Technology has a ratchet effect at scale - as a solution becomes widely adopted, it switches from being a convenience to being a necessity, because people start building more stuff on top of it. It's as true of to-the-minute accurate clocks as it is of smartphone banking.

You can still run a version of Word from 2004. It's fine, if all you need is to write some thoughts down for yourself. But the moment you need to collaborate with other people via a Word document, you'll find it difficult without the modern version with all its user-hostile aspects - and more importantly, other people will find you difficult to work with.

Same applies to other software, web and smartphones, and to everything else in life - the further you deviate from the mainstream, the costlier it is for you. Deviate too much, and you just become a social outcast.

> Feel free to complain, but don't forget you can make choices.

Of course. I can make a choice. When the choice is between being able to login to secure services with my SIM embedded e-signature, use mobile banking and conduct official business and not being able to do any of these things, making choices are easy.

Running Linux on desktop is easy mode when compared to phones, and yes, I started using Linux on desktop in 1999 too with SuSE 6.0. Phones are way more interconnected and central to our lives now when compared to a general purpose computer running your $FAVORITE_OS.

> Feel free to complain, but don't forget you can make choices.

Except, this not really a choice or a reasonable work around.

Phones are still somewhat expensive, not to mention a time-sink to maintain. Try explaining to your parents or even close relatives that they need to abandon the phone they either spent $$$($) on our spend a $$ monthly on that they should really buy another $$$($) phone and use their "official" device like a company card.

> Back in '99 Linux didn't run Excel/Word/Powerpoint or most games, but I ran it anyway. What others call showstoppers are for me inconveniences.

It didn't ran on computer of people that wanted Excel/Word/Powerpoint or most games. I don't think the market of people wanting to use their phone only as a server is big enough for a competitive OS to arise, but I may be mistaken

I have a lot of use cases for general purpose computers. If I am operating an event, "inconveniences" are literal showstoppers. When I'm running sound at a performance, switching audio inputs needs to work instantly and with essentially perfect reliability.

Another use case which Linux has a lot of trouble with is operating as a replacement for a pen-and-paper notepad. When I set a computer down for a day, I should be able to turn it on instantly and see the notes that I wrote 3 weeks ago. There are a variety of reasons this doesn't work on Linux. You say "that's an inconvenience" but there are circumstances in which being able to read those notes without needing to wait 30 minutes for the laptop to get enough charge and boot up could be a matter of life or death.

If these kinds of issues are mere inconveniences, that means the computer is a toy rather than a tool.

> I'll keep another phone for the rare times some corporate/government overlord requires it.

Not having to do that is the whole point (especially as those are not rare to most of us).

This reminds me of a Woz interview in the early days of the iphone, and his solution to it not supporting multitask was also to run two phones.

> Back in '99 Linux didn't run Excel/Word/Powerpoint

It still doesn't btw.

What's an inconvenience for you is a no-go for many others. I'm willing to put up with certain things... others aren't.

You can't buy a new less than $400 that can be google free.

Bingo, this right here. Linux desktop wasn’t a daily driver until one day it was.

Although the only problem with this strategy is that Linux got that way because of a lot of private companies that actually wanted that. Valve didn’t want to be locked in with Microsoft. Many of Microsoft’s direct competitors also don’t want to be locked in. IBM famously switched to Mac, Google has been using Mac and Linux workstations for a long time as well.

Also, web technologies like Electron made porting applications to small user bases Linux easier. If that never happened, I wouldn’t be able to use my commercial apps on Linux. This concept might be a little more of a challenge for the mobile app ecosystem, which is a mix of native wrappers like react native and native apps, and there is a high amount of dependency on native APIs for the extra sensors and hardware features phones have the laptops and desktops don’t have.

E.g., For Linux on mobile to work react native can’t be an incomplete implementation like the status quo.

How about you don't forget about the majority of users out there who are unable to do the techy thing to circumvent technical issues?

It is a constant trope in technical forums.

We are a minority. Solutions which might be "inconveniences" for you, might be unsolvable issues for the rest of the planet.

Communication is the main issue - If you've got whatsapp/telegram/whatever,and a couple others you can handle your own life differently without human interaction being affected.

The rest is a personal choice, I'm happy to have a bit higher friction to check my bank's balance for example. Maps is an issue but it can be overcome.

I've not managed to read all the comments in this post, so apologies if I'm repeating other people, I also have only a passing understanding of how Google Play works, but couldn't we have:

Linux based phone, running Anbox to support Android apps running within containers. Effort would then have to put into support Play APIs within Anbox. Not a small amount of work, but I compare it to the state of Linux 20 years ago and how well Linux is doing today.

So what. Enough of us do that it just might be feasible.

I've used Linux for a loong time before some business-critical software ran on it. I had to have a Windows VM for years for netbanking, or before that, dual-boot for gaming.

If we're all too spoiled to give a free alternative a chance because it might be slightly inconvenient, we don't deserve the free alternative.

Websites as platform can't solve a problem that's social in nature - that it's allowed and accepted for organizations to have such excessive, invasive levels of control.

The parties I accuse of driving this problem didn't suddenly go rogue when smartphones happened. They always wanted this level of control (and much more) - they just couldn't get it until relevant technologies matured enough.

I'm not speculating here - we have actual empirical evidence to confirm this. A clear example is that there are several countries that, unlike the US and most of Europe, went all-in on Internet banking back before smartphones. Web limitations and conventions didn't stop them from doing the same thing everyone is doing with the phones now - the banks there just force customers to install malware on their computers, so they can do some remote attestation and KYC (and totally no marketing data collection) on their PCs.

Most of the West never had this because of the inverse of leapfrogging phenomenon - big, developed economies had too fast progress and at the same time too much inertia to fully adopt a pre-smartphone solution nation-wide.

