5 ms·

We badly need more competition in the OS space. Perhaps Android can become an open standard for application delivery, with commercial vendors and non-profits co

by yholio 6y ago

We badly need more competition in the OS space. Perhaps Android can become an open standard for application delivery, with commercial vendors and non-profits competing in providing runtime environments.

mikhailt 6y ago
Can you expand on what you mean? There are plenty of competition in the OS space, Linux: (Canonical (Ubuntu), IBM (RedHat/Fedora), System76 (Pop!_OS)), MS, Apple, Google, and so on. How would using Android or AOSP (open) as the platform to run apps on many platforms better than using Electron with the web as the backend, which, despite all of the negativity going around for it, is likely to be more free/open and integrated with the OS than Android runtime would be?
- pjmlp 6y ago
  Linux distribution wars as replacement to UNIX wars is not competition. Just sand of the same bag with distinct flavours, as we say back home.
- yholio 6y ago
  Monstrosities such as Electron ar the simptom of the problem, not it's solution. Competition in this context means that the end user is free to select any device from any manufacturer, and can expect his applications to run roughly in the same way and with similar performance on comparable hardware, without repurchasing them, without getting locked to a proprietary application store that takes a pound of flesh from the developers etc. The competition between walled gardens, ex. Apple vs. Android, is not conducive to a consumer friendly outcome, see for example the Windows vs. everybody else competition of the previous era. A single proprietary platform will gain a critical mass and people will orient themselves naturally to the system that can run their applications. An Android subsystem running on Windows has the chance to be exceptionally close to the hardware and provide a near native experience.
  - tonyedgecombe 6y ago
    Competition in this context means that the end user is free to select any device from any manufacturer, and can expect his applications to run roughly in the same way and with similar performance on comparable hardware, without repurchasing them, without getting locked to a proprietary application store that takes a pound of flesh from the developers etc. That would require the operating systems to become a commodity with little to distinguish between them. There is no way any of the OS developers is going to allow that to happen.
- riskable 6y ago
  Electron isn't the answer. It's just a decent (if exceptionally bloated) solution to the problem that Microsoft intentionally created by making it so much of a pain in the ass to make truly cross platform apps. Other, better solutions will be popularized soon enough. My money's on some of the promising new Rust GUI frameworks. Because even if they're limited in functionality at first their foundation is just too good to ignore.
  - shawnz 6y ago
    Why can't Electron be the answer? I am of the opinion that WebKit/HTML5 are the most advanced, flexible, accessible UI toolkits we've ever created. I don't think some small Rust project will be able to upset that massive undertaking which has been decades in the making. Consider also that Electron can be improved and made more efficient.
    - yholio 6y ago
      Electron is not merely a HTML5 renderer for GUIs, though; it's a whole OS abstraction layer that translates native paradigms to a platform independent format that can be scripted. An Android subsystem would be exactly that, and more, with near native performance, a shared runtime etc. And yes, even HTML5 applications that Android supports. And it would be more than just a hack. Microsoft will have all the incentives to make it run properly, since it gives them access to a whole world of non-WinOS applications that their users will become dependent on.
  - jodrellblank 6y ago
    > "the problem that Microsoft intentionally created by making it so much of a pain in the ass to make truly cross platform apps." ? Unix shell scripts were a pain in the ass to make cross-platform compatible between the big Unix vendors, before Windows ever existed.
    - Gibbon1 6y ago
      Problem I've encountered with building Unix projects on windows is symlinks. Either the build process creates them or worse they'll part of the project itself. Which is really not nice.
criddell 6y ago
I kind of hope that Microsoft buys Android from Google. Last summer John Gruber wrote [1] that he feels that Google has lost interest with Android and I think he might be right. When Google announced they would start charging for photos storage I think it signaled that maybe user data isn't as valuable as it once was. If that's correct, then maybe Android isn't as important as it once was. Maybe it's time to find better owners for the OS. [1]: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2020/06/25/wong-ios-14-android https://daringfireball.net/linked/2020/06/25/wong-ios-14-and...
- Andrex 6y ago
  John Gruber is the last one I would turn to for an opinion on Google and their outlook, personally. Edit- To be clear, your opinion is that Google seeking to diversify revenue streams translates into them being bad stewards for Android? Is Android only valuable for user data? I don't think so.
- threeseed 6y ago
  Google will never sell Android. Strategically it's vital for them to have at least some control over the dominant platform on which their users interact with them. It's kind of like asking them to abandon Chrome.
  - tonyedgecombe 6y ago
    It's all about money. I wonder just how much money Android generates for them. I wouldn't be surprised to hear they make more from iOS users.
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      > It's all about money. Yes, but not about making money directly from it, but in denying any other plaftform maker an effective monopoly. Chrome was that for the desktop browser space before it actually became dominant; ChromeOS is an attempt at that for desktop OS; Android is that for mobile.
    - yholio 6y ago
riskable 6y ago
Let's have a thought experiment: Tomorrow the government passes a law that outlaws the sale of Windows or any Microsoft alternative OS starting 1 year from now. This law is absolute and cannot be undone before the deadline. What do you think would happen? Would the world just stop buying new computers? Would Windows programmers just give up and become say, blacksmiths? Hell no! What would happen is the world would move on from Windows and the world would be a better place for it. I suspect that dozens of alternative OSes would pop up (many based on Linux) and we'd start to get some real competition in the consumer space. Something that's been desperately needed for like two decades now. It would be like a gold rush as developers, big companies, and startups in seemingly limitless number arise to fill every "gap" in the market that opened up.
- robertlagrant 6y ago
  Seems a pointless thought experiment. If governments banned ARM and Intel chips then there'd also be lots of new companies. So what?
- jodrellblank 6y ago
  > "What do you think would happen?" Microsoft would sell something else (e.g. Office365, or hardware) and give free Windows licenses with it, or sell them via a different government (international sales), or lobby so the law gets undone 1 minute after the deadline, or some other loophole. > "Hell no! What would happen is the world would move on from Windows and the world would be a better place for it." Linux users can't make Linux desirable, so they want authority to ban the competition. So much for "freedom". > "Something that's been desperately needed for like two decades now." People weren't interested enough in buying BeOS, and Linux organisations can't even give it away for free. What evidence of "desperate need" are you seeing?

