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More and more Anti-Android propaganda pops up since iOS' market share is nosediving. If Android is not freedom what is iOS then? No inter app communication, no

by apunic 13y ago

More and more Anti-Android propaganda pops up since iOS' market share is nosediving. If Android is not freedom what is iOS then? No inter app communication, no exchangeable launcher/lock screen/ keyboard, real multitasking came just since this fall, no real resolution independency, no nothing.

nine_k 13y ago
Maybe Firefox OS or Tizen fit the bill of a free mobile OS better?
- fidotron 13y ago
  If anything, less so. Firefox OS could be viewed as an incredibly limited subset of Android, and these things promote ever increasing dependence on computing services not in the devices, which more than likely means closed ecosystems in clouds. This is a worse situation than you have on Android today. The freedom problems with Android are more to do with driver support. Until an app development SDK is self hosting it's a bad sign too, but none of the mobile OS candidates has that right now.
  - oscargrouch 13y ago
    Good point. More dependency from cloud applications; more support for closed source; cause clouds are the new way to help corporations to hide their code away Who cares about the layout of a button and some images in a page (as theres little value in this code) if the real brain in applications will be closed behind the clouds?! We need more devices that can run independently, with open source code and preferably in a distributed and autonomous way.. Clouds are anti-hacker and anti-opensource; if a user platform help this trend to grow(as FirefoxOS do), it helps for more closed- source and hidden secrets.. completely against the hacker spirit of collaboration and openess
  - rquirk 13y ago
    I haven't seen a detailed breakdown of the freedom problems with Firefox OS, but it looks to be more or less the same as Android in the cupcake era - really basic core applications and a phone that works, but not much third party stuff. You have to rely on mobile web sites. The biggest difference is that rather than have dalvik-based applications, they are written in javascript. All the core apps are on your device locally, and you can write code that is also stored locally too. Then it promotes the whole "search" part. That seems to be links to websites mixed in with applications, which does seem confusing and doesn't sit well with having data independence. But that's just the same as using web sites on Android. On the positive side, I'd trust Mozilla to maintain their first-party code as free software. The core phone apps are not likely to go proprietary, as seems to be happening on Android.
    - fidotron 13y ago
      The killer cutoff is if it's possible to write server apps for the platform in question. For iOS you can while the app is in the foreground, for Android you can all the time, for Firefox or Chrome OS . . . nope, they are explicitly designed to be clients to something else. That may seem ridiculous, but the hooks are not there in Web APIs to do peer to peer communication for example, let alone peer to peer based on discovery of nearby devices. Chrome OS even lacks zero conf network support. Aside from Mozilla (who seem overly attached to the support of carriers) the people pushing the advancement of the web platform have zero interest in altering this direction, and in fact would prefer we go further in it. I would be far keener on FF OS or Chrome OS if they supported sandboxed node.js on the clients, and worked on extending the API from node.js, not the web browser model.
- briandh 13y ago
  Someone with more knowledge of the situation than me may be able to offer more useful input, but it appears that the terms of the Tizen SDK are troubling from an openness perspective: https://developer.tizen.org/forums/sdk-ide/tizen-sdk-licensing-makes-whole-tizen-not-open-source https://developer.tizen.org/forums/sdk-ide/tizen-sdk-licensi...
caberus 13y ago
i understand you point, and even file manager not exists on iOS, despite is running a modified version of unix, in which almost everything is presented as file or directory... experience of Android is only on Google's Android, this is my point, if you want to have the true Android Experience, than you have to use Google's Android because Google Apps only run on official Android OS
bane 13y ago
you forgot http://source.android.com/ http://source.android.com/
- Justsignedup 13y ago
  Even if it's not the entire android experience. I can still read it, and use it's lessons to write my programs. VS iOS. Yes where is the iOS kernel source code on the internets?
  - bennyg 13y ago
    Obviously it's not, but their documentation is by far the most extensive - even community support amongst devs for the language is higher than Android.
  - vvhn 13y ago
    of all the things, you had to pick the kernel :). the kernel in use for both iOS and OS X is xnu for which the OS X sources are available on opensource. apple.com ( mavericks source at http://opensource.apple.com/source/xnu/xnu-2422.1.72/ http://opensource.apple.com/source/xnu/xnu-2422.1.72/ ). While the iOS version isn't released, it likely to be exactly the same with the only differences being in the ARM architecture specific code. If you would like to make changes and build your own OS X kernel, instructions to do that are at http://shantonu.blogspot.com/2013/10/building-xnu-for-os-x-109-mavericks.html http://shantonu.blogspot.com/2013/10/building-xnu-for-os-x-1...
y0ghur7_xxx 13y ago
> If Android is not freedom what is iOS then? Who cares? The article writes about Android. Just because iOS i even less free does not make Android better.
- Justsignedup 13y ago
  Reasons I pick Android over iOS: - Google does not have a war against rooters. They try to close exploits but any pure google android phone can be rooted with no effort. - Android allows almost ANY application to be installed on non-rooted devices. Exception is applications which require root, which won't function. - Android allows for things like Humble Bundle, which is impossible on iOS. - Android allows me to chose any email client I want with full support of cross-application features. Any browser I want. Any instant messaging program I want. Any chat program I want. Etc. IDK that feels pretty good to me.
oscargrouch 13y ago
iOS are more closed than Android? sure. But at least they dont lie about it; they dont market themselves as open-source heroes.. Is this misleading speech that is at stake here; There's a lot of people buying android devices, thinking they are supporting the open-source movement.. So its better not compare the worst(iOS) with the bad(Android) when it comes to openness; lets compare it to how it should be, according to Android PR; what they are saying and what they are practicing are very distant things; and thats the most pure example of hypocrisy
- trimbo 13y ago
  > they dont market themselves as open-source heroes "We're going to the standards bodies, starting tomorrow, and we're going to make FaceTime an open industry standard" - Steve Jobs, 2010
  - pencilcheck 13y ago
    Open source == standards? Don’t kid me

by apunic 13y ago

nine_k 13y ago

Maybe Firefox OS or Tizen fit the bill of a free mobile OS better?

