Stephan NeuhausOct 15, 2024
Sarah Jamie Lewis

The state of software distribution in 2024 is pretty miserable.

Mandatory code signing on platforms breaking any kind of asset reproducibility while adding dependencies on a multitude of unauditable third party authorities.

Mandatory verification on mainstream appstores requiring endless navigation on increasingly nonsensical forms attempting to align the organizational info some data broker scraped from yellow pages in 2020 with actual reality (no really that office doesn't exist anymore).

Oct 15, 2024 at 5:29pmWeb
Show threadSarah Jamie LewisOct 15, 2024
Want to side-load? Sure go ahead, and be reassured that sometime in the next few years that "unofficial applications" will cease to have access to sensitive apis like "the internet" or "files"
Show threadSarah Jamie LewisOct 15, 2024

I believe in meeting people where they are, but increasingly I find them strapping themselves into increasingly locked down platforms. Places where designing software to accommodate certain risk models is impossible.

At a certain point - and I'll be honest, it's pretty damn close - we will have to give up.

Show threadSarah Jamie LewisOct 15, 2024

iOS has always been on the other side of that threshold (with some recent moves to maybe put it within reach again).

Windows and Android are both teetering.

If I was to make a prediction it would be that you should expect to see less free software on those platforms in the coming years, and even existing ones will begin to slowly rot.

Show threadMrCOct 15, 2024
@sarahjamielewis In the 1980s TV Show "Max Headroom" (where it was illegal to turn off the TV that spied on you) there were people called "Blanks" because they had removed themselves from the ever-present corporate run surveillance regime. At some point, some of us will be running around with bolted together computers and phones running 10 year old hardware and OSS and "illegally" avoiding targeted advertising.
Show threadWladimir PalantOct 15, 2024
@sarahjamielewis We’ve been trying to introduce ad blocking on mobile platforms for the better part of a decade. We tried a lot, yet the one time we found a (somewhat) workable solution Google locked down their platform to kick us out. Let’s face it: all mobile platforms currently available exist to lock people in, not to empower them.