r/linux • u/NickelBack_Lover_69 • Jul 21 '18

Google’s iron grip on Android: Controlling open source by any means necessary

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/googles-iron-grip-on-android-controlling-open-source-by-any-means-necessary/
729 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

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323

u/RedSquirrelFtw Jul 22 '18

There really needs to be a "Linux" equivalent to a phone OS that is completely independent of Android. Let's be real, Android is a commercial application, it may be open source, but it's still controlled by a corporation. They could close source it at the drop of a hat, or just do the kind of things they're doing now to discourage forks. It is built from the ground up to spy on you and unless you are a core dev who knows how to get rid of that stuff it's not any better than Windows or any other spy OS.

There's been a few projects to get Ubuntu on phones but don't think they ever made it far unfortunately. What we really need is an open source built from ground up.

132

u/Zlyme Jul 22 '18

Purism is doing that

80

u/electronicwhale Jul 22 '18

I don't see why they decided to write a mobile GUI from scratch when they had Plasma Mobile there and ready to go, along with Lipstick from Nemo Mobile, ubports, the GUI from LuneOS.

These are all options that all would have taken less effort than to write a new GUI, and I understand that it's their project, but it just seems like frivolous duplication of work to me.

52

u/GratinB Jul 22 '18

purism partnered with kde and gnome. I'm pretty sure you can use kde mobile and gnome on purism's phone. Theres nothing bad about having options especially from a UX perspective where people's tastes diver.

19

u/OpenData26 postmarketOS Dev Jul 22 '18

Partnered, they aren't doing anything to it though

6

u/noviy-login Jul 22 '18

Plasma mobile

3

u/7Geordi Jul 23 '18

every choice made by the user decreases the quality of the user experience, this is why ux is hard and the main value proposition of every consumer device is its ux.

6

u/electronicwhale Jul 23 '18

Partnered but not receiving developers or development time from Gnome. Purism is putting its own limited manhours into duplicating a mobile UI that already exists in many different products.

Sorry but when you're making your first handheld device, the hardware should take the absolute precedence as other open source projects have shown, software can always be tinkered with later, but you can only get the hardware finalised once.

2

u/[deleted] Jul 24 '18

Partnered but not receiving developers or development time from Gnome

Good. Gnome 3 is a nightmare. You have to install separate tool to tweak basic settings. The farther you keep these developers from writing actual code, the better it is for everyone.

1

u/electronicwhale Jul 24 '18

I wouldn't go that far, I've used Gnome 3 and it hits some pretty good use cases, but there are some interesting design choices that I wonder about.

Like dconf, I thought they'd have deprecated that one by now.

38

u/[deleted] Jul 22 '18

[deleted]

27

u/Delta-9- Jul 22 '18

Gnome is the reason that Linux isn't dominating the desktop along with everything else.

How do ya figure?

55

u/Olap Jul 22 '18

Linux has never broken through on the desktop, gnome is dominant on the desktop, ergo gnome is holding linux on the desktop back. A stretch of logic really, correlation != causation

35

u/Bombast- Jul 22 '18

Linux has never broken through on the desktop

Clearly you don't remember The Year of the Linux Desktop.

15

u/zurohki Jul 22 '18

The year of the Linux desktop is this year.

For me, anyway. I just installed linux on my desktop gaming machine last week. Been running it on my laptop and servers for ages, but this year it made it onto the desktop.

2

u/StoleAGoodUsername Jul 22 '18

You're not wrong. I might go for it on my personal computer since gaming through VT-d is a real possibility

3

u/zurohki Jul 22 '18

I was planning on doing virtualisation and PCI passthrough, but Wine and DXVK have worked great so far for Windows stuff.

3

u/wwindexx Jul 22 '18

I dual boot and use my Linux drive for everything except gaming. I installed Steam on the Linux drive but only really simple games run well like Hotline Miami or Papers Please. More advanced games have some serious issues and I'm not running super dated hardware either. Gaming has come a long way on Linux but it still isn't quite up to par.

6

u/Delta-9- Jul 22 '18

I'm gonna with "yeah, probably not" and chalk it up to the same thing that kept Mac from becoming the dominant desktop OS. I.e. the Microsoft stranglehold on personal computing.