This works only as long as the webapp allows you to log in using a username/password and/or 2FA which is not tied to a smartphone app. More and more countries are moving to digital identity solutions, and while many of them offer hardware tokens as alternatives to apps, the future looks like one where smartphone apps will be only option.

They're working hard on shutting that down as well with Passkeys. It's only a matter of time until the only way to log in will be through de-facto proprietary apps.

But, it doesn't. The browser is unsupported for many of the above-mentioned applications.

Being a web app doesn’t mean shit. We already have DRM encrypted web content where the consuming device requires some attestation to decode. I.e. Widevine.

Yes, some banking apps work on Waydroid.

> I can choose to use a bank that allows me to access all of their online banking features via the browser.

Lucky you. There are fewer and fewer such banks out there. The trend is to route login and consequential interactions on the web through 2FA on a phone - and not TOTP, but push notifications sent to the bank's app, that only runs on devices that pass remote attestation checks.

> I can choose to work for a company that doesn't want to surveil my personal device.

Again, lucky you. Most people don't really get many options for employment at any given moment, and the issue of corporate phones is usually at the bottom of the list of criteria when one is looking for a job. I.e. not a real choice for most people.

> I can deal with the government via snail mail

At a snail pace.

> or in the browser.

Modern government systems around the world tend to require some sort of identification that usually gets tied to your smartphone, either directly or via your bank.

> I can use third-party YouTube clients and torrent movies and games, or simply don't engage with DRM'd media because there's plenty of entertainment out there.

Torrents aside, that's not the case. Entertainment isn't fungible. Disney can release all Star Wars media DRM-free for everyone to download, and it means exactly zero to someone who wants to watch Star Trek, but Paramount/CBS decided to go all Ferengi on the franchise. Can't substitute one for the other. This is why the market supports so many streaming services these days - they exploit this very fact.

> Count the percentage of software you use that are open-source compared to 10 years ago. I bet it's more.

Open Source software stopped mattering once the world embraced Software as a Service model. Source code on Github means nothing if the code is actually executed on servers you don't control and have no visibility into.

That covers end-user OSS. The larger space of OSS building blocks are... building blocks. OSS libraries matter to users just as much as standard Phillips screws used inside an appliance, when they're beneath layers of glue and permanently soldered elements and join together elements explicitly labeled as "not end-user servicable".

> It's only a matter of time before we make hardware open-source, too.

That time will come around when we build a Star Trek-style replicator (and then have a successful revolution to seize this new means to production, because no way the first company to build an universal manufacturing device is going to just let people use it). Open Source Software succeeded only because software development has near-zero natural barrier to entry, so there was a large supply of bored high-schoolers and students, hobbyists, academics and other do-gooders with enough time and will to just build stuff and give it away for free. This isn't true for hardware.

Now, circling back to the main point:

> Whether we can move to open platforms depends on the choices people make.

No, it does not. On consumer side, the market is driven by supply, not demand. I.e. you only get to choose from what the vendors decide to make available to you, and they know perfectly well you have to choose something, so your voice doesn't matter.

If it did, we wouldn't be having this whole thread in the first place.

I think this is true for other European governments. The UK is has introduced age verification (although not mandated an app) and is pushing for digital ID. If digital ID meets too much pushback plan B is a boiled frog approach by introducing it for children first (the legislation for that is in its final stages).

Governments say they want sovereignty but not if they have to pay anything for it. They also like the fact that forcing everyone to do everything through a few big businesses makes surveillance and censorship easy. No need to pass laws, just do deals with a few companies. Governments are all about central control, and its more important to them than what they see as obsolete nonsense about sovereignty.

Your post made me contemplate how other entities want to be able to attest themselves (in your case the government wants to be able to verify the identity of its citizens). Moral and legal arguments aside, the way they are going about it is a bit sloppy in that they are banking their sovereignty on a third party instead of taking the reins themselves.

Instead of mandating google/apple signed applications, they could instead implement some specification for a secure enclave (or whatever fits their needs - I doubt they need control over the entire OS meaning there is plenty of space for pushback for people that want to retain their rights and freedoms for their devices). If you add some sort of certification based on an open standard that would allow any manufacturer interested in the market to be verified that the "attestation" for specific apps or secrets works, then it would no longer enshrine the current winners (apple/google) and instead allow for a healthier market.

This would only be a good thing because it places power with the government and not a third party (something surely the government would prefer), and allows things to be more in the open.

And in an ideal world the specific locked down portion would not need to be active or interfere with the rest of the operating system to some extent, so people would not be reliant on the manufacturers for their applications and would have the freedom of installing whatever they want and using the rest of their device however they wish.

Maybe the answer is to put whatever the banks etc need on something like a smartwatch. Smartwatch + phone is better than two phones IMHO and they're so tedious to use/install anything on that it reduces the attack surface for hackers etc. Tap to pay or digital signatures or identity, passkeys etc via a smartwatch interaction seems like a good use case. Sort of a souped up yubikey. I don't know how good biometrics is on watches nowadays but my Pixel phone has some sort of camera behind the screen to read fingerprints so I can't imagine its impossible. Even adding a capacitive pad on a band seems plausible. Who knows, I don't feel like biometrics have been a real focus of design in the smartwatches I've used.

Personally, I have found smartwatches fairly useless (I do enjoy the activity tracking and notifications but that's not much really) so freeing my phone from bullshit by moving some functions to a watch could increase the value/utility of a some sort of smartwatch. Ultimately, it doesn't need to be that "smart" even.

Doubtful - the costs of supporting it far outweighs any gain they'd have. In case of banks, the costs of supporting aren't just about developing software for an additional platform, but also insurance premiums and managing fallout of hacks (which always eventually happen) - both of which would go way up, as the company would be voluntarily supporting endpoint decides that are less secure than "industry standard" minimum.

