Google announced that as of September 2026, it will no longer be possible to develop apps for the Android platform without first registering centrally with Google. This registration will involve:

- Paying a fee to Google
- Agreeing to Google’s Terms and Conditions
- Providing government identification
- Uploading evidence of the developer’s private signing key
- Listing all current and future application identifiers

https://keepandroidopen.org/

#android #opensource #keepandroidopen

The @distrowatch end-of-year roundup does not pull its punches, in an admirable way:

«
Some distributions, particularly the commercial projects, shifted focus this year, discarding useful tools and replacing them with AI buzzwords, less capable installers, and broken core packages. We saw Red Hat/Fedora discard an old, functional installer for a limited, broken replacement while introducing a barely functional AI chatbot into Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Ubuntu swapped out its tried and true GNU core utilities for less functional Rust alternatives while also breaking Flatpak packages. Meanwhile, openSUSE threw away its famous YaST system administration tools and brought in a system installer which barely works.

It's been a bleak year if you're a user of commercially-backed Linux distributions. Programs licensed as free software are being replaced by more liberally licensed alternatives, AI slop is being hyped as a main selling point, and powerful administrative tools are being replaced by watered down web-based alternatives.
»

https://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?issue=20251222

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For people having trouble upgrading do not ignore the warning from freebsd-update or you will have problems!

"Completing this upgrade requires removing old shared object files. Please rebuild all installed 3rd party software (e.g., programs installed from the ports tree) and then run 'freebsd-update [options] install' again to finish installing updates. "

#FreeBSD

#Android is dead and we’d better all leave the ship before it sinks entirely.

Options to unlock bootloaders on Android devices are also narrowing down. Xiaomi removed the ability to unlock the bootloader entirely in MIUI in August (after months spent making it ridiculously difficult), same for OnePlus, Samsung did so in July, and probably Google devices will soon follow suit.

And let’s not mention the nightmare of the Play Integrity API that forces all Android developers to register through the Play Store and use Google’s signing keys, even if they don’t intend to distribute their apps through it.

Sure, officially Google has taken a step back and has pledged to provide a way for developers and power-users to bypass those restrictions. But we can all expect it to be a cumbersome and change-prone process filled with ridiculous amounts of frictions at every step - and I wouldn’t even expect such a morally bankrupt company to keep maintaining this “sideloading” option.

Google once competed with Apple for customers. But in a world where Google walks away from the biggest antitrust trial since 1998 with yet another slap on the wrist, competition is dead, and Google is taking notes from Apple about what they can legally get away with. And the EU, the biggest opposer of its anti-competitive acts, is also becoming softer with Big Tech - both because Vestager has left the job, and because being soft with trillion-dollar monopolist tech titans is seen as a sign of being “technologically competitive”.

Your best bet is to purchase a Pixel 9a now, before more manufacturers decide to block bootloaders, and immediately flash it with #GrapheneOS.

The long term plan would instead be to throw all of our efforts and energies on Linux phones. The folks at GrapheneOS are doing an amazing job and fighting against all kind of pressures, but at some point we should probably all just acknowledge that anything that is tainted with Android, or runs on a device intended only to run Android, is a liability, and we should no longer build solutions on top of hardware and software that we can no longer trust.

Sailfish, PostmarketOS, UBPorts, MeeGo or whatever comes next must succeed. No matter the cost.

Hey. If you've got a #Kobo #ebookreader, I will appreciate if you could extract some information from your device. Currently, I'm contributing to #postmarketOS wiki. Since #onyxboox refuses to release the kernel source code for its devices, I am trying to gather information about different ebook readers with #eink panel. So if someone wanted to mainline a #boox device, they could use drivers from Kobo since they release the kernel source code.

I would really hate my #booxleaf to become useless, because onyx does not give updates anymore nor it releases the kernel source code so the community can provide an alternative OS or ROM. By doing so, not only onyx contributes to #ewaste. But also forces users to change devices like every 2-3 years. Even when the device is working good. Like me device. Needless to mention #GPLViolation here.

I will post about me plans, later, God willing. For now, I am optimistic about mainlining me device and also #BooxPage. Because both use Snapdragon which has good support in mainline, it's an ebook reader so you don't need to add support for modem and GPU, and the Carta 1200 screen used in these two devices are also used in other e-book readers such as Kobo.

BTW, boosts appreciated! If you haven't got a wiki account, you can ping me and I can add the information :)

Edit: Thank you so much. There are 40 boosts so far. I wanted to say if you got other ebook readers with eink which they release the kernel source code, feel free to add them to the wiki, too.

#mainlining #pmOS #LinuxMobile