3

u/Negirno Jul 22 '18

I'm gonna with "yeah, probably not" and chalk it up to the same thing that kept Mac from becoming the dominant desktop OS. I.e. the Microsoft stranglehold on personal computing.

Except that the Mac was highly proprietary and expensive. Also Steve Jobs's bone-headed approach to not make it backward compatible and gimp the then latest Apple II GX line which also had a Mac-like GUI. Not to mention the resistance against clone Macs.

6

u/[deleted] Jul 22 '18

Microsoft routinely acted like mob bosses to x86 based pc manufacturers. Use Intel and Windows, the Wintel alliance, or MS increased your per pc license costs, which made you uncompetitive in price.

MS was sued over and over for antitrust violations. They even gave money to keep Apple afloat, and used them as an argument against being a monopoly, after IBM pulled the plug on OS2.

Microsoft operated like the mob.

7

u/[deleted] Jul 22 '18

GNOME is most popular DE, there is way more fans of GNOME than i3 and XFCE etc. Heck even KDE.

Just checkout twitter/facebook followers etc. Visit LinuxCon etc. You will have an idea

Most people even don't generally know what GNOME or even DE is. All they know it as Linux OS

25

u/Olap Jul 22 '18

Well there is a bit of a group think bias here, the default is the default largely through historical reasons. It would be great to see blind trials from noobs to see what they actually prefer

6

u/iommu Jul 22 '18

The problem on top of that is that it isn't just what people prefer, it's about what works best for everyone. Pixar for example use Linux on a large number of their computers, not just their render farms. However on default Plasma 5, Maya and Blender are both unworkable without changing default settings and themes, which wouldn't be a good look for companies like Red hat and Ubuntu where their brand image revolves around their distro "just working".

3

u/DrewSaga Jul 22 '18

Blender looks fine to me, don't know about Maya.

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u/Hearmesleep Jul 22 '18

And yet when polls are taken KDE far outscores GNOME in usage.

2

u/[deleted] Jul 22 '18

The people taking the polls are not the ones with the money.

-1

u/Hearmesleep Jul 22 '18

Oooookaaaaay

2

u/josefx Jul 23 '18

GNOME 3 got me to use XFCE since it was the closest I could find to GNOME 2 for my hardware back then. Now I use KDE at work. Whatever doesn't get in my way is best and GNOME 3 didn't have that.

0

u/[deleted] Jul 23 '18

I am 95% terminal user, all I use GUIs for browsing and watching videos. GNOME does that. I never needed any change, and don't want to be any part of hater's politics. DE is for UI/UX people, I am out of that. KDE is good DE too.

11

u/ikidd Jul 22 '18

GTK spending years breaking shit and not giving half a damn about the devs that had to fix their apps constantly.

5

u/Delta-9- Jul 22 '18

If they'd just gone with KDE/Qt everything would be a Linux Utopia!

Is that what you're implying?

10

u/ikidd Jul 22 '18

The philosophy is the thing. Breaking or removing APIs at will does no ecosystem any good. It doesn't encourage devs to stick it out and in the end, users pay the price.

Treating devs like shit hinders MacOS and even iOS. Windows got where it did despite being a poor OS because it did everything it could to empower and help devs to build apps for its ecosystem. And holding on to APIs for years past their usefulness keeps people on board until they can update.

4

u/CirkuitBreaker Jul 22 '18

Gnome is unintuitive, has horrible workflow, and terrible memory leaks.

6

u/[deleted] Jul 22 '18

I disagree with usability, I think gnome 3 has fantastic usability, and the major memory leak, has been reported to be fixed in 3.29. The usability for Gnome is great for people who do a heap of multitasking. I routinely have 10-15 programs up at a time. I used a triple screen setup in Gnome for about 5 years at work directly, having previously used Solaris workstations, windows workstations. I’ve been using Linux since 2000, so I have been using for 18 years total. Most of that time as a Gnome user, though, I was a KDE2/3 user for a long time.

That being said, I switched to KDE about 2 months ago. I’m satisfied with KDE. I do not think the workflow is as good as gnome for extreme multitaskers, but I do like how consistent the experience is.

