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?
@jazaval Thank you for bringing up the free market because you are right, in a free market I'd be able to freely choose which vendor, provider, manufacturer, developer and so on I conduct my business with.
But the reality is there is no free market anymore, the existence of a free market has been eroded away by big companies like google and their peers over time step by step, the most recent step being the one we've been arguing about.
(see image cuz post is long and I don't wanna split it up)
you can absolutely build a device out of parts of your choosing or have a vendor do it, you just don’t find it convenient.
@StaticR you could then install any OS made by someone or some organization that’s okay with their intellectual property being applied to any device, or just write your own.
@StaticR you can then install any application on that system so long as the developer has made their source code available, and licensed it with terms agreeable for doing so.
@StaticR a truly *free* market also enables *me* to build devices, systems and applications that allow *me* to restrict *you* from doing any of these things with the devices, systems and applications I build, and whichever has the greater competitive advantage as a result, will be more successful.
@StaticR the moral of the story is that if you want the public to care about their rights, they need to be more of a gift than a burden
@jazaval Actually no, you can make a device or system that has a set of capabilities and your competitiveness on the market is based on these capabilities compared to your competitors.
What you can not do is arbitrarily restrict how these capabilities are used by customers eg you can make a computer with an OS but you cannot put restrictions on customers for what sets of bits they are allowed or not allowed to compute or where those bits come from.
@jazaval how deep does your vision of being able to build a device out of parts, in this case a phone, actually go? Are there commercially available parts like mainboards, processers, cameras, screens, shells and so on that I can assemble into a phone, sort of like how I can assemble a desktop PC? Where would I get these parts from? Are there parts that I'll have to manufacture myself somehow? I'd low key be actually interested in that.
@StaticR I mean, just take a fanless industrial PC with a built-in cellular modem, like one of these https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/2-Lan-6-COM-IOT-Industrial_1601444279616.html
2 Lan 6*com Iot Industrial Automation Mini Pc 11th Gen Core I5-1135g7 I7-1165g7 X86 Embedded Ipc Edge Computer Fanless Mini Pc - Buy Mini Pc industrial Pc industrial Mini Pc fanless Mini Industrial Pc fanless Mini Pc fanless Industrial Mini Pc mini Pc Industrial embedded Mini Pc industrial Computer embedded Computer mini Industrial Pc industrial Fanless Mini Pc embedded Pc i5-1135g7 i7-1165g7 iot Pc mini Pc 11th Gen can embedded Mini Pc ipc edge Computer iot Industrial Automation pc Industrial Product on Alibaba.com
2 Lan 6*com Iot Industrial Automation Mini Pc 11th Gen Core I5-1135g7 I7-1165g7 X86 Embedded Ipc Edge Computer Fanless Mini Pc - Buy Mini Pc industrial Pc industrial Mini Pc fanless Mini Industrial Pc fanless Mini Pc fanless Industrial Mini Pc mini Pc Industrial embedded Mini Pc industrial Computer embedded Computer mini Industrial Pc industrial Fanless Mini Pc embedded Pc i5-1135g7 i7-1165g7 iot Pc mini Pc 11th Gen can embedded Mini Pc ipc edge Computer iot Industrial Automation pc Industrial Product on Alibaba.com
@StaticR add your display, i/o, power source and case to taste. provision however you like.
@StaticR here’s one with a touchscreen, battery and LTE modem included: https://higolepcstore.com/products/f9b-7inch-mini-pc?variant=50891270979877
@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 Besides that, allowing the user to have agency over the device via installing apps freely or further enabling/disabling functions and features of the OS as they wish has absolutely nothing to do with any of that. At this point what even was this discussion supposed to be about in the first place?
@StaticR @leeloo @lianna well EULAs vary, but sideloading covers a number of security and piracy concerns.
the hobbyist days of computing where collaborative behavior was required simply for the end-user experience to exist are over.
this doesn’t make competitive behavior illegal or immoral, it makes you overly nostalgic.
@jazaval at this point you're not even arguing whether it's good or not anymore you're straight up just saying that the good days where you had rights are over get over it.
So I gotta ask, why do you so badly want to have less rights? Why do you want to be forced to use your devices and tools not how its best for you but how its best for some company that contributed part of it? Why do you want a company that profits from you using its app store to restrict you from alternatives?
@jazaval Are you perhaps the one who's nostalgic for the old times where you were a child and had to ask your parents for permission on everything?
@StaticR people have just as many rights as they used to, they’re just choosing not to write as many bootloaders and kernels as they used to. it’s a choice, nobody is restricting them.