by yholio 6y ago

mikhailt 6y ago

Can you expand on what you mean? There are plenty of competition in the OS space, Linux: (Canonical (Ubuntu), IBM (RedHat/Fedora), System76 (Pop!_OS)), MS, Apple, Google, and so on. How would using Android or AOSP (open) as the platform to run apps on many platforms better than using Electron with the web as the backend, which, despite all of the negativity going around for it, is likely to be more free/open and integrated with the OS than Android runtime would be?

pjmlp 6y ago
Linux distribution wars as replacement to UNIX wars is not competition. Just sand of the same bag with distinct flavours, as we say back home.
yholio 6y ago
Monstrosities such as Electron ar the simptom of the problem, not it's solution. Competition in this context means that the end user is free to select any device from any manufacturer, and can expect his applications to run roughly in the same way and with similar performance on comparable hardware, without repurchasing them, without getting locked to a proprietary application store that takes a pound of flesh from the developers etc. The competition between walled gardens, ex. Apple vs. Android, is not conducive to a consumer friendly outcome, see for example the Windows vs. everybody else competition of the previous era. A single proprietary platform will gain a critical mass and people will orient themselves naturally to the system that can run their applications. An Android subsystem running on Windows has the chance to be exceptionally close to the hardware and provide a near native experience.
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  Competition in this context means that the end user is free to select any device from any manufacturer, and can expect his applications to run roughly in the same way and with similar performance on comparable hardware, without repurchasing them, without getting locked to a proprietary application store that takes a pound of flesh from the developers etc. That would require the operating systems to become a commodity with little to distinguish between them. There is no way any of the OS developers is going to allow that to happen.
riskable 6y ago
Electron isn't the answer. It's just a decent (if exceptionally bloated) solution to the problem that Microsoft intentionally created by making it so much of a pain in the ass to make truly cross platform apps. Other, better solutions will be popularized soon enough. My money's on some of the promising new Rust GUI frameworks. Because even if they're limited in functionality at first their foundation is just too good to ignore.
- shawnz 6y ago
  Why can't Electron be the answer? I am of the opinion that WebKit/HTML5 are the most advanced, flexible, accessible UI toolkits we've ever created. I don't think some small Rust project will be able to upset that massive undertaking which has been decades in the making. Consider also that Electron can be improved and made more efficient.
  - yholio 6y ago
    Electron is not merely a HTML5 renderer for GUIs, though; it's a whole OS abstraction layer that translates native paradigms to a platform independent format that can be scripted. An Android subsystem would be exactly that, and more, with near native performance, a shared runtime etc. And yes, even HTML5 applications that Android supports. And it would be more than just a hack. Microsoft will have all the incentives to make it run properly, since it gives them access to a whole world of non-WinOS applications that their users will become dependent on.
- jodrellblank 6y ago
  > "the problem that Microsoft intentionally created by making it so much of a pain in the ass to make truly cross platform apps." ? Unix shell scripts were a pain in the ass to make cross-platform compatible between the big Unix vendors, before Windows ever existed.
  - Gibbon1 6y ago
    Problem I've encountered with building Unix projects on windows is symlinks. Either the build process creates them or worse they'll part of the project itself. Which is really not nice.