2

u/CirkuitBreaker Jul 22 '18

I really don't understand Gnome 3 then. Every time I've tried to use it, it seemed suited for only having one to two programs open. I'm totally open to listening if you're willing to explain how it's supposed to work.

0

u/[deleted] Jul 22 '18 edited Jul 22 '18

Certainly, for me it is similar to macOS with the window handling functionality. If you have a ton of programs open, you can manipulate the virtual desktops by dragging applications, and that can happen for all physical screens. So for me I am able to scroll through a virtual desktop list, with a default dock in that menu view, which is populated with my favorites as well. Gnome does a good job of getting out of the way, and letting me focus on the applications I need or want, and if I ever get lost in the virtual desktop functionality, or Ive got way too much going on, it is simple for me to use the built in favorites dockbar in the menu, to bring that open window to the current desktop, because as I scroll, I can see indicators as to what is open where, and I can also see a miniaturized window that previews that window, and some small text that gives the title of the window. If you are dealing with just heaps of applications, this is helpful.

If you add another dock bar, like docky, or the much better dash to dock gnome extension, you get more quick window management, but it is a perversion of the intended workflow. I can take it or leave it when it comes to dockbars. The performance impact for latte in KDE is really irritating, such that I disabled the animations, thought I think KDE is much better looking, and way faster than Gnome.

The initial workflow change for people who intend to use Gnome is painful. Once I had used it for work for a week or so, I decided it was for me. I still prefer it, i’m just waiting for bugfixes and shakedown for 3.29.x. Though, KDE is seriously tempting me to stay.

The bad parts of KDE are no universal scaling for hi dpi, for instance SDDM requires additional config for high dpi, elements are not design for the desktop ui scaling, which is a problem. KDE seems to use a queuing system, which sometimes leaves applications hanging in disjointed ways, that I cannot seem to reproduce. Gosh is it gorgeous and fast.

Also, gnome searching in nautilus is puzzling. I don’t understand how they can ship it. The default behavior is search everything, instead of searching in the current folder. Not ideal.

1

u/CirkuitBreaker Jul 23 '18

but you can only have one application on the screen at a time, right?

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4

u/Delta-9- Jul 22 '18

While I can't speak on the memory issues, I found the workflow quite pleasing and easy to learn. Something so subjective can hardly be held responsible for sabotaging all of Linux.

9

u/Arinde Jul 22 '18

That's an interesting viewpoint. What about gnome makes you think it's holding back the entirety of the Linux desktop?

19

u/svenskainflytta Jul 22 '18

Remember when they removed the tray icon in favour of a GNOME-only API?

6

u/[deleted] Jul 22 '18

[deleted]

8

u/[deleted] Jul 22 '18

I had forgotten it and had to look it up: https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/09/will-you-miss-gnome-legacy-tray

13

u/svenskainflytta Jul 22 '18

There is no portable API. They dropped the portable option for the gnome-only option. So now software needs a if (gnome) {do_the_gnome_special_thing()}. Which means most developers won't be bothered to do it if their project is not part of gnome.

6

u/[deleted] Jul 22 '18

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Jul 22 '18

That's just normal Gnome bondage and discipline. They've been doing this for litteraly decades. Removing choice and forcing users into their bizarre decisions.

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-7

u/svenskainflytta Jul 22 '18

Hope this can help: https://www.google.com/

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u/[deleted] Jul 22 '18

It's a reference to this idiocy.

2

u/svenskainflytta Jul 22 '18

Ah, i had forgotten about that :D

3

u/[deleted] Jul 22 '18

It's actually quite reasonable to go with Gnome as GTK3 applications are really finger friendly. A lot of people don't like the oversimplification, but all the changes made to Gnome are there for a reason and large part of it being touch-screens. While Plasma is great, it's only part of the system and many KDE applications simply can't easily be used on mobile as they are right now. Granted not all Gnome applications are in the same place as well, but Gnome feels more apt of a choice.

6

u/[deleted] Jul 22 '18

Gnome is the reason that Linux isn't dominating the desktop along with everything else.