The key thing isn't that the banks (and governments, and enterprise software vendors, and ...) don't provide an alternative to the app as authentication factor. It's why they don't do this.

It's not about security. It's about them wanting people to use the apps. Forcing everyone to use an app streamlines the vendors' operations, reduces the state space of possible user interactions down to small number of flows they control directly, and also provides them a direct channel (communications or upsell, where applicable) to the user.

This is not a fluke or a conspiracy of small number of influential players. It's an emergent alignment of incentives across pretty much the whole supply side of digital aspect of human civilization (not "just" the market, because it's also happening in political and social spheres).

I agree. I also think though that it's a different kind of trust. They trust Google, Apple, and Microsoft because they _think_ they'll be held accountable by some legal system, but judging by the wrist slaps meted out for their massive security lapses (especially you M$) or their constant breakage of their own privacy policies to spy on people it actually seems worse than trusting individual app developers.

"just use a second phone" cannot be the answer because 99% of people will just scoff at that. Instead of buying a second phone, why not just buy one that works?

And that's to say nothing of the environmental impact.

Which is exactly my point: once you apply these workarounds, you don't need a smartphone anymore.

Also: both banks and governments are pushing for 2FA with a mobile device being the primary, and in some cases the only, accepted second factor source.

As for the atm: to use the ATM I need a bank card, to use the bank card I need a PIN. What do you think all the local banks have chosen as their secure channel for communicating that pin to users in the last few years?

For bank apps, you can just use their website

Too bad browsers also support device attestation.

This is only until the only 2FA solutions that the bank requires you to use to log in and authorize transactions only come as smartphone apps.

There are OSS solutions for glucose monitors and even insulin pumps, and they exist precisely because commercial vendors tend to give at best suboptimal quality even when it comes to medical devices. Sure, most pay attention to not accidentally kill you, but beyond that, their incentives go in opposite direction to your incentives.

It's important to have computing freedoms so that people who actually care end-to-end, and don't have financial incentives directed against patients' well-being, are able to build on top of products on the market, fix the enshittification, and improve functionality.

(We also need that to close the loop. It's a common story that meh products of today, which improve on bad products of yesterday, are just commercializing the fixes developed by people fed up with said bad products.)

> But they don't demand the same control over laptops and desktops. Only phones. Why is that?

Oh, but they do. PCs (and Macbooks) are products of an earlier era, and the solutions of control evolved along; it looks chaotic, but that's because it's where the R&D happened over the past decades, which ultimately produced a cleaner - and more easily identifiable - mobile control ecosystem. But it's all there, if you look closely. To name few major groups:

- Many generations of DRM plugins for games, then for streaming media

- Trusted computing hardware

- Intel Management Engine and other firmware backdoors routinely inserted into hardware

- Endpoint security software, deployed widely on corporate-owned machines

Mobile solutions are just version 2.0, built on top of all that R&D.

> Granted I can't deposit a check with my laptop but I can do any other banking I wish to do.

This is the insidious part: for many banks, this is only tolerated because they force you to use their proprietary app on a trusted mobile device as a second factor! At this point, it doesn't really matter how well-controlled your main browsing platform is, because you have to use your phone anyway, and there the control happens. And, "for your convenience", the mobile app isn't just a physical security token, but lets you do banking too, which allows them to gradually deprecate the web experience.

Apple is already in the process of closing down the Mac. As for PCs... why do you think these hardware requirements were imposed on Windows 11?

Hint: When Windows 12 comes out, everyone, or at least everyone with a newish PC, will have a TPM module that's capable of enforcing and attesting a signed-code boot path from power on all the way down to application-level code. Windows 12 will turn these machines into Xboxes that run Excel. Many computers will also have Pluton technology, which is an on-chip TPM implementation that cannot be tampered with or removed from the CPU, and which literally came from Microsoft's Xbox division.

General purpose computing isn't quite dead yet, but there's really nothing we can do for the patient. We're just waiting for it to flatline.

Good luck convincing anyone of that. We could also live without clothes and fancy food and most of modern amenities, but we don't, for the same reason.

Yes, but what do you use as a second factor to authenticate and confirm money transfers?

In large parts of the world, the answer is usually "my uprooted, remotely attested smartphone". Increasingly, it's becoming the only supported method. When that's the case, what you use to load the banking UI doesn't matter anymore - the mobile device is the only actual requirement.

Web being an open platform doesn't matter in any way, when the code runs on proprietary servers.

I tried to log into a banking website on a full desktop browser recently, one that I had previously used with a password. It literally would not let me login until I downloaded their app and set up a passkey. That is now the _only_ way for me to access those accounts. Presumably, I could call in, though I wouldn't be surprised if the person on the phone also asked that I download the app in order to verify my identity, and even if it wasn't the case, they didn't offer that option when I was trying to login. Many bank websites now also require the phone app.

Remind me again what video quality Netflix gives you when streaming to an open browser on an open OS?

You're saying I can use Revolut in the Firefox on, say, Fedora?

People have genuine reasons to stay with the provider / platform and usually browser doesn't cover half of their use cases.

For example I have to use Revolut because it's one of the very few banks that allow me to use Garmin Pay and work (reluctantly) on my phone without Google rootkit. Can't use, say, Curve because their privacy policy is alarming (and I had a very very weird/disappointing interaction with their compliance team).

And you've already got a good example with Netflix.

You're getting downvoted because that's not the point.

You are technically right, we still have access to these services via a web browser today. It doesn't mean we'll have it forever.

With the advent of AI browsers and AI agents, it's not hard to think of a future where LLM chat interfaces and mobile apps are the future, and web apps start getting disregarded as legacy and eventually, discontinued.

Try ordering some food via mobile application and then again via web app. You'll instantly feel the downgrade on the web app. Bugs, glitches, slow experience.

