nixCraft 🐧The website “Keep Android Open” is an initiative to protest and advocate against a new policy by Google which bans sideloading apps. The goal is to pressure Google to reverse or modify this policy to protect the open nature of the Android platform and the ability to sideload or use 3rd party app stores without excessive restrictions https://keepandroidopen.org
Drew
F4GRX Sébastien@crmsnbleyd @nixCraft to go where? iOS?
River@crmsnbleyd @f4grx @nixCraft The biggest issue with open source phone OS'es currently (at least to me) is that they're incredibly lacking in terms of hardware support. Not even the "feel free to install, but if you've got weird hardware you're on your own", but rather, the line currently tends to be "if you do not own one of these 17 specific devices, you cannot run this OS. Period."
It's hard, I've owned my phone since like 2021, I don't intend to upgrade for several more years, but I don't like the way Android is going currently either. But if the hardware isn't supported for FOSS, there's not much I can really do.
Tall Simon@riverpunk @crmsnbleyd @f4grx @nixCraft I have wondered if the solution to obscurity and complexity would be to make the manufacturer liable for return or repair of a product which "does not function as described."
That description is hard (NP hard) for phones.
Of course, if the source code is released, and it is reasonably legible and well engineered, that's the full description.
In the end, we have to get politicians to push on a few, appropriately simple, and hard-to-avoid pressure points if we are going to fix the situation.