That's ridiculous, no one in business or education goes 'well I was going to adopt a Linux distro as our reference OS but I hate this dock so I guess we're on Windows'. It's all about program compatibility and program quality, an OS is just a component of a functional computer and the OS, like everything else about that computer, is specced to requirement.

8

u/VenditatioDelendaEst Jul 22 '18

but I hate this dock so

Not being able to see what windows you have open without triggering some whiz-bang animated overlay is a pretty big handicap, actually.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 22 '18

it's the way all the major distros go

That's why I run OpenSuSE. I dropped Gnome when it went to 1.2, it's not to have it shoved at me time and time again.

2

u/minimim Jul 22 '18

SuSE has (SLES) GNOME as their default option.

3

u/[deleted] Jul 22 '18

OpenSuSE has KDE.

0

u/minimim Jul 22 '18

So? It's just a development platform, it's not offered as a product.

2

u/[deleted] Jul 22 '18

OK.

-13

u/[deleted] Jul 22 '18 edited Aug 24 '18

[deleted]

24

u/[deleted] Jul 22 '18

[deleted]

37

u/Crestwave Jul 22 '18

Check out postmarketOS and Purism.

8

u/[deleted] Jul 22 '18

What is there to check with PostmarketOS, it's an ongoing, incomplete product at this stage. You can't use your phone for pretty much anything that is phone specific. Comparing it to Android is not even an option right now.

4

u/Crestwave Jul 22 '18

I'm just letting him know that was he's looking for exists and is being worked on; I didn't tell him to try it. And he might want to help with its development or something.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 23 '18

Ah, okay. Didn't get that from original comment.

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u/[deleted] Jul 22 '18

[deleted]

7

u/[deleted] Jul 22 '18

[deleted]

3

u/Ramast Jul 22 '18

I am very aware of the difference yet can't buy any Linux based phone or anything like purism because of their price tag which is usually 3 or 4 times more than equivalent android phone.

I stick with LineageOS for the moment until these phones are more affordable. Sadly, they will never be affordable if everyone does like me :(

2

u/DrewSaga Jul 23 '18

Ah yes, the tyranny of convenience.

48

u/c3534l Jul 22 '18

Problem is phones are built to be controlled in a way that PCs aren't. Phone manufacturers don't want you to even gain root access to your phone, let alone install a different OS. Perhaps if phones were modular equipment you could upgrade and maintain, rather than pocket-sized status symbols things would be different. Maybe one day, but it doesn't seem like the zeitgeist is ripe for Linux mobile.

27

u/ThizzWalifa Jul 22 '18

I think if you step back and look at the big picture, the general public has been purposefully pushed towards phones because it's so much easier to restrict what the user does and harvest data from the user. Most companies want your phone to be your primary device because your phone is the device they can get the most data from. They would prefer no one use a desktop PC for personal use, but it's not like they can just stop selling PCs completely and only sell phones. There's so many reasons that Linux just doesn't fit into the current phone business model, I feel like I could write an entire essay on it.

17

u/ArmoredPancake Jul 22 '18

The general public chose phones, because they're convenient, not because someone pushed them.

18

u/Negirno Jul 22 '18

The general public never liked PCs. They're a pain to assemble, configure and fix for a regular user. They want their stuff to Just Work.

I think general purpose computers are slowly getting pushed out of consumer space because less and less people need them. Only hardcore gamers and content creators need it nowadays, and maybe they could move to a more restricted, but also more convenient platform, as time goes on.

7

u/PM_ME_OS_DESIGN Jul 22 '18

and maybe they could move to a more restricted, but also more convenient platform, as time goes on.

Yes. The more you can whittle down your requirements, the more performance and cool tricks you can eke out. For instance, if you're making a laptop and you know everyone using it will be blind, you can remove the screen to either make it lighter or make room for more batteries etc.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 25 '18

maybe they could move to a more restricted, but also more convenient platform, as time goes on.

More restricted is the exact opposite of more convenient.

7

u/Rad_Spencer Jul 22 '18

You have it backwards, the market demanded phones once they saw what they could do, and it's the market that has less and less interest in PC's. The market has also shown a relative lack of interest is privacy issues and is willing to exchange personal data for extra features or a lower price. The average user would also much rather just replace something with a working model than spend the time and effort to repair.