The desktop web is already the 2nd-class citizen for modern startups.

right, government literally side with them if any

open hardware/platform is impossible if they mandate all chat is exported to gov anyway

I'm sure they would love to. They've been trying to make their own app store (Galaxy Store) a thing for over a decade. But cutting ties with Google would mean no Google Apps and no Google Play Store, and that would probably be catastrophic for them.

Web standards have progressed but your other points would still apply.

Does there exist a company or project that has the resources to develop a smartphone with better performance, UI, and cost than Android or iOS devices? Microsoft couldn't pull it off, and I am skeptical that Meta would have been able to.

I can imagine an alternative smartphone carving out a niche audience like older users, FLOSS enthusiasts, digital minimalists, kids, gamers, privacy-focused users, etc. Perhaps over the span of decades such a project could iteratively improve while the incumbents enshittify and eventually surpass them in popularity.

But it seems more likely to me that Android and iOS will dominate consumer smartphones for as long as that form factor exists. When they are displaced, it'll probably be by some innovative non-smartphone computing device.

If that's inevitably the case, then we should all enjoy the ability to install user-controlled, open source operating systems while we still can.

However, if it's not inevitable, then those who cherish such freedoms should forcibly push back against the attempts to strip them away.

The Librem 5 is awfully outdated now (and so I won't buy it today because I'd worry about it becoming e-waste fast), doesn't have a good battery life, is very pricey, and I'd worry about call reliability (I have no doubt it can be made to work, but reliably, from sleep?).

I'm sure it's way better than the PinePhone, but the Librem 5 is definitely not suitable for the general public, even without considering the Linux mobile part.

> Which OS?

Mobian and postmarketOS

> Did you try SXMo?

Yes, not my cup of tea. I'm happy with a stable Plasma or Phosh; at this point, the GUI is not a concern at all for me. SXMO is a nice project but it will never target the general public, and I think we need to target the general public because I wish the general public's computing were free. It's nice that nerds can be free but it's also not good enough.

> The one catch is that it can be difficult to trick certain picky apps into running on an "unsecured" device.

Imho, this is where we should fight for regulation.

"All mobile apps must allow the user to acknowledge the risks of running on an unsecured platform, but then launch normally"

Couple it with a liability shield for user security issues, if the user acknowledges risk.

The real Android lock-in is the universe of essential apps that, through developer laziness, refuse to launch on alternative platforms.

I think next time I upgrade my "phone" I'm going to get a gaming capable tablet with wireless and give it the steamos treatment. This gives you decent linux/windows/android interop.

I already lug a small backpack around most of the time, I can leave the tablet in the bag and use buds for conversations and when I need an actual computer it'll be way better.

Ubuntu controls a big voting block in debian’s organization. They forced systemd in, for example.

Devuan is a good enough compromise for me. The OS is stable, and the only issues I’ve had involve hacking curl|bash scripts that fail to realize they should just install the debian version.

(Steam and docker run well.)

> If you're worried about a for-profit company having sway over your computer, Ubuntu is not really the choice to make.

Why not? The point is not to not have anything supplied by a business. The point is to avoid being controlled by a business.

Ubuntu does not have the same hold over your computer that Google has over your phone. The software is open source. You can switch distros easily as it does not have lock-in.

Agreed.

So many good working devices go to waste because no longer supported by Google and the hardware manufacturers. They have good cameras, good wifi etc... we should be able to reflash them and install whatever OS we want on them.

It's becoming more and more difficult to install even Lineage on a lot of 6 or 7 year old hardware.

Good point about hardware duopoly, and laws (along lines of "right to repair", right?). Nit: "Until we do not have that in place" - double negative

For example because the wait time in the theme park which I visited can be find only in their app for iOS and Android. The same true for ordering food to your table in another theme park. Yeah, there are alternatives, but those cost you time, sometimes hours. And these companies won’t implement anything for an error margin.

Not so, if the next system is mobile GNU/Linux. As long as the components remain free and mostly the same as on desktop, if one or two go bad, they can be replaced. And certainly the core system won't go bad.

> Most if not all large, successful open source projects are funded by commercial interests, not just consumers.

Right, the key point here is most of the fundamental projects were never commercial in origin and had grassroots community or academic roots. Android is built on top of a student's hobby Unix clone.

> The resources it takes to maintain something like Android far exceeds what can be funded solely by donations and volunteers.

Um, no duh a corporate project requires corporate funding. Android was never a grass roots community effort.

How many consumer devices is Linux successfully running on?

If it's just about building software against suites of tests and spec that already exist, then definitely what I'm saying would make it faster. But if it's a hardware control issue, then no.

In that case (ie, if in order to be free we need to free the hardware, too), we need to create a hardware company that builds a phone from the modem/radio on up and owns every layer.

Obviously non trivial hahahahaha :)

AI is letting the world of bits move faster than before by exponentially reducing rework and sharing around the benefit of network effects from collective human knowledge. It's not touching hardware in the same way, and doesn't give us the same superpower.

edit: I guess the "easier" play is to convince an existing full stack phone hardware company to make us an OpenPhone that we can hack on because they believe in the inevitabilities of trends and consequences from AI and want to invest in that future. That would be cool? Any takers? Reach out cris@dosaygo.com

Like many others in this thread have already said, Linux is not the solution.

You call it blackpilling, I call it facing reality.

The Linux kernel is a separate system layer here, it's the AOSP parts like the Dalvik Runtime (equivalent of JRE) and components built on top of it (such as Play Store) which are being subject to permissive licensing abuse. If AOSP itself was GPL licensed, it'd have been difficult for Google to create something closed like Play Store as it'd have been considered derivative work.

