents.
We have other mobile OSes, even ones that support Android apps like Jolla and PostmarketOS. People don't use them.
Re: Keep Android Open
#9Somewhere along the way, installing became side-loading and the rot started taking hold.
Yeah, this. The vocabulary ratchet is underrated as a policy tool. "Install" became "sideload." "Sideload" became "install from unknown sources." "Unknown sources" is becoming "unverified packages." Each rename shifts the Overton window a little further from "this is the normal way to put software on a computer you own" toward "this is a suspicious deviation Google has graciously decided to tolerate for now."
By the time the technical mechanism lands, the framing has been prepared for a decade. The 24-hour cooldown, the seven taps, the three scare screens all _feel_ proportional to the danger the language has been implying. That's not an accident, that's the policy working as designed.
Re: Keep Android Open
#10We need a financial way to reward the resistance. Big corps do not care, as we saw them cave to Apple. Anyway, I did my part, basically I only use FDroid. I filled this out: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfN3UQeNspQsZCO2ITk... >Combat astroturfing: when you encounter suspect posts on community forums and social media in support of the policy (“Well, actually…”), challenge them and do not be shy. Someone co…
F-Droid really does have some great stuff, and you can know that the default posture is user respect rather than the opposite situation of the Play Store. I've started almost exclusively using F-Droid, excepting only for a few core apps that aren't available there (much to my disappointment).
If you haven't searched/browsed F-Droid in the last few years, do it. You'll likely be pleasantly surprised.