Android developer verification: Balancing openness and choice with safety

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It is way past time to build a 'people's phone', funding it through a platform like LiberaPay [1][2] or Open Collective [3][4], with a requirement for the device to be completely open-source.

[1] https://liberapay.com/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberapay
[3] https://opencollective.com/
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Collective

If we start today, we could have a new phone in 2-3 years. Future generations will thank us.

It's not just phones. There is a concerted movement by massively-moneyed folks to destroy the fabric of open society, so there are a number of different areas that need attention. A coordinated effort across the breadth of society to restore, maintain or improve the foundations of open society.

Liberapay

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Open phones are all fine and well, but good luck convincing banking and government applications to work on those (especially in countries where bank login is used to access government services).

> Open phones are all fine and well, but good luck convincing banking and government applications to work on those (especially in countries where bank login is used to access government services).

First phones, then lobbying. As citizens of an open society, government exists to serve us, not the other way around. With enough users, they will have to respond. As I said, there are a number of areas that need attention and a coordinated effort across the breadth of society to restore, maintain and improve the foundations of an open society.

> As citizens of an open society, government exists to serve us, not the other way around.

I really wish this was true. It should be true. It used to be true. But I don't think it is now.

> With enough users, they will have to respond.

Well, yeah. But even if we had millions of people lined up (which we don't) it still wouldn't be enough to force a positive response.

Frankly there's too much money wrapped up in this now. Because of that, open computing will always be under attack. I hate coming off as so defeatist, but what we need is a culture change, and a new device which is (from the perspective of the 99%) worse and more expensive than Android isn't going to get us that.