You're right that broadly speaking, there is very little that could be done to stop this but having a culture of "everything GPL" in an organization definitely helps. For example, Sun was farsighted enough, though they couldn't stop Oracle from acquiring MySql, Oracle was still forced to keep MySql under GPL and they were able to salvage MariaDB too.

Similar was the case with Java. Oracle tried everything in its power to control its use and direction including legal means, it's only thanks to GPL that alternative implementations like OpenJDK and Amazon Corretto still exist. We can't even imagine the state of these software today if Sun hadn't licensed them under GPL originally but used some other permissive license instead!

Not that it would help in this particular scenario, but Linux did not embrace the GPL development from about 20 years ago.

But they are!!

Disclaimer: I really like Open source.

I think without open source something similar might have happened to a lot of software, but instead of becoming Open, they'd become gratis (free/zero cost), or almost so. The heart of the matter is that software has near-0 cost of distribution, so making 1 trillion is basically the same cost (to the developer) as making 1 unit. So since developers have free economies of scale, they are highly incentivized to lower the price to capture most of the market, I think. Software also requires relatively little maintenance, it doesn't rot[1] -- good software basically lasts forever with some minor up-keeping. Add in competition, and the tendency is for cost to go to near 0, at least for relatively popular software. But then there are two problems:

(1) If the company goes under, the software is lost, or rather it could be reverse engineered with huge difficulty and some information loss about the actual code.

(2) The incentives are still not well aligned with users. The makers are incentivized to rely on advertisements, get (and sell) user data, make their software addictive, and more.

On (1), FOSS software guarantees the source will be available and can be ported to new systems, basically becoming a common good. On (2), the incentives are very well aligned for FOSS, development can become a community effort, and in the rare case a developer would turn to collecting and selling user data or dark patterns, the software can be forked for example. In particular Open source funded by grants, donations and community/voluntary work is very aligned with public interest.

I get the downside that it could be unfair that developers aren't being paid as much, but I believe it wouldn't be much of a difference in income (for those kinds of software), and we can and should as a community donate to open source efforts (and since it's clearly in the public benefit I think governments, companies and all sorts of organizations would be wise to do so).

Finally, you're basically still free to create and sell closed source software, you just have to compete with community and volunteer efforts. I think it's well within your right (and it might make sense in some cases, say niche software). But I think it's worth considering carefully wether it's best for the product, for you and for the community to have it closed or open.

(also, indeed you can sell FOSS, but to be honest I don't know of many success stories in this regard (anyone share some examples?); I know arduino which is open software/hardware was very successful selling their genuine boards/having a pay request on download that you can dismiss. On Linux package managers make this difficult, although Flathub recently added donation buttons!).

[1] There are some issues popularly called "software rot", but it's basically some relatively minor (compared to the rot of many physical goods) compatibility issues when interacting systems change.

> The era when people paid an affordable fee for software they could use however they wanted was much better. But it got squeezed out by free software on the one side and serf-ware on the other.

Charging for free and open-source software is not only possible, but encouraged Stallman himself.

I have been involved in open source projects with various structures and sustainability models. Open-core Enterprise software startups, unfunded or underfunded middleware/libraries and underfunded end-consumer software/apps. A real problem that I have with lots of open source is a mismatch between technical talent to produce software, an open ethos/philosophy (finding true believers in a much more open future), AND the most important often missing piece, a product mindset and willingness to do work that isn't just software dev. So many FOSS projects I have seen, with capable engineers spending years of their lives working on them, are lacking product management, a willingness to let users actually push the project in a direction that is more approachable to a mass audience, and the willingness to do the hard boring work of making software run everywhere. Lots of stuff falls into this general gripe, and a bunch of it isn't news to anyone. Lots of open source has shitty design/UX, every damn one of us that lives with desktop Linux knows exactly why it's not the year of the Linux desktop. The sleep function on the laptop I am writing this comment on doesn't work right (when booted into Linux), and every few months you have to find terminal wizardry to fix normal shit that should have a GUI config interface to un-fuck it, but "real software people don't touch their mouse unless they absolutely must". This comment got a bit off the rails, anyway, long live FOSS!

People developing software for free will never compete with thousands of engineers employed at corporations working every day. Who has time for that except those that are rich and retired?

We need a non corporate model of software development, something like worker owned coops.

Sounds a bit like victim blaming, how is it the fault of open source software that corporations are exploiting them?

AFAIK GPLv3 requires to allow user to run modified software (so essentially device must be unlockable). Android is not GPLv3, unfortunately.

I can't root or otherwise customize my OS on my device because Linux is not GPLv3.

> We accept everyone who accepts everyone.

If we were to accept and enforce this rule, billions of followers of some major religions would not be eligible to be part of a free and open society.

Yeah, this is pretty much the rationale behind the Paradox of Tolerance, which you alluded to. Just as a tolerant society cannot tolerate intolerance without eventually just becoming intolerant, this clearly demonstrates that the same is true for Free Software. If we tolerate the use of Free Software for the use of the non-free software, eventually one loses the freedom in Free Software.

It's of course not a perfect analogy since the original Free Software still exists, but since in practice the dependency was from free towards non-free, like in this instance, it still works. Google and its anti-freedom practices are still in effective control of the Android ecosystem even though it's still technically free by way of AOSP.

And just as how some people argue that intolerance of the intolerant by a tolerant society is bad, so do some people argue that things like the GPL is bad because it prevents downstream modifications etc. going from free to non-free. Maybe this will help re-evaluate the culture around this stuff.

Can you explain how you mean this in the context of software?

What you describe sounds like the paradox of intolerance but I fail to see how that can be applied to free software.

Freedom in general: You can't have absolute freedom because that includes the freedom to take the freedom from others.

In software: You can't have absolutely free software because ... ? I fail to see how free software might infringe on the freedom of others.

I hate that you’re being downvoted. You are absolutely right here.