fidotron 13y ago
If anything, less so. Firefox OS could be viewed as an incredibly limited subset of Android, and these things promote ever increasing dependence on computing services not in the devices, which more than likely means closed ecosystems in clouds. This is a worse situation than you have on Android today. The freedom problems with Android are more to do with driver support. Until an app development SDK is self hosting it's a bad sign too, but none of the mobile OS candidates has that right now.
- oscargrouch 13y ago
  Good point. More dependency from cloud applications; more support for closed source; cause clouds are the new way to help corporations to hide their code away Who cares about the layout of a button and some images in a page (as theres little value in this code) if the real brain in applications will be closed behind the clouds?! We need more devices that can run independently, with open source code and preferably in a distributed and autonomous way.. Clouds are anti-hacker and anti-opensource; if a user platform help this trend to grow(as FirefoxOS do), it helps for more closed- source and hidden secrets.. completely against the hacker spirit of collaboration and openess
- rquirk 13y ago
  I haven't seen a detailed breakdown of the freedom problems with Firefox OS, but it looks to be more or less the same as Android in the cupcake era - really basic core applications and a phone that works, but not much third party stuff. You have to rely on mobile web sites. The biggest difference is that rather than have dalvik-based applications, they are written in javascript. All the core apps are on your device locally, and you can write code that is also stored locally too. Then it promotes the whole "search" part. That seems to be links to websites mixed in with applications, which does seem confusing and doesn't sit well with having data independence. But that's just the same as using web sites on Android. On the positive side, I'd trust Mozilla to maintain their first-party code as free software. The core phone apps are not likely to go proprietary, as seems to be happening on Android.
  - fidotron 13y ago
    The killer cutoff is if it's possible to write server apps for the platform in question. For iOS you can while the app is in the foreground, for Android you can all the time, for Firefox or Chrome OS . . . nope, they are explicitly designed to be clients to something else. That may seem ridiculous, but the hooks are not there in Web APIs to do peer to peer communication for example, let alone peer to peer based on discovery of nearby devices. Chrome OS even lacks zero conf network support. Aside from Mozilla (who seem overly attached to the support of carriers) the people pushing the advancement of the web platform have zero interest in altering this direction, and in fact would prefer we go further in it. I would be far keener on FF OS or Chrome OS if they supported sandboxed node.js on the clients, and worked on extending the API from node.js, not the web browser model.
briandh 13y ago
Someone with more knowledge of the situation than me may be able to offer more useful input, but it appears that the terms of the Tizen SDK are troubling from an openness perspective: https://developer.tizen.org/forums/sdk-ide/tizen-sdk-licensing-makes-whole-tizen-not-open-source https://developer.tizen.org/forums/sdk-ide/tizen-sdk-licensi...

caberus 13y ago

i understand you point, and even file manager not exists on iOS, despite is running a modified version of unix, in which almost everything is presented as file or directory... experience of Android is only on Google's Android, this is my point, if you want to have the true Android Experience, than you have to use Google's Android because Google Apps only run on official Android OS

bane 13y ago

you forgot http://source.android.com/ http://source.android.com/

Justsignedup 13y ago
Even if it's not the entire android experience. I can still read it, and use it's lessons to write my programs. VS iOS. Yes where is the iOS kernel source code on the internets?
- bennyg 13y ago
  Obviously it's not, but their documentation is by far the most extensive - even community support amongst devs for the language is higher than Android.
- vvhn 13y ago
  of all the things, you had to pick the kernel :). the kernel in use for both iOS and OS X is xnu for which the OS X sources are available on opensource. apple.com ( mavericks source at http://opensource.apple.com/source/xnu/xnu-2422.1.72/ http://opensource.apple.com/source/xnu/xnu-2422.1.72/ ). While the iOS version isn't released, it likely to be exactly the same with the only differences being in the ARM architecture specific code. If you would like to make changes and build your own OS X kernel, instructions to do that are at http://shantonu.blogspot.com/2013/10/building-xnu-for-os-x-109-mavericks.html http://shantonu.blogspot.com/2013/10/building-xnu-for-os-x-1...

y0ghur7_xxx 13y ago

> If Android is not freedom what is iOS then? Who cares? The article writes about Android. Just because iOS i even less free does not make Android better.

Justsignedup 13y ago
Reasons I pick Android over iOS: - Google does not have a war against rooters. They try to close exploits but any pure google android phone can be rooted with no effort. - Android allows almost ANY application to be installed on non-rooted devices. Exception is applications which require root, which won't function. - Android allows for things like Humble Bundle, which is impossible on iOS. - Android allows me to chose any email client I want with full support of cross-application features. Any browser I want. Any instant messaging program I want. Any chat program I want. Etc. IDK that feels pretty good to me.

oscargrouch 13y ago

iOS are more closed than Android? sure. But at least they dont lie about it; they dont market themselves as open-source heroes.. Is this misleading speech that is at stake here; There's a lot of people buying android devices, thinking they are supporting the open-source movement.. So its better not compare the worst(iOS) with the bad(Android) when it comes to openness; lets compare it to how it should be, according to Android PR; what they are saying and what they are practicing are very distant things; and thats the most pure example of hypocrisy

trimbo 13y ago
> they dont market themselves as open-source heroes "We're going to the standards bodies, starting tomorrow, and we're going to make FaceTime an open industry standard" - Steve Jobs, 2010
- pencilcheck 13y ago
  Open source == standards? Don’t kid me