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> Respectfully, I think this is the wrong fight. Respectfully, no. There are no mainstream OS alternatives. You're standing up to fight for 0.000001% of users
by echelon 6mo ago
> Respectfully, I think this is the wrong fight.
Respectfully, no.
There are no mainstream OS alternatives. You're standing up to fight for 0.000001% of users and leaving everyone else stuck.
Fighting to win our phones back is fighting for the 99.99999%.
These devices are the most important part of everyone's digital world. Certainly the non-technical folks. You can't even order food at restaurants anymore without them. You can't date or socialize as a young person without one. It's becoming your state-issued ID. It's everything.
And two companies control everything you do.
They need to be stripped of all of their power to constrain these devices. Once you buy the device, it's yours.
These belong to society. Not the two giant monopolies that won a battle decades ago and forever get to sit atop their pile of gold like dragons. They should never be able to dictate the world downstream, and certainly not with the authority they have today.
Web installs. No scare walls. No hidden menu settings. First class distribution and support for web sans app store. No ability for these companies to strong arm.
They're taxing all of human innovation. Any time you want to reach someone, they stand in the way. They ask for 30%, they mandate the tech, the updates, they divorce you from choosing payments, login, your ability to talk to your customer.
As a consumer this means new tech companies can't start and grow big and fight the incumbents. The incumbents can move anywhere and dump on it. They can put a ceiling on outside innovation and copy or acquire it on the cheap.
All of tech is becoming a lock and shackle authoritarian regime with permanently fixed leaders, ossified tech, and banana republic fleecing of everything new. This is bad for consumers and freedom and innovation.
Respectfully - no. You're wrong. These companies need to be slapped hard by every regulatory body in the world.
They shouldn't have freedom. They should have responsibility they're fearful of. And they should have competition.
Competition is good. Capitalism should be hard. Apple and Google should be sweating, not coasting. This should be a responsibility, not a fish in barrel situation.
- palata 6mo agoI feel like you missed my point. I am fighting for the 100% (and you are not, as you say). We should all own our devices, and owning a device means that we can install whatever OS we want on it. The beauty of it being that if you can install whatever OS you want on it, then the problem raised by the article does not exist anymore. Today, if you own a Pixel, you can just install GrapheneOS and it will mostly work. Why just "mostly"? Not because of GrapheneOS. Because of some goddamn companies (usually banks) who want to lock you into the Google flavour of Android. If you own another device, maybe you could install LineageOS or /e/OS, but chances are that you won't be able to relock the bootloader, so you will lose the security model of Android. For many people, this should mean that it's not a reasonable option. But that's not LineageOS' or /e/OS' fault: it's the manufacturer's fault: they are locking you into the Google flavour of Android (which many times also means their own flavour based on top of the Google flavour). And on many other devices, you just cannot install an alternative OS at all, so you are stuck with the Stock OS. You are essentially saying "it is fine that 99.99999% of the people are locked into their manufacturer flavour of Android, as long as we can keep using F-Droid" (because really, the changed discussed here mostly affects F-Droid, and it would be debatable whether or not F-Droid's design is fine or not). I disagree, it is not fine. When we buy an Android device, we should be able to install an alternative OS, period. All of us.
- busssard 6mo agowell if in the 10year future new OS are as easy installed as apps now, maybe. But that future is far off. Getting my grandma to install NewPipe is easier if Fdroid works on her phone, than to get her to install the new totallyFLOSS-OS
- palata 6mo agoHave you tried installing GrapheneOS? I don't think it's harder than properly installing F-Droid and then installing NewPipe with it. > the new totallyFLOSS-OS Nobody said it has to be new and totally FLOSS. Just build on top of AOSP, which is open source and very mature, and that everybody knows (because it is Android :-) ).
- fsflover 6mo agoInstalling my OS as an app on top a spying [0] Google/Apple walled garden? No, thanks. Only bare-metal installation makes sense for the freedom of computing. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26639261 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26639261
- echelon 6mo ago> When we buy an Android device, we should be able to install an alternative OS That's not freedom for the world. That's freedom for you and ten people. The bigger thing to fight for is removing Apple and Android's power over what happens post-sale. And that can include your demand, but it also includes a whole hell of a lot more about vanilla/stock Android/iOS.
- palata 6mo agoOnly because you don't know what those alternatives are. I can take a random person in the street, show them my /e/OS or GrapheneOS phone and ask them what it is running. They will 100% say Android. I can ask them to use it for 10min (write messages, open the browser, swipe TikTok) and they will never realise that it is not running "the Android signed by Google". It is so, so close to the Android signed by Google that it's not worth "improving" the Android signed by Google! If you want to remove the power of Google over Android, just use one of those alternatives and the problem is solved. The pain points with those alternatives are what we need to fight. And really it's just a few small things that need to be regulated.