Just because we “allow nazis” doesn’t mean society will turn into an authoritarian dictatorship.

People are not stupid.

I don't fully agree with that, IMO it's a multifaceted problem.

There's the obvious fact that tech has become the new path to high salaries, and culture changes when people are pursuing the money rather than the trade.

There's the centralisation and capture of resources - app stores in mobile, message boards moving to reddit then being astroturfed, hardware closing to repairs for water resistance/ form factor reasons...

There's also the death of piracy limiting access to resources. Apps, courses and books were files pirated massively, online services kinda stopped that.

I don't think free/open source resources failed to catch up in quality, but I do think they failed to soften friction and remove the barrier of access. Consider mastodon vs twitter, creating a website vs a facebook page, sideloading an app vs app stores, reading a manual vs an influencer course.

> ... mainly for quality and reliability.

And yet, it continues to decline year over year.

An issue is that it’s not only the corpos, there’s also an increase of individuality that has become the norm.

For example, try to learn from an online resource and you’ll see that the most popular sources (YouTubers, twitchers, etc) are all preparing a rug pull to a non free resource, slipping undisclosed ads as content or straight up selling snake oil.

I grew up assuming that a random guy on the internet had always genuine intentions, even those who were assholes. Now the default is either a paid account, a bot, or someone trying to grind for personal gain. Everything’s adversarial.

Then why don't they make it stupid easy to just make a build for the iPhone and transfer it directly?

Also, I am highly suspicious that they check every app submitted to the app store with a human.

People who switch are a vocal minority too.

We're stuck between two mafia families :-(

I've been doing it that way for years on the free account, never seemed like a bother to me. I usually have a tweak I want to make to the code anyway. But I suppose some might find it inconvenient.

In any case, to say you can't put your own apps on your phone without paying a fee is incorrect, which is the comment I was responding to.

I’ve never considered or tried anything other than using a Mac, so I don’t know. But I was responding to a comment about a different matter, the fees for a developer account.

>And suppose the amount is as trivial as you propose. Then why does a multi-trillion dollar conglomerate need that pittance from a million ordinary people?

Reminds me how in the 1970s and 1980s there used to be these ads in the back of magazines in which a person who supposedly became a millionaire sold pamphlets for $5 telling his secrets to success. The obvious question was why such a successful person would need $5 from poor people (unless that was one of his secrets to success, I suppose).

You bring up several important issues and I agree with you 100%. A lot of good application/utilities in the past were from engineers who needed the tools themselves, developed them, and then released it open source.

But I can also see the clutter argument. Windows app store has been and still is a nightmare to use.

It feels like we had a good system, but then lost it. I have no idea what it takes to get it back.

> Then why does a multi-trillion dollar conglomerate need that pittance from a million ordinary people?

Because the store gets spammed by million of bot applications ? Having a small fee for store review is probably a decent noise floor.

You can still develop apps on your devices without a dev license - the week long cert is annoying, they probably want to avoid people side-loading via this mechanism (which I am against FWIW).

But you can develop on your devices without paying 100$/year

> That 100 dollars is just the fee to even make an app. Even if your iPhone never has an Internet connection. And even if you literally load the app via USB to your iPhone only.

This is incorrect.

You make it sound like you cannot even get started unless you pay a $100 fee. You do not need to pay Apple any fees to make an app and put it on your own device. You have to pay the fee once you want to distribute it on the App Store.

You can do that without dev license ?

OP I was replying to presented his scenario of self developing an app he uses on his own personal device, my response was specifically in regards to that use case, not any hypothetical third party person.

I think you could use adb over tcp from a chroot in the phone itself? But that doesn't really make it easier from their standpoint, and this is just a step towards full lockdown which is coming.

1) OP indicated his scenario was a self developed app he uses on his own personal device, not a hypothetical "friend". In terms of some unknown future scenario, speculative fear doesn't really provide anything in the ways of a constructive dialog.

2) In regards to inactive accounts, from Google's policy page:

>If you have never submitted an app for review and the account is more than one year old, it’s considered inactive.

>If you have apps, the account is considered inactive if it is more than one year old, all published apps have fewer than 1,000 combined lifetime installs, the required contact details are not verified, and you have not used Play Console in the last 180 days.

>Google sends warning emails at 60, 30, and 7 days before actual closure, allowing time to take corrective actions.

While you are correct that this would lose you access to the developer account, inactivity for a year and ignoring multiple warning messages over a 2 month period gives you an opportunity to weigh your options. It doesn't even require app updates, just activity in the Play console.

This is the obvious problem.

People can modify GrapheneOS however they want including making their own builds with the officially supported userdebug root support enabled. Open and free doesn't mean catering to power users with the official setup at the expense of everyone else. It doesn't mean sacrificing substantial privacy and security for niche aesthetic customization and other power user features. Defining freedom for devices as software providing more customization options for power users is strange. The freedom is from it being open source and any OS being permitted on the devices.

Devices built to officially support GrapheneOS MUST include first class support for using an alternate OS that's not the official GrapheneOS, which is part of our requirements at https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices. These requirements apply to official GrapheneOS devices in the same way as devices using a Google Mobile Services stock OS. Combined with the OS being open source, that's what gives people the freedom to legally and practically use/make forks of it with arbitrary changes.

Userdebug builds of GrapheneOS are officially supported, although we don't recommend using them on a production device. Setting ro.adb.secure=1 for a userdebug build does preserve most of the security as long as ADB isn't used, but not all of it. It still downgrades security when ADB isn't used since the changes to accommodate having root access and other debug features via ADB have an impact beyond when it's actually used. It doesn't destroy the overall security model in the way people typically integrate root access where a huge portion of the OS has it and it's accessible to apps in a persistent way.

GrapheneOS is all about security, not privacy or freedom. You coincidentally get privacy and freedom benefits, but only where they don't conflict with security.