criddell 6y ago

I kind of hope that Microsoft buys Android from Google. Last summer John Gruber wrote [1] that he feels that Google has lost interest with Android and I think he might be right. When Google announced they would start charging for photos storage I think it signaled that maybe user data isn't as valuable as it once was. If that's correct, then maybe Android isn't as important as it once was. Maybe it's time to find better owners for the OS. [1]: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2020/06/25/wong-ios-14-android https://daringfireball.net/linked/2020/06/25/wong-ios-14-and...

Andrex 6y ago
John Gruber is the last one I would turn to for an opinion on Google and their outlook, personally. Edit- To be clear, your opinion is that Google seeking to diversify revenue streams translates into them being bad stewards for Android? Is Android only valuable for user data? I don't think so.
threeseed 6y ago
Google will never sell Android. Strategically it's vital for them to have at least some control over the dominant platform on which their users interact with them. It's kind of like asking them to abandon Chrome.
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  It's all about money. I wonder just how much money Android generates for them. I wouldn't be surprised to hear they make more from iOS users.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > It's all about money. Yes, but not about making money directly from it, but in denying any other plaftform maker an effective monopoly. Chrome was that for the desktop browser space before it actually became dominant; ChromeOS is an attempt at that for desktop OS; Android is that for mobile.
  - yholio 6y ago

riskable 6y ago

Let's have a thought experiment: Tomorrow the government passes a law that outlaws the sale of Windows or any Microsoft alternative OS starting 1 year from now. This law is absolute and cannot be undone before the deadline. What do you think would happen? Would the world just stop buying new computers? Would Windows programmers just give up and become say, blacksmiths? Hell no! What would happen is the world would move on from Windows and the world would be a better place for it. I suspect that dozens of alternative OSes would pop up (many based on Linux) and we'd start to get some real competition in the consumer space. Something that's been desperately needed for like two decades now. It would be like a gold rush as developers, big companies, and startups in seemingly limitless number arise to fill every "gap" in the market that opened up.

robertlagrant 6y ago
Seems a pointless thought experiment. If governments banned ARM and Intel chips then there'd also be lots of new companies. So what?
jodrellblank 6y ago
> "What do you think would happen?" Microsoft would sell something else (e.g. Office365, or hardware) and give free Windows licenses with it, or sell them via a different government (international sales), or lobby so the law gets undone 1 minute after the deadline, or some other loophole. > "Hell no! What would happen is the world would move on from Windows and the world would be a better place for it." Linux users can't make Linux desirable, so they want authority to ban the competition. So much for "freedom". > "Something that's been desperately needed for like two decades now." People weren't interested enough in buying BeOS, and Linux organisations can't even give it away for free. What evidence of "desperate need" are you seeing?