ꓤɔᴉʇɐʇS"sideloading" is a stupid made up term invented to delegitimize installing software.
Heres a bunch of other things I'm doing while "sidestepping" some supposed central authority:
- sideshopping (buying stuff from a store that isn't amazon)
- sidedining (eating or making food that isn't from mcdonalds)
- sidethinking (using my own brain instead of asking chatgpt)
- sidelistening (to my own music instead of on spotify)
- sidechatting (irl instead of online)
lia@StaticR Eh, the analogy doesn't quite work. When you cook a homemade dinner, you're not interacting with McDonald's at all, but when you "sideload" an app onto your Android phone, it's still Android.
A more accurate analogy would be "bringing homemade food into a McDonald's", which... well, would be banned too.
However, adding your local music library to Spotify, and adding your own local video games to Steam, both are a thing.
The real question is whether Android is a service Google provides to you similar to a McDonald's restaurant (which by sideloading you're illegitimately changing) or a tool similar to a file manager, which can be used however you please.
I'm also on your side obviously. It was just a bad analogy I think.
Leeloo
Jacob@leeloo @lianna @StaticR uh, actually the correct analogy would be licensing a franchise of a McDonald’s in a building that you own, and then breaking the rules of that franchise agreement by selling or eating food outside the dining standards. don’t license the franchise, i.e., don’t run software you don’t agree with, even if you need it for technical reasons.
@lianna @leeloo @StaticR it’s not, though. just in the sense that you do not own the order of the words of a book you purchase, you do not own the cleverness of the OS. you own the ink the renders the words, and you own the electrons that represent a copy of that cleverness. The cleverness is licensed to you, not sold.
@jazaval @lianna @leeloo This was actually the point I was gonna get to earlier when I said I'll post something "in a bit".
The difference is a McDonalds franchisee works for McDonalds and represents their brand and sells stuff under their banner, so they have to uphold the expectation what a McDonalds is.
A private person using the android OS themselves does not work for google, does not represent their brand to others so they shouldnt need to uphold the brand's expectations.
@jazaval @lianna @leeloo The customer or end user is not an actor whose job it is to further the brand values of the companies they are a customer of. They're the customer not a billboard.
They're the end of the chain so there's no one under them they need to uphold brand values and expectations for.
JakobT@jakobtougaard @jazaval @StaticR @lianna
Does that ever happen?
Around here, the shooter gets blamed. Maybe the security at wherever he stole the gun. And of course when it happens kn the US, the insane laws that hands out guns like they were antidepressants.
@jakobtougaard @StaticR @lianna @leeloo so you’re saying in this case, the manufacturer is trying to build in a physical safety measure that stigmatizes “side-sales” that occur outside ATF-sanctioned sellers, and we would… scorn this?
@leeloo @StaticR @lianna you don’t need to use that software to use the phone though, the EULA has nothing to do with the *phone*. you accept terms to use *software*.
if you disagree, you’re more than capable of just pulling a Terry Davis and writing your own bootloader, kernel, OS, etc. in order to utilize that hardware you now own if you disagree with those terms the software creators set.
@leeloo @StaticR @lianna that’s weird, cause you can completely replace it with all new software without physically modifying the phone at all.
software is just someone’s interpretation of the best way to arrange electrons in a way that represents your intentions. it’s intellectual property, not physical, and is subject to different ownership rules.
@leeloo @StaticR @lianna again, take the example of George Hotz, who in high school back in 2007 “siMply waNTEd TO modifY SoFtWARe thaT He ownED On hIS IPhonE” and then oops!
somehow a multi-billion exclusivity deal that AT&T paid for with real money lost tons of value.
yea boo hoo, I get it. nothing of real value lost.
@leeloo @jazaval @lianna I wanna chime in and say that any sort of agreement needs to be sorted out BEFORE a purchase or transaction is made. It shouldn't be possible to buy something and then be forced into a contract after the fact.
Usually, the first time you're presented with terms of use is when you first boot up your system after having paid for it so you're basically pressured into agreeing because if you don't you got a brick a brick that does nothing of what was advertised to you.
@leeloo @jazaval @lianna On top of that, those terms of service agreement are usually entirely non-negotiable and written up in such a way to give the company pretty much complete freedom to do whatever they want, including stripping your right to legal action even when they outright break the law due to binding arbitration clauses.
On top of that they can change the terms whenever they want and the new terms automatically apply to you. They CAN actually agree you to new terms and its fucked up
On top of that they can change the terms whenever they want and the new terms automatically apply to you. They CAN actually agree you to new terms and its fucked up
@StaticR @leeloo @lianna so? if what they’re providing is of so little value as to not merit the leverage they are wielding, surely you can just provide yourself?
or maybe what they’re providing is valuable, complex, and difficult enough to produce in this day and age that only a massive monolith can? how is that their problem?
@StaticR @leeloo @lianna 95% of these companies exist because some autistic nerds felt the *exact same way* about something a few decades ago. so they built something from scratch.
it’s “fair” because you don’t have time to reinvent the wheel like they did, and they don’t think you should get rights to tinker with their wheel as if you did. it would make them easier to topple over, using their own creation against them.
@jazaval @leeloo @lianna I feel like terms and conditions that are designed not just to ensure the bare minimum needed for a transaction or service between the client and the provider to take place but to expand beyond that to ensure the continued dominance of the provider over the client (and possibly limit the emergance of competitors) are a good or fair thing. I mean antitrust is a thing and we have that exactly to prevent exactly that sort of deal.
@jazaval @leeloo @lianna pretty sure you can do that actually, as long as it remains street legal you can make modifications to a car's engine, patent law has nothing to do with that.
Though that isn't really analogous to installing apps on a phone because apps typically don't make changes to the core OS, they're just a layer on top. For the car analogy it'd be more like installing your own dashcam.
@StaticR @leeloo @lianna the issue is that software work is not like engine work. an individual making their phone do something is about 1 person-week’s effort from them making a million phones do that same thing. a person making their engine do something is about a person-century’s effort to multiply to the same number of engines.
@StaticR @leeloo @lianna in a vacuum, you are technically correct. there is no difference. in reality, George Hotz was able to enable an entire generation of people to sideload things onto their PS3s and iPhones *as a literal child*. somehow I think if he was into engines there would have been less widespread IP
violation. I can’t put my finger on why, but maybe you can help?
violation. I can’t put my finger on why, but maybe you can help?