alt Hacker NewsWe should have the ability to run any code we want on hardware we own
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I would say also that if Google and Apple control what you can install, they are responsible for it if there is a problem.
This ist what the four essential freedoms are all about.
The hardware aspect is quite irrelevant to the whole point: the hardware only runs with software that does not respect your freedom and there's no feasible way to make the hardware run software that does respect our freedom. And of course our banks and streaming services and whatever else we need also don't offer us any software that respect our freedoms. So no, it's not about hardware, it's about free software. Always has been.
Absolutely must have the right to run any software on hardware we own. It should be mandated for hardware built by large companies, who are soaking up the capital and labor that’s available. It’s sensible regulation.
Or:
One (a big entity with enough resources) should take this as an opportunity and create a new, third truly open alternative to iOS and Android (no, I'm not talking about an AOSP fork, I'm saying something totally new) and let iOS/Android have their thing as they want, letting consumers decide between the three instead of forcing vendors into ridiculous business decisions like forcefully opening their own platforms for others.
18ish years after the 3rd version of the GNU General Public License, and tivoization is now the norm.
> It should be possible to run Android on an iPhone and manufacturers should be required by law to provide enough technical support and documentation to make the development of new operating systems possible.
Why?
The author doesn't explain why and I've yet to see any justification for this other than, essentially, "because I want to" - usually evoking supposed freedoms and rights that exist only in the realm of wishful thinking.
Once we have a decentralized trust protocol that has been widely adopted, it will hopefully solve most of these problems. As it stands right now, we can validate control, but not actual ownership. As such, ownership has to be proven via KYC and other centralized methods that rest on state authority. Not a good solution for those who care about privacy and individual freedom!
> It’s through this control of the operating system that Google is exerting control, not at the hardware layer.
True, but many phones use the hardware layer to prevent you from installing a different OS. It's all part of the same system designed to deny us real ownership of the computer we paid for.
For anyone saying otherwise:
There is ONLY ONE valid way to check trust - it is called keyring.
All linux distributions do use it.
Think on how you use SSL certificates on your browser, now remember that you can always import your own Certificate authority.
As simple as that. Unless you have nefarious purposes.
> When Google restricts your ability to install certain applications they aren’t constraining what you can do with the hardware you own, they are constraining what you can do using the software they provide with said hardware.
No. Incorrect. Because the argument that we should be focusing on software is a distraction. They use restricting the OS as an argument to restrict the Hardware. Their is pressure put on on hardware devs to toe this line.
You can see this with secure enclaves. If they didn't care about what software was running on their hardware, they wouldn't be designing hardware to restrict the kind of OS you can run on the hardware. Secure Boot/UEFI is going in that direction and Mobile devices are already there to some extent.
This whole argument is a distraction designed to lure people away from the real problem. That all technology (Hardware and Software) is being designed to restrict freedoms. If you are focus on this distraction, you are missing the point.
It is interesting, that when Apple, with small steps, slowly disallowed any kind of sideloading merely nobody took notice of it... and now Google is doing the same, and whole internet protest. Who knows, maybe fact that now there is no alternative for tech-savy, and people are angry now it is good thing in longer perspective for both platforms.
I don't think government should be involved here, but what they can do is (a) always provide alternatives where interacting with government doesn't require a smartphone or apps, and (b) mandate the same for regulated or essential industries like banks and airlines etc.
I'm not convinced there is some inalienable right to load an OS onto any hardware but said hardware/OS should never be on the critical path to anything a citizen needs to do.
I'm two days into switching my Pixel 6 from Android to GrapheneOS. No issues so far. I haven't set up my banking app, but it's supposed to be supported.
I don't really agree with this take.
I do think that it should be easier for people to build and install alternative OSes on their phones.
However, building your own mobile OS is just really hard. And on top of the technical challenges, the UX challenges, the overall polish challenges, there are non-technical challenges that are often impossible for alternative OSes.
* Industry connections problems. As an example, no open source mobile OS has a contactless payments app, at least not one that is generic and can support more or less any credit card out there. That is, you can't build an Apple/Google Wallet analogue and have it work.