Root access isn't available by default, but it takes about 120 seconds (including waiting for it to reboot) to add it.

Raw root access isn't what I'd want apps to have.. it's that the Android permission system deliberately limits what the user can consent to, the rest is for "system apps" and to install those you need to unlock bootloader and start the whole "journey" while saying goodbye to banking apps.

Implementing a more flexible permission model + sandbox would probably involve too much work for them.

Hopefully AVF might make things a little better if we'd be able to run Android VMs on Android - so you'd be able to run a rooted VM inside GrapheneOS.. but this depends on Google keeping Android open source, yet QPR1 was not released.

Could either of those be considered a major Android OEM? I was thinking Motorola.

> Security is important

The argument that this is actually a security benefit is a farce. It doesn't do anything. If the device is compromised then it's going to capture your password and send it to the attacker without attempting any attestation. So the only time the attestation is attempted is when the device isn't compromised.

Secure boot and OEM bootloader unlock should be able to work with images so you can lock a phone after the upgrade again.

I managed to get a US refubished Pixel 2 somehow with a fuselocked bootloader here in Ireland. I bought it second hand but I've no idea how it got that way. But I'm suck on the Pixel image and I wanted to use it for ROM testing etc.

> If you have to buy a second device to use Netflix, so be it, but we need laws that guarantee people can make digital payments without Apple or Google's permission.

The reality is however that if you look at active current projects being able to use digital IDs to access fundamental freedoms like communication without child safety rails in Europe is going to require Apple or Google's permission because politicians like it that way.

You can think things should happen in a way all you like, but they are not going to, because governments have vested interests in the opposite direction.

And good lock unlocking anything over 5 years old because the updated website doesn't support what you've got. Been there, it sucks.

But this is changing. Already in multiple countries(and soon possibly EU wide) there will be only play integrity(strong verdicts) to enforce availability of many services(if not using ios, which is the same locked in syndrome).

Yes some banks still allow classic clunky 2FA(sms, card readers, sometimes SIM generators) but it'll all eventually go away in favor of "locked and favored" os unless legislation fights against it.

Only for now. Google did push the Web Environment Integrity API, which is basically "Play Integrity API for Chrome," that helps websites check if the OS, browser, or installed extensions are "safe".

Fortunately, they backed off and decided to abandon the proposal after massive backlash. But we don't know when we will see a 2.0 version of that.

There are at least a couple of banks or credit card companies in the UK now that only offer mobile apps, as well as those now using push MFA with their apps for every large purchase. Recently I needed to install an app from the UK government to prove my identity via camera to renew my driving license, and that doesn't work in GrapheneOS either. I can do it in person (for now) but there is an extra fee.

Banks are all moving to MFA through an app, which then needs play protect, which then maybe need TWRP/Magisk.

Does it? If it looks equivalent to "stock" Android but you can do what you want with is, including removing bloatware, then it's arguably more secure and thus a better alternative than most. It might not be the most secure but it's already a step.

Hmm... that looks like a pretty skewed comparison. It's as if somebody took the security features that make Graphene stand apart and compared everything else to them.

No contention that Graphene is safe, but categorizing other OSes as "pretty bad when it comes to security" because they don't copy Graphene is a bit of a stretch.

I'm going to echo the sibling comment that this comparison conveniently centers on GrapheneOS while conveniently ignoring anything they don't do; for example, a firewall using root is useful, but since they've decided user's can't be trusted with control of their devices that's right out.

It's hard to find. Pixel 8 costs $670 here, and the cheapest Pixel is 9a for $470. At this price, it is overpriced. Pixel 8 has 8 GB RAM, Samsung A16 with 8 GB costs just $230. It's almost 3 times cheaper. And Samsung supports 2 SIM cards, unlike Pixel, so you can have, for example, one SIM for Internet and another for calls.

I snagged a Pixel 8A for around 200 on ebay.

you can also snag refurb'd Pixel 7s for $170 off eBay atm

On pixel devices you can add your own signature to be checked and thus can use secure boot with a custom OS - that's how GrapheneOS works.

No need to strip out every wall, we just have to think about the problem and put doors at necessary places so we can enjoy both freedom AND security.

Do you understand that you are advocating for a world in which two corporations are the sole determinator of the livelihood of all mobile software developers? A career in software development should not be at the complete mercy of Apple and Google, or I suppose if you had your way Microsoft for PC gatekeeping as well.

No, just take a look at how long and smooth does a pinephone run with "GNU Linux" vs stock android.

Android devs actually backported a bunch of work to the mainline kernel with regards to low-level energy management, but that's only one half of the story. The other is your phone stopping unused apps gracefully, and being able to go back to sleep regularly.

Especially considering how much software these days on Windows are all Electron/Web. So is not a hard switch as it once was.

I switched from Windows to Linux it's been 2 years. One of the few things I missed on Windows, was the native WhatsApp app, as the Web WhatsApp it's horrible. Then a few months Meta killed the native app and made into a webview-app :)

And I can just take about any Linux distro, install it to about any computer and have an extremely nice device to work, play games, and handle almost any daily task with. I call that a huge success.

Not really, because Proton is Win32, kind of.

It really isn't. This is a temporary sugar rush that comes after pretty much every time Microsoft does something awful. After a while the buzz will fizz out and the majority of those PC gamers that looked to switching go back to Windows.

IME a lot developers don't even use Linux on their desktop machine. I've met three developers that use Linux professional IRL. A lot of devs have a hard time even using git bash on Windows.

I am always called up by people at work because I am "the Linux guy" when they have a problem with Linux or Bash.

Sure, there are a lot of people that use Linux indirectly e.g. deploy to a Linux box, use Docker or a VM. But if someone isn't running Windows, 9 times out of 10 they are running a Mac.

