5 ms·

Not a fan to drop maintenance on the community. Pass a law that taxes Google punitively for each app sale on an unmaintained phone, and see how quiclky they'll

by pyrale 5y ago

Not a fan to drop maintenance on the community. Pass a law that taxes Google punitively for each app sale on an unmaintained phone, and see how quiclky they'll find a way to support their phones.

thayne 5y ago
> will be required to unlock bootloaders and publish technical specs is probably sufficient motivation. There's no way Apple would be willing to do that. Google might be, but they might have a lot of resistance from Qualcomm and possibly mobile carriers and other partners.
- pyrale 5y ago
  That is imo a bad fix, because it would be very easy for Google and Apple to make sure the technical specs are unreadable and the bootloaders complicated to use, without much recourse for the lawmaker. Comparatively, it's much easier to make a law targeting the stores that's hard to avoid.
  - thayne 5y ago
    As has been mentioned in other comments that is also easy to avoid by simply making it impossible to download apps on older phones.
    - pyrale 5y ago
      Yes, indeed. But that is a massive footgun to use, and it creates a direct incentive to have longer service durations. It is likely that Google would stand to make more money by offering longer service duration for their OS, and by demanding phonemakers to maintain their firmware. I guess the info we need to see whether this would be a good decision or not is how much money Google makes from selling apps to phones 3 year and older.
bmicraft 5y ago
This actually sounds like a workable solution, the first one I've seen so far that could really solve the issue
withinboredom 5y ago
Or magically find a way to stop tracking that metric.
- pyrale 5y ago
  I'm sure that, was such a law allowed to pass, lawmakers and prosecutors would magically find a way to express their dissatisfaction if Google was trying to skirt the law in such a crude way. My bet would be on Google successfully lobbying to kill the bill in the first place, or to cripple it and make it irrelevant (for instance with a long grace period that always gets extended).
  - solarkraft 5y ago
    > lawmakers and prosecutors would magically find a way to express their dissatisfaction if Google was trying to skirt the law in such a crude way. Depends on what the law makers actually want. Enough legislation is passed just do they can tell their voters "look, we did something" without actually hurting their corporate buddies.
b112 5y ago
Not a fan to drop maintenance on the community. As long as there is also a minimum support window, say 3+ years, and full specs and source are community released, then why not? The important part could easily be ensuring that older hardware can be accessed. We need an end to binary blobs, or, to force long term blob support and updates. I imagine a scenario where you pay $20 per year for support and updates for your old device, to a third party. Or of course, there could be foundations, compile it yourself, etc too. But if the environment is the reason, why not share the load? Manufacturers publishing code, sources, and docs is not trivial in of itself.
- pyrale 5y ago
  I'm not a fan of it, because that basically means that Google asks the community to take up the bill for a service they sell at extraordinarily high price. I know that's the case for lots of open-source software, but since we're coming to that topic, Google's open-source policy that produces software that is either tightly aligned with their own interest (Chrome) or barely usable without their proprietary ecosystem (Android) is shameful. Quite frankly, I would much rather see open-source communities work on linux phones, no matter how useless that may be. Another reason I'm not a fan of it is that if Google is allowed to transfer their responsibility to a community, I'm willing to bet that their initial support duration will drop even more, and that any issue will be blamed on open-source maintainers, log4j-style. > But if the environment is the reason, why not share the load? Does Google share the profits? Is their Android business barely profitable to justify getting free labour?
  - b112 5y ago
    I think we are aligned, but, my thought is... we can only push and wish for so much. Forcing 3+ year support in law, plus forced code release at the end, gives a massive change, and some important bits. It is part 1. Also, my 3 years support is after last sale... not release date.
  - ipaddr 5y ago
    Empower the community is not a bad idea.
justinclift 5y ago
> Pass a law that taxes Google punitively for each app sale on an unmaintained phone, and see how quiclky they'll find a way to support their phones. Wouldn't the result of that, be that phones that get anywhere even close to being unmaintained would stop dead (or close to it), so Google doesn't get exposed to a problem? To me, that doesn't sound better than the situation you're trying to fix.
- pyrale 5y ago
  Selling apps to the long tail of older phones is probably worth throwing some money in a maintenance team. Especially with phones having a 3 year shelf life.
Iolaum 5y ago
Depends. Given the number of devices in circulation someone will figure out how to make money if we remove the obstacles for doing so.
pabs3 5y ago
They will just prevent the Google app store from working on unmaintained phones, or just ship one last update to remove it from them.
- pyrale 5y ago
  That would cut their market size and attractiveness to new buyers. If they choose to harm themselves, that's fine by me.