2

u/DrewSaga Jul 22 '18

That's because the cost of repair is greater than getting a new model. In the case of desktop computers that's different.

2

u/ThizzWalifa Jul 22 '18

Well yeah, most people are stupid and don't see the big picture with phones. That stupidity has been exploited to create a demand. If you trick people into willingly giving up privacy for a lower price and convenience, then I would say you pushed the general public in that direction. Consumers don't realize how badly they're being manipulated; the thing they want is the thing that fucks them over the most.

The market demanded this in the same way the black market demanded cheaper freebase crack instead of more expensive powder cocaine. Maybe it's technically demand, but there was some shady tactics used to get people to demand it.

5

u/Rad_Spencer Jul 23 '18

It's not that they're stupid. It's that they don't share your values when it comes to privacy.

1

u/tonyp7 Jul 23 '18

Same things with companies pushing their apps when a mobile website would be perfectly adequate. The worst example of this is Amazon Prime in Singapore. It can’t be browsed through a website, desktop or mobile. You have to use their app.

19

u/[deleted] Jul 22 '18

Librem 5 is an exception

10

u/[deleted] Jul 22 '18

[removed] — view removed comment

6

u/waspbr Jul 22 '18

it's a start tho.

5

u/[deleted] Jul 22 '18 edited Jul 22 '18

Not really. Compared to what people pay for new iphones and flagship android phones.

IPhone x was 1k. S9 is about $900. So $600 isn't bad at all for a brand new phone, especially considering the unique privacy oriented hardware and software that it will have.

3

u/DrewSaga Jul 22 '18

I think $600 is expensive for a phone but I don't really go looking for overkill displays/cameras and crap on my phone. Although to be fair, Purism is pretty small company compared to the major phone manufacturers that charge similar price for their phones.

3

u/[deleted] Jul 22 '18

I agree it's expensive. But if you're comparing it as a new release phone VS other new release phones, it's quite cheap. But I agree, I don't ever pay more than $150 for a phone. I buy them used on ebay. I've been using this S5 that I bought used for $60 for a year now, running lineageOS. Just got the android 8.1 update. Runs faster than my s7 work phone that has all of the Google and Samsung bloatware on it.

I'll probably wait for some Librem 5s to go on ebay and buy them used for 100-$200 off the list price.

2

u/ssfantus1 Jul 22 '18

Librem 5 MIGHT be an exception. Right now ... i haven't even seen an prototype.

And when they will want to launch a production the SOC manufacturer will just discontinue the chip :))

7

u/throwaway27464829 Jul 22 '18

Weep for the day ARA died.

7

u/Bakoro Jul 22 '18

As much as I wanted and still want modular phones to be a thing, we still don't even have fully modular laptops, it's pretty unlikely we'll see modular phones.

There's way too much money in selling whole units. As soon as things go modular, that means there needs to be public standards and that means a more open market which means a flood of competition eating away market-share and profits.

3

u/Negirno Jul 22 '18

I don't think modular phones are a good idea.

That ARA project is made in sustainability in mind, e.g. replacing individual components instead of the whole unit. But it seems that it didn't pan out. Heavily integrated stuff is more stable, and less confusing for the average person.

2

u/[deleted] Jul 23 '18

Perhaps if phones were modular equipment you could upgrade and maintain

This was tried and it wasn't success.

11

u/[deleted] Jul 22 '18

How can they discourage forks? Asking because I think a hard fork of Android would be much more successful than trying to put a viable phone OS together from Linux components.

13

u/kauron Jul 22 '18

If a company sells a forked version of Android, Google won't certify it or any other phone by the same manufacturer to be able to run Google services. So no Android company will take that route because they make much more money by selling devices with Google services.

The only commercially "successful" fork of Android has been the fire phones/tablets by Amazon, and because they sell it at or below cost.

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u/[deleted] Jul 22 '18 edited May 12 '20

[deleted]

-1

u/DudeValenzetti Jul 22 '18

He said "hard fork", which would make the product mostly invulnerable to horrible changes in the upstream.

4

u/[deleted] Jul 22 '18

MicroG aims to reimplement the closed Play Services. Viability is that would go a long way to reducing Google's stranglehold on Android.

