this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2023
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Privacy
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On a Operating system/free software level we're doing fine. Not great (still no true open source phone OS, Firefox has like 3% market share, lots of closed/unfixable hardware) but you can work and have fun using OSS and it's not going anywhere. On a global economy level we're as fucked as always. Big tech isn't going anywhere and 99% of people will choose convenience over ethics every single time. We're a minority here and always will be.
By ethics I don't mean using signal over spying WhatsApp. I mean local shop instead of employee exploiting amazon or mastodon over right wing extremist supporting Twitter. People do understand what amazon and twitter do but not using them is just to much effort for them. Even if it's not that much effort at all...
Aren't custom ROM's open source? It would be nice if you could buy a phone from big brands with it preinstalled already. That would make it so much more accesible.
Even custom ROMs depend heavily on googles services. If you disable all of it you're loosing some basic features, some apps won't work and you have problems installing new apps. There are solutions but in the end you're relaying in googles closes source services.
I know that many people still rely on Google's services, but speaking from my own experience, it's not hard to ditch them entirely.
I installed LineageOS 2 months ago, and was only missing my banking app, which I installed using the Aurora store and it works without any issues. For everything else I found alternatives which are, admittedly not as good/users friendly as Google's. But I wouldn't say there's no true FOSS phone OS.
So aurora is OS but it's pulling apps from play store. Each time you update your apps the updates will come from google. Unless you will manually download apk files from the web... It works for now but aurora already had issues accessing play store and it may stop working one day.
I have an app for public EV chargers that requires google device registration to work. It's the best network around so sometimes I have to use it. I have device registration disabled normally but that's another example where google services are needed for crucial functionality.
And I've recently installed another app that would not let me authenticate on LOS. Google is doing this on purpose and more and more apps will not work on custom ROMs.
And we are really far away from creating mobile app ecosystem that's not relaying on google. You can install mobian or something but currently absolutely no one supports it. I need android to use my bike GPS, my car charger, connect to my car, access my bank and even to use my climbing wall. None of this has native mobile Linux client. It will take decades before companies start supporting Linux on mobile the way they support it on desktop.
Yes, Aurora is not the ideal solution and Google might be cracking down on it soon. But as long as it works I don't really mind it going through Google, at least I don't need an account for it.
And sadly many Apps are just made with Google in mind because it's so popular, but my hope is that in the future more and more Apps will have at least a Google free option.
Mobian sounds cool, but doesn't seem so promising to me as well. I agree that custom ROM's are not in a good spot right now, but I think it's gonna get better in the future.
Surely the objective is not to get companies to "support" yet another platform, it is to use a single platform that is open at the level of protocols and file types.
And surely that platform is already here and is called the Web.
Web is a shitty platform. Since it started gaining in popularity as the way to do apps and not just deliver HTML it has been constant nightmare when it comes to privacy and security. It still is. On top of that your putting another sandbox on top of everything which doesn't make much sense on mobile and is bad for performance. It makes sense for some multi platform apps but web apps can't even access the file system in a normal way. Giving browsers a way to do this will be another security nightmare. Same with Bluetooth. Basically with web you have two choices: keep it all sandboxed limiting functionality while struggling with performance the way electron does or open it app and let random scripts execute with full access to your user space. Neither is a good option for a platform. You can reuse tools like js, CSS and HTML in some new platform but web will not make it's way to desktops and mobiles.
This strikes me as a best-vs-better situation. What is your solution to this problem that is actually plausible in the real-world this century?
Simple, we just have to force google to allow manufacturers to offer degoogled android on their phones which is what EU is doing: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/18/eu-fine-google-android-anti-competitive-behaviour-consumers
"Google is also ordered to stop blocking manufacturers from using so-called forked or modified versions of Android, such as Amazon’s Fire OS, if they want to use Google services on their other devices."
Next they have to force google to allow alternative app stores preinstalled on devices and give them the same permissions play store has. With this you will be able to see truly open android actually available in stores. Companies like Mozilla (more probably some consortium like Mozilla/duckduckgo/Sony/LG/whatever) will be able to establish alternative app store that will actually compete with play store and offer same apps. We where close to this years ago buy google offered discounts to phone manufacturers that did not include other stores, made the system depend on their services and then punished companies that tried to compete by locking them out of those services. If EU manages to revert it and open up the platform we will have viable alternative that's way better than the web. And it can happen real soon. That's our best option at the moment.
This does indeed sound like the best approach. We're not there yet and EU citizens need to push for this or it might not happen.
For example, getting a ride through Lyft is now impossible without GPS, their app won't start. Knly option is Uber through a website.
You also don't get notifications for some apps because of that. So I had to make some sacrifices to not have GPS installed
There are also normal taxis. I never had to use uber in my life.
Might be better to just use taxis if their price is reasonable
It is extreme hard to find a phone with Lineage OS preinstalled in the stores. Very hard to install it by my self, we can't assume everybody can do this.
Most of the phone OSs are FOSS, the complaint there is the blobs for the drivers, which is nearly impossible to get around.
As I explained in other post, AOSP may be open sourced but it still depends on android services owned by google. I have degoogled android and some apps don't work and other apps require device registration. And of course most apps are still only in play store. We're not that far for properly open platform and hopefully EU will get as there but we're not there just yet.
That's exactly what I'm doing. One degoogled phone to carry with me and googled one for android auto and stuff. But that's exactly the issue, you don't have to do it with Linux.