* As much as I wish Jobs had stuck to his guns on the "no iPhone SDK" thing, and had instead developed and improved the mobile web stack, that's not the reality today. There are many things you just cannot do current mobile OSes through its web browser. Native apps are required there. And so that means companies need to choose the platforms they build for. Today that's easy: iOS and Android. But getting governments and banks and various companies to build apps for your niche mobile OS is going to be essentially impossible. And with closed-source kitchen-sink libraries like Google Play Services, it's incredibly difficult even to get a lot of Android apps running properly (and consistently reliably) on "de-Googled" Android phones.
Ultimately the real problem is that there's no capable, standardized, OS-agnostic platform for building mobile apps. The web platform could have been it, but it's not, and now Apple and Google have a vested interest in ensuring that it never can be, because building native iOS and Android apps locks people and companies into those ecosystems.
Ultimately^2 the real problem is that free markets are a myth, and don't work. Companies want to become monopolies, and want to bar new entrants. I would absolutely love some mandate/legislation/whatever that made it mandatory that we have a fully open source mobile OS, and that all the players involved need to be allowed to build equivalent functionality into it that Android and iOS have. I know that sounds radical and like government overreach (and current governments wouldn't go for it anyway). But the alternative is what we have today: monopolists that don't care about the rights of their customers. There's really no "free-market" way out of this.
The first step is legally mandated unlocking of bootloaders.
More and more phones are locking them down until exploits are found to unlock them.
The situation we have is fine. You can make hardware with features these people want, or you can make hardware with features those people want.
It has never been easier to realize your own open source hardware platform. Those dedicated to freedom can chose to offer alternatives. The challenge is we don't live in a post job society and people need to make money to survive. Until that changes, practical professionals will gravitate towards non-ideal systems that optimize for short term value over freedom.
Why not launch a new startup focused on building an open smartphone? This is HN after all, with the right pitch someone will throw money at it.
I know I'm going to get downvoted to hell for this, but I genuinely think it's OK for a device manufacturer to say: "we are building this device to run this software. If you don't want to run this software, then don't buy this device. There are plenty of other devices out there that will run other software, you can buy one of those if you want to run other software - our devices are designed to only run our software, and we're only going to support that".
I think that's a huge difference from the sideloading issue, though. Which is effectively saying "you must purchase all your software for this device from us, even if it's not our software, and even if it's available elsewhere for less".
I get how one statement creates the monopoly that allows the other statement, but I think they are still two separate statements.
The first thing that came to mind when I heard hardware we own was vehicles like a Rivian where they do run a lot of software. I can understand why they'd not want people to run software in order to avoid bad press. If someone writes something and things go wrong, it will look bad for the manufacturer, even if they're not at fault.
Much harder to make a secure device that is resistant to getting pwn'd if you can run any code you want. I personally prefer my iPhone to be more secure than to be more open.
Buy a more open phone if you want one, but stop trying to use legal means to force the software on my phone to be worse for my use-case just because you want to have your cake and eat it too.
If you share the post opinion, it means you believe there is value in an hardware that provides enough details in order to run any software we want on it. If that is the case, go build a company that builds such an hardware.
You already have that ability, afaik there is nothing stopping you or your friends from loading and running whatever software you want except your own technical ability.
If you want the government to force other people to do the work to let you have your cake and eat it too, I can't support that.
I just want to wake one day and install desktop Linux on my iPad.
The only way this happens is if people & organizations vote with their $$.
My immediate follow-up to people who take this position: Are you using Framework laptops, pinephone or other OSS devices already? If not, then it's just empty air -- vote with your $$.
We as tech enthusiasts killed a viable 3rd option. For all its warts Microsoft created a great mobile os, but we killed it. If we could convince them to bring it back to be the true alternative to the existing duopoly in might fix these issues.
Going to be contrarian.
Why not build your own hardware and run your own software on it, instead of screaming at clouds of big tech.
There is Fairphone as an example so it is possible to build/buy hardware directly.
Hardware vendors are like creepy ex's that won't let go. You sold the device. Move on. It's not yours anymore.
Truly logical thinking to me :D
We need a law to have mandatory storage of precise and complete technical specification to be able to write drivers for hardware peripherals. With heavy fines if they are incomplete.