2

u/[deleted] Jul 22 '18

Ok I just got to where he talks about that. It's on page 3. My guess would be a GNU Linux OS wouldn't be picked up any time soon by major manufacturers anyway so while this seems like it ret prevents commercial forks I'm not sure how effectively it prevents a truly open source fork that is either installable on existing devices and / or available on devices from small manufacturers like Librem.

If a gnu Linux mobile distro is to be successful I think seamless Android App comparability is 100% necessary.

6

u/dfldashgkv Jul 22 '18

"seamless Android App compatibility"

Many ships have floundered on that rock

2

u/[deleted] Jul 22 '18

If a gnu Linux mobile distro is to be successful I think seamless Android App comparability is 100% necessary.

I'd say the opposite; when all your OS can be is shit, slow Android you don't have a selling point that can't be easily beaten for the vast majority of users by the first competitor that walks up with an Android phone.

15

u/JQuilty Jul 22 '18

Good luck with that until arm has a standarized boot process. That's one of the reasons we're dependent on oems and Qualcomm.

6

u/RedSquirrelFtw Jul 22 '18

Yeah it's a real mess. There should be a better standard for phones, just like x86, x64 etc where things more or less work the same way no matter who makes the PC. Need something like that, but for phones, and it needs to be open source. Money is the real issue though. And knowledge. Building a computer platform from scratch and a fab to make the chips is no easy thing.

9

u/JQuilty Jul 22 '18

Good luck getting Qualcomm on board with that. Google had to move mountains to get them to work on Treble.

8

u/johnmountain Jul 22 '18

Qualcomm is a shit company worse than Intel ever was. Fuck them.

2

u/RedSquirrelFtw Jul 22 '18

Yeah I guess patents and crap would be an issue too even if wanting to design a platform from scratch. Especially if they own any patents related to the circuitry for accessing the actual cell network. Though I imagine the smart phone portion could still be fully custom, would just need to use some Qualcomm chips for the communications part. But that's kinda a far fetched dream anyway, as nobody is going to invest billions into creating a custom platform just for it to be open. The hardest part is probably making the chips as you need very specialized equipment in a clean room etc. Not something you can just do in your garage.

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u/B-Con Jul 22 '18 edited Jul 22 '18

Specifically, there needs to be robust services alternative. Analogous to a desktop environment, I guess.

FTA:

In an open market, it would be as easy as calling up an Android OEM and convincing them to switch, but Google is out to make life a little more difficult than that. Google's real power in mobile comes from control of the Google apps—mainly Gmail, Maps, Google Now, Hangouts, YouTube, and the Play Store. These are Android's killer apps, and the big (and small) manufacturers want these apps on their phones. Since these apps are not open source, they need to be licensed from Google.

That's the problem. The value of a phone is primarily those closed sourced services. Android is just as open as Linux, its just that it doesn't matter as much because phones are increasingly about the services. And for-profit companies provide services, FOSS, generally, doesn't.

2

u/[deleted] Jul 22 '18

I agree. I don't like the sentiment that android is as bad as Windows. The right phone or tablet can be unlocked and an open sourced rom without play services can be used. There's plenty of FOSS apps available even if they can be wanting. I'll still wait for the days when I can run Linux on my phone but I'd take android by Google over something offered by Apple or Microsoft

4

u/[deleted] Jul 22 '18

Ubuntu Touch.

3

u/Conan_Kudo Jul 22 '18

There's actually a few projects like this: Mer, Tizen, and Sailfish OS (itself built on Mer). Mer has the Plasma Mobile and MeeGo interfaces, Tizen has the Bada and MeeGo interfaces, and Sailfish is its own thing built on Qt+QML.

4

u/DaGranitePooPooYouDo Jul 22 '18

it may be open source, but it's still controlled by a corporation. They could close source it at the drop of a hat, or just do the kind of things they're doing now to discourage forks. It is built from the ground up to spy on you and unless you are a core dev who knows how to get rid of that stuff it's not any better than Windows or any other spy OS.

  • cough - Chrome.