More generally the thing that has paid the bills for me is always these huge proprietary tech stacks I've had to deal with. Whether it be Microsoft's old ASP.NET tech stack with SQL Server, AWS, Azure, GCP, what pays the bills is proprietary shite. I hate working with this stuff, but that what you gotta to pay the bills.

My TV runs one, it isn't taking the world by storm.

https://webostv.developer.lge.com/discover

I'd rather like to see AOSP development spun off to a separate non-profit entity. Either by Google doing it or by a hard fork (which will need a lot of funding). Traditional Linux misses the polish and especially the security layering to be a good phone OS. Better to start from an already good base that works.

Why would that affect anything? The Chinese Android ecosystem is already split from the Google one.

> Right, but that's a choice from manufacturers, not a requirement of building a mobile platform.

IMO, I think Microsoft gave up on running Android apps on Windows because they read the writing on the wall: Google will use Play Integrity/Protect to ensure Android apps only run on Google-approved devices/operating systems and nothing else.

I think this is the ultimate fate for Waydroid, as well.

Everyone is quick to ascribe malice without understanding why changes are made. It's never done for the reasons you think. Without a formal relationship between Graphene and Pixel, things were operating out of luck. This is why the next target hardware is starting with a business relationship. Even desktop Linux is most successful when business relationship between a vendor and the distro maker. Everything else is ripe for random breakage in support.

Except many key features are nowadays delivered via APEX modules, distributed via PlayStore.

https://source.android.com/docs/core/ota/apex

> although some of the problems have to do with the way the settings and controls are working

I was talking about the security model.

https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/linux.html

So you're saying Google is doing fuck all to protect customers on their already locked down store, right? This doesn't sound like it will be addressed by Google extending developer registration outside of their store at all if they can't even address obvious scam apps that they're already promoting. And to your point, yes, Apple probably does do a better job of maintaining their app store, that way they can prevent some of the push back on iOS being so locked down. An iPhone sounds like the right device for your father.

from the Play Store

This is not about the Play Store. This is about the whole Android platform. It's about running what you want on your own machine.

There wasn't much foresight required on his part because companies were already doing things like this way back when. As a trivial example, patents on DRM predate the oft-cited "Right To Read" by a decade or more. Stallman just observed these trends and took an opposing stance without (to GP's point) really addressing the economic incentives and nuances involved.

Maybe his biggest contribution is that his extreme stance and ensuing visibility probably helped shift the Overton window.

The "things that got him cancelled" were things he said (as opposed to things he did) and those that I've read were correct (though I'm aware I havent read everything he said on the subject).

I think it is and it doesn't just end there. It's develop and distribute binaries.

Everyone is still free to develop and distribute source code.

This is not Google locking down the Play Store, it's them restricting distribution outside the Play Store, which you don't have to do in any case.

Why would you be interested in Android?

Isn't iOS a pinnacle of UI/UX loaded with most innovative features in the world backed by the most genius CEOs of all times?

You should just check submission link contents before commenting. This just locks down apps outside of google play.

> Android phone if Google locks down the play store to legitimate actors, increases the barrier for entry and improves the quality and safety of submissions

Locks down how? This is literally how it is from the start. Ignoring the fact that it is completely unrelated to the topic, this is just wrong regardless.

honestly x86_64 has kinda caught up with arm in power to wattage

Wow, PinePhone is mess. So much for a consumer device... Do they even use their own product?

They are just careful not to say whose security.

It's not a lie if it is to secure their cashflow.

One man’s security is another man’s control.

Edit: and to be clear, I’m against this change by google. I think there is value in protecting grandma from sideloaded apps (if that even happens in the real world) but this isn’t about protection of consumers, it’s about centralised control of what you can and can’t do, in preparation for handing over the reigns to an authoritarian government. ‘Security’ either to protect you from scams, protecting YouTube from third party apps, or preventing nation state hacking or similar will inevitably be the driving narrative.

This looks kind of cool, but it lacks a headphone jack...

Which you think would be the first thing you'd put on there since Bluetooth pairing is extremely difficult to get right when you're using custom operating systems.

Very Welcome,

-Your Friend

Verily We Youths Frolic

Verify With Your Face

That's a bit overblown. Almost all banking apps work fine. You might be one of the unlucky few of course, but there's no need to scare others from running free software.

I think the "one smartphone for absolutely everything" era is over. Either switch banks (there are many who don't do this nonsense) or have a dedicated Android/iOS device for banking.

I remember, when DVD players were required to show mandatory, non-skippable sections of video, chinese players violated the standards and international agreements and allowed skipping those sections, and they also sometimes illegally ignored regional restrictions.

Google, Apple, or CCP. Problem solved.

I mean, the actual implementation will be that CCP signs Google DragonFly Global Root CA cert, and Apple runs Google signed firmware, but those are just minor implementation details.

5 eyes governments would be able to mandate this to stop against the ‘persistent evils of China’

The irony, software freedom is now dependent on China.

My apologies for not being precise: Linux/GNU and all the BSD variants.

This is the problem with this Hacker News platform. Who is downvoting me instead of discussing my points?

This platform has the EXACT same problem as Reddit. People can just silence you before you had a chance of discussion. What a waste of fucking time. Instead of improving our world models of reality by having discussions, you can just silence others because you disagree. Remove the fucking downvote button! Just remove it, jesus fucking christ. Who thought this button was a good fucking idea?

I'm nearly out of this garbage. The same way I left Reddit long ago. X is the only platform that allows free speech.

Not neccesarily a guise of security, but perhaps a different means of security. E.g. securing stock investments, profits, monies, etc. Nothing is 100% secure, you can't be in the void and still call it a void, etc

To the extent that this is true, the lesson is very much not that Microsoft should have had total control over what users were allowed to run.