by pyrale 5y ago

Not a fan to drop maintenance on the community. Pass a law that taxes Google punitively for each app sale on an unmaintained phone, and see how quiclky they'll find a way to support their phones.

thayne 5y ago

> will be required to unlock bootloaders and publish technical specs is probably sufficient motivation. There's no way Apple would be willing to do that. Google might be, but they might have a lot of resistance from Qualcomm and possibly mobile carriers and other partners.

pyrale 5y ago
That is imo a bad fix, because it would be very easy for Google and Apple to make sure the technical specs are unreadable and the bootloaders complicated to use, without much recourse for the lawmaker. Comparatively, it's much easier to make a law targeting the stores that's hard to avoid.
- thayne 5y ago
  As has been mentioned in other comments that is also easy to avoid by simply making it impossible to download apps on older phones.
  - pyrale 5y ago
    Yes, indeed. But that is a massive footgun to use, and it creates a direct incentive to have longer service durations. It is likely that Google would stand to make more money by offering longer service duration for their OS, and by demanding phonemakers to maintain their firmware. I guess the info we need to see whether this would be a good decision or not is how much money Google makes from selling apps to phones 3 year and older.

bmicraft 5y ago

This actually sounds like a workable solution, the first one I've seen so far that could really solve the issue

withinboredom 5y ago

Or magically find a way to stop tracking that metric.

pyrale 5y ago
I'm sure that, was such a law allowed to pass, lawmakers and prosecutors would magically find a way to express their dissatisfaction if Google was trying to skirt the law in such a crude way. My bet would be on Google successfully lobbying to kill the bill in the first place, or to cripple it and make it irrelevant (for instance with a long grace period that always gets extended).
- solarkraft 5y ago
  > lawmakers and prosecutors would magically find a way to express their dissatisfaction if Google was trying to skirt the law in such a crude way. Depends on what the law makers actually want. Enough legislation is passed just do they can tell their voters "look, we did something" without actually hurting their corporate buddies.

b112 5y ago

Not a fan to drop maintenance on the community. As long as there is also a minimum support window, say 3+ years, and full specs and source are community released, then why not? The important part could easily be ensuring that older hardware can be accessed. We need an end to binary blobs, or, to force long term blob support and updates. I imagine a scenario where you pay $20 per year for support and updates for your old device, to a third party. Or of course, there could be foundations, compile it yourself, etc too. But if the environment is the reason, why not share the load? Manufacturers publishing code, sources, and docs is not trivial in of itself.

pyrale 5y ago
I'm not a fan of it, because that basically means that Google asks the community to take up the bill for a service they sell at extraordinarily high price. I know that's the case for lots of open-source software, but since we're coming to that topic, Google's open-source policy that produces software that is either tightly aligned with their own interest (Chrome) or barely usable without their proprietary ecosystem (Android) is shameful. Quite frankly, I would much rather see open-source communities work on linux phones, no matter how useless that may be. Another reason I'm not a fan of it is that if Google is allowed to transfer their responsibility to a community, I'm willing to bet that their initial support duration will drop even more, and that any issue will be blamed on open-source maintainers, log4j-style. > But if the environment is the reason, why not share the load? Does Google share the profits? Is their Android business barely profitable to justify getting free labour?
- b112 5y ago
  I think we are aligned, but, my thought is... we can only push and wish for so much. Forcing 3+ year support in law, plus forced code release at the end, gives a massive change, and some important bits. It is part 1. Also, my 3 years support is after last sale... not release date.
- ipaddr 5y ago
  Empower the community is not a bad idea.

justinclift 5y ago

> Pass a law that taxes Google punitively for each app sale on an unmaintained phone, and see how quiclky they'll find a way to support their phones. Wouldn't the result of that, be that phones that get anywhere even close to being unmaintained would stop dead (or close to it), so Google doesn't get exposed to a problem? To me, that doesn't sound better than the situation you're trying to fix.

pyrale 5y ago
Selling apps to the long tail of older phones is probably worth throwing some money in a maintenance team. Especially with phones having a 3 year shelf life.

Iolaum 5y ago

Depends. Given the number of devices in circulation someone will figure out how to make money if we remove the obstacles for doing so.

pabs3 5y ago

They will just prevent the Google app store from working on unmaintained phones, or just ship one last update to remove it from them.

pyrale 5y ago
That would cut their market size and attractiveness to new buyers. If they choose to harm themselves, that's fine by me.