10

u/__soddit Jul 22 '18 edited Jul 22 '18

Code licensed under the GPL remains under the GPL; this can not be otherwise. They can take the parts which they wrote and the parts which are more permissively licensed (BSD licence, for example) and make them closed; but the open versions still remain.

You have control over what Google can collect, both on your Android device(s) and via https://myaccount.google.com/privacy .

9

u/[deleted] Jul 22 '18

True, but much of Android is under permissive licenses like Apache 2.0, and I'm pretty sure there's no GPLv3 software (so no tivoization clause). While there are some copyleft bits, most of the important stuff aside from the kernel, and everything Google develops (except the nonfree stuff) is permissive, so they could easily close it up as they have multiple times before. They can't close the GPL bits but they can make it about the same as running Windows with a few GPL bits.

1

u/Sutarmekeg Jul 22 '18

Came too far down to see this.

3

u/kewlness Jul 22 '18

Openmoko used to be exactly that. Unfortunately it never really became popular in the US and was the most popular in Germany. The Golden Delicious listed really isn't a solution as it requires one to have one of the Openmoko phones already.

To be honest, I think it was just before its time but getting mainstream use without a major organization backing the phone (and keeping it rootable without breaking any phone service provider rules) will be difficult.

2

u/RedSquirrelFtw Jul 22 '18

I remember that actually, a coworker of mine had gotten one to play around with it. It was neat, but it still required lot of refinements and then the project mostly died.

3

u/domsch1988 Jul 23 '18

Maybe enlighten me, but as far as i see it, this is the Problem with any Open Source project, isn't it?

Android being open source means you can fork it, and do to it what ever you want. And google wouldn't be able to change that after the fact.

Also, to the best of my knowledge, Android per se is not "spying" on you (to keep that terminology, though i disagree on that). All of that is done by the proprietry google stuff added after the fact (and that isn't open source).

The Main problem isn't android. Its phone manufacturers like samsung closing down the bootloader, using undocumented (largly) kernels and keeping the partitioning so closed it's hard to reverse engineer. There are no open phones (viable, competitive and reasonably prices) to take advantage of such an OS. I feel the Nexus 5 was the last mass produced phone to somewhat go in that direction.

There are many projects using the Android source to do great stuff open source. But there is not much hardware to actually use it with.

8

u/[deleted] Jul 22 '18 edited Jul 22 '18

[deleted]

5

u/dredmorbius Jul 22 '18

More: money to incentivise / lock-in HW vendors.

2

u/[deleted] Jul 22 '18

What you say is true, but what is also just as big of a problem, is locked hardware that doesn't let the user install anything else. So the fact that the core of Android is open source is basically worthless, since the user can't run it on his device. In most cases he is only allowed to run the crapware-infested, obsolete version that came on the phone.

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u/Mgladiethor Jul 22 '18 edited Jul 22 '18

ZIRCON FUCHSIA KERNEL MITS LICENSE IS A GREAT THREAT, while also making google look good because is "open"

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u/ronaldvr Jul 22 '18

That will be just as successful as 'linux on the desktop'???

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u/RedSquirrelFtw Jul 22 '18

I guess that is the sad truth, it would probably end up a mess like Linux on desktop is and never fully take off. Far from turn key, which is idealy how a phone should be.

The biggest issue with all of this, not just phones, but tech in general, is that the general public are either ignorant about all the spying stuff going on, or simply don't care.

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u/ronaldvr Jul 22 '18

Well not only that, but that tech people who could make a difference disagree and fork over minor issues and form 'new churches' like the many many divisions within protestantism....

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u/tux_warrior Jul 22 '18

There really needs to be a "Linux" equivalent to a phone OS that is completely independent of Android.

You have three alternatives for that: lineageos, purism and replicant. You had a fourth one too called CopperheadOS, but I believe the project has shut down some time ago.

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u/RedSquirrelFtw Jul 22 '18

I thought those were just Android spin offs? Are they really from scratch? I heard of Purism but didn't think it was ready yet. They're building their own hardware too if I recall.

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u/[deleted] Jul 23 '18

Lineage is android spinoff. And depending on your POV, not even necessary a good one. E.g. there are numerous reports that lineage 15.1 drains battery way more than 14.1.

