@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.

@lianna @StaticR
Product sure, but once they've sold the phone, it's not their property anymore.

Hence, bringing your own food into a building formerly owned by McD.

@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 @StaticR @lianna
I have never agreed to anything to buy a phone.

Sure, I have clicked "agree" on an D
EULA, but that has always been after I have already purchased the phone, and thus legally unable to change the fact that I have already purchased it. It's a scare tactic, nothing else.

@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.

@jazaval @StaticR @lianna
It's only weird to you because you swallowed the propaganda, hook, line and sinker.

At the time of purchase, the software is part of the phone, no matter what you do with it afterwards.

@leeloo @StaticR @lianna despite a very specific agreement written by the rights holders who are licensing it to you?

or do you actually believe software is more legally analogous to a physical series of pistons and less so to a novel or a piece of sheet music?

@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.

@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)

@StaticR

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.