Technically true, the worst kind of true.
The original phrase is good as is and much better than this nitpicking if we'd like to see actual movement on the issue.
“I should be able to run whatever code I want on hardware I own”
> Forcing Apple to change core tenets of iOS by legislative means would undermine what made the iPhone successful.
Even if this is true… so what? Perhaps the App Store monopoly has helped make the iPhone successful, but that doesn't make it a good thing.
> If you want to play Playstation games on your PS5 you must suffer Sony’s restrictions, but if you want to convert your PS5 into an emulator running Linux that should be possible.
Why? What if Sony's restrictions are bad? Why are we ceding corporations the right to treat us however they want, so long as we're using their software?
You shouldn't have to flash a new OS onto your hardware in order for it to respect you as its user & owner. You shouldn't need to be tech-savvy, either. The happy path for the median user should be privacy and freedom.
Free/libre alternatives to consumer software are always going to be second-class, because respecting users is at odds with making money off them. If we people to be treated well by tech, it's not enough to provide an alternative ecosystem. We have to deny corporations the option to treat users badly in the first place.
Interesting perspective but unfortunately with smartphones you'll have cellular carriers lock down their bootloaders because of bogus "security" reasons.
In order to create a new type of right, we need a term that can be promoted. For exemple "The Right to Digital Autonomy".
But we can't. Not on PS5, not on Iphone..
I can't recall a post staying at the top this long. I hope this is a sign of how hard we're going to reject Google's stance.
isn't that google just make the android reach parity with iOS???
this is happening with apple ecosystem since forever and people fine with it, so what is the issue here???
oh I know, people mad because someone take what they been able used to
not because they cant sideload. you can (just need an developer account for that)
My PS5 is lying around being useless for me now.
Realistically there would be a non-zero cost to allowing this, tech support, or compliance issues, or even PR issues when somebody’s modified hardware does something bad. So few people actually care or want this, it doesn’t feel like a fight worth having as a unilateral mission.
I want my less tech savvy family members to be able to buy locked-to-the-company-store hardware, that they can’t run other things on, as it protects them from one avenue of scams and hacks. This protection can and will be worked around if it can be easily disabled.
Fully open phone systems consistently fail to sell enough to make a difference, which is a bit of a shame, but honestly at this point the market has spoken.
> Forcing Apple to change core tenets of iOS by legislative means would undermine what made the iPhone successful.
Successful for whom? If you're talking about the commercial success of apple through lock down behaviour, sure. But there is *nothing* that would prevent them from providing the exact same experience while adding a toggle in settings "allow sideloading". You want the "crisp" experience that comes from apple's strict review process, just use the official app store.
Looking at android till now, it is still possible to offer a "certified" os that is flexible enough for you to use foss stores. The argument pretending that removing sideloading is customer centric are borderline fallacious. I don't think that playing on semantics between hardware and OS changes any of that
Nope. The masses have voted with their wallets for the walled garden approach. Maybe if the Linux phone wasn't as terrible or worse than bottom contender Android devices the argument could stand. In an era where move fast and break things is business as usual, we've correctly chosen the devices that just work, even when we must sell our privacy to make it so. The days of IBM/PC compatible are ancient history.
This seems counter intuitive.
All nflix da should require is the interfaces outer needs.
Network stack CODECS CRYPTO stack (DRM)
The OS seems irrelevant.
I mean sure you worked be limited to whatever interface a browser could provide.
It's not as if certification of a certain operating system means anything other than the certificate.
Netflix used play4sure beck in my days at Apple, and literally t out was a tick box for them to assure the content owners they had DRM.
Nobody certified apple's netflix app for ATV back then, I know, Ben Lee and I wrote it...
We desperately need OS research, exokernels should be a thing by now, at least then the question becomes moot.
Windows, (alphabet)OS, Linux and BSD all provide operating systems that enable productive work but there's a lot of cruft
You can’t run any code you want on the phone because of the radios.
This reminds me of the early days of gaming consoles where modchips were a grey area. The iPhone jailbreaking exemption in DMCA was a rare win for user rights, but we've seen that precedent hasn't extended much beyond phones. The technical capability exists - it's purely policy/business decisions blocking it.