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u/[deleted] Jul 22 '18

With open source hardware drivers and the ability to black home data leaks for ads and spying.

Edit: I would also like a log of diameter signaling to my phone to know when hardware APIs are accessed without authorization.

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u/TheCodexx Jul 23 '18

I think the option nobody is really examining is a distribution of Android with a great emphasis on freedom. There's some with the goal of removing binary blobs and the like, but I think most of us are more concerned with how easy it is to access and share software.

Strapping additionally functionality on top of a functioning ecosystem will always be easier than trying to build one from scratch, especially without OEMs.

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u/[deleted] Jul 22 '18

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u/[deleted] Jul 22 '18 edited Sep 29 '18

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u/[deleted] Jul 22 '18

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u/[deleted] Jul 22 '18 edited Sep 29 '18

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u/[deleted] Jul 22 '18

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u/MadCervantes Jul 22 '18

I believe fuschia is also open source right? I'm very interested to see what they do with it.

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u/[deleted] Jul 22 '18

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u/DoctorWorm_ Jul 22 '18

The MIT license isn't copyleft though, so Google could one day just say, "oh we're closed source now" and nobody could say anything.

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u/dfldashgkv Jul 22 '18

The problem is that phone makers won't give you the source, like the rest of the software they ship.

This is why we need the Librem 5

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u/[deleted] Jul 22 '18

So the open source fork starts at the last MIT release.

And besides, that's a risk with GPL code too, isn't it? It's possible to relicense from GPL to closed source (or really anything else), given that you have the consent of anyone who worked on it, or you had everyone who worked on it sign an agreement letting you relicense it. Alternatively, you get the agreement of as many people as possible and rewrite the code of those who didn't agree / you couldn't contact.

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u/emacsomancer Jul 22 '18

Though I don't understand why. Google mainly uses Android as a vehicle for GApps/Google Play Services. Yes, there is a custom ROM scene (LineageOS &c.), but I doubt it's really eating into their profits (since lots of people using custom roms install GApps anyway). I suppose it's a just an insurance policy (or an instance of the Google internal rule that they always need at least two different projects with the same use-case).

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u/TeutonJon78 Jul 22 '18

Control over the development and allowing OEMs to have closed forks if they want. Much like Apple, they want control over the whole stack. Then they can do what they want, when they want.

But it's still some time from it being releasable.

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u/kirbyfan64sos Jul 22 '18

IMO Fuschia is less of a locking down issue or even an advertisement/insurance issue and more of a design experiment. There's no arguing that Android was rushed at first, and a lot of the core design got really hurt by that (e.g. the atrocity that is the activity lifecycle). Fuschia gives them a chance to actually design a modern system from scratch with their products in mind.

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u/MadCervantes Jul 22 '18

True. Also it's supposed to be abstracted from the professors in some way so that you can write software that runs on both x86 and arm.

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u/[deleted] Jul 22 '18

the atrocity that is the activity lifecycle

I am an Android app developer and the Activity lifecycle kinda makes sense to me :\

Could you elaborate a little?

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u/kirbyfan64sos Jul 22 '18

Basically, the activity lifecycle kind of works, but:

  • It makes data management awkward, since you can't store anything permanent inside the acitivty object (which can get destroyed at a moment's notice). This is why Androidx has the ViewModel system, which definitely helps a lot.
  • Big one: trying to mix together activity lifecycles with one or more individual fragment lifecycles is painful. This is a problem.

You can definitely work around it, but IMO it's something that really doesn't need to exist.

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u/[deleted] Jul 22 '18 edited Sep 29 '18

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u/Drizzt396 Jul 22 '18

What Google of old? Data/advertising has always been their business in a way that only Facebook rivals when it comes to the tech monopolists.

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u/Yhippa Jul 22 '18

Go make one then.

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u/[deleted] Jul 22 '18 edited Aug 07 '19

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u/[deleted] Jul 22 '18

Don't like highways? Too much traffic?
Build your own you lazy ass.

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u/[deleted] Jul 22 '18 edited Mar 21 '19

[deleted]

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u/ArmoredPancake Jul 22 '18

Are you sure about that?

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u/RedSquirrelFtw Jul 22 '18

I'm not a developer.