Join the discussion
Write your take first — we'll ask for email only when you're ready to publish.
- Hacker News
- It makes me a little sad that there’s no mention of Raymond Carver in this thread. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_We_Talk_About_When_We_Tal... The current state of dominant mobile OS’s is about as bleak as the bleakest Carver story. Since I’m on a tangent I’ll also highly recommend the movie Shortcuts.by klawed
- Also recommended: BIRDMAN or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)by marcprux
- Note that the Android permission system is designed so that you are not in control by design, some permissions are "not for you" and only for "system apps" which you can't control. This gives Google and device manufacturers advantage over third party software developers in the name of security...
I think we should focus on defending the slowly-vanishing ability to unlock the bootloader and fight for the core parts of Android to stay open source.. without these two, installing an APK will mean less and less until it might eventually become synonymous with installing a PWA.
by zb3 - A great example of this is the 'networking' permission. Being able to control which app can speak to the WAN/LAN is a very important security consideration. Instead, every Android app can send any data it wants without the user being able to have a say in the matter. A lot of apps work just fine without being able to 'phone home'.
Thankfully there's the likes of GrapheneOS, however, with Google's recent changes, unless their OEM partner pulls through, their days are likely numbered.
- On MacOS it warns you when you're about to open an app you've downloaded and installed yourself. "Foo has been downloaded from the internet, are you sure you want to open it?". It doesn't stop you from installing it. Why should doing so on your phone be any different?by ef2k
- > Why should doing so on your phone be any different?
Because it's obscenely profitable for the platform holder to have complete control over app distribution.
Can we stop pretending it's about anything else than that? Just imagine if Microsoft got a 30% commission on every PC software purchase in the world...
by CrossVR - If you install the binary directly, but obviously it does not ask when you are installing through a store like brew...by greatgib
- it also sometimes says `"Foo" Not Opened` `"Apple could not verify “Foo” is free of malware that may harm your Mac or compromise your privacy."` This is frankly pretty insulting to the intelligence of the user and /does/ stop them. I think the paradigm is flowing towards "less" rather than "more"by WorldPeas
- macOS warns you literally about every downloaded app not from MAS (signed!), unless you build it yourself or remove quarantine manually.
I think it is mostly about expectations, macOS trained people that it is relatively safe to install signed apps. If your app is unsigned, Gatekeeper will refuse to run it.
by bloomca - This is the key and only difference. Scanning is great, and security is great.
but macOS lets you override any system determination, iOS does not, and Google is proposing the iOS flavor.
by conradev - I believe they are saying that this update will remove the ability to decide if you want to install it and will require developers to register and pay for their applications to be installable at all. It's been several years since I developed for Mac, but they operated a similar way, secretly marking a file as quarantined and saying "XYZ Is Damaged and Can’t Be Opened. You Should Move It To The Trash" if you didn't pay to play. Maybe this has since changed, or maybe I'm just a dummy. Regardless, whether a platform has any business funneling a user into their walled garden is another philosophical argument altogether.by spcebar
- Depending on your app this is not all.
If i send a golang binary to someone with a mac via signal or other mediums, apple simply displays a dialog that the app is damaged and can't be run.
You need to use chmod to manually remove the quarantine flag to run it.
That for me is something that should be fined ad infinitum, because it is clearly designed to disallow non technical people to run custom apps.
by bpfrh - You know, this would be a fantastic time for Google to get their sandbox in order. If we need to do it like this, go ahead and create a secondary user, call it sandbox and let me install all my wild and unapproved apps there. SecureNet can automatically fail in Sandbox.
But I don't think they're going to do that, ultimately users who actually care about this are an absolute tiny percentage of the market.
And weirdos like us can always just import a Chinese phone that doesn't have mandatory Google verification crap.
by 999900000999 - Or just install an alternative AOSP-based OS. Ironically one of the best phones for that is the Pixel, because it runs GrapheneOS.by palata
- I haven't tested it myself, but as far as I know you can run ADB in the phone itself via Termux. Perhaps it's possible to make a wrapper that install apps from F-Droid with ADB? It would mean that you would only need to be tethered to the your PC once.
Obviously they'll eventually remove this because Google is hostile to things like ReVanced / some spook wants this power.
by lisdexan - But what would be the point when no one would bother writing an app for such a small user base?
- But the purpose of prohibiting sideloading isn't security. It's preventing of apps like NewPipe and Vanced.by Manuel_D
- > And weirdos like us can always just import a Chinese phone that doesn't have mandatory Google verification crap.
No, we can't. One of the first countries with that mandatory Google verification is Brazil, and we can't import phones which are not certified by ANATEL, they will be rejected by customs in transit.
by cesarb - The existing comments here somehow display a big amount of discomfort with the semantics of the article, not so much with the points argued...by ainiriand
- Sorry, but "welcome to HN?" Commenters here regularly miss the forest for the trees, ratholing on minutiae and nitpicking one or two words in a 1000 word article. Often totally missing the overall point. We're notorious for it.by ryandrake
- Dear F-droid, please edit your article to be technically correct so that HN can like it. All you have to do is change "coined" to "popularized".by card_zero
- As an iOS user who's been frustrated with Apple's approach to "self-loading" (i.e., running your own code on your own devices) and who's actually gone out and gotten Android devices to write PoC/PoV apps on instead, I really don't like Google's stance on this--even if I would not, at this time, choose to daily drive an Android device, I do rely on F-Droid for getting software on six or seven different devices _right now_ and they would be useless to me if I couldn't do it.by rcarmo
- This year, I discovered SideStore on iOS, and its wonderful auto-refresh feature. Since then, I have written two iOS apps and am happily using them daily with zero issues. This plus the new Google announcement mean no going back to Android for me any time soon.by vagab0nd
- The fact that we don't have root access to our phones is insane. This "sideloading" part is just the cherry on top of the dystopia we live in.by zouhair
- And if you do have root, there is a good chance you're blocked from using common services on your phone such as mobile banking.by fiso64
- The result of this is very deep. Apple/Google effectively control what consumer technologies and services are allowed to gain traction.by andoando
- That's also a large part of the issue IMO. I currently _have_ root on my rooted and Lineaged Poco F3. But as hardware attestation is becoming the norm I am deeply worried about the future. I have been a pretty eager Android fan due to its achievable-if-savvy openness. If I lose root and sideloading, then Android is dead to me. There would be nothing valuable in it, just another corporate walled garden.by kuratkull
- Author here. I admit I am rather startled by the tone of many comments here and the accusations of disingenuity. Splitting hairs about the origin of the term "sideload" does not change the fact that those who promote the term tend to do so in order to make it feel deviant and hacker-ish. You don't "sideload" software on your Linux, Windows, or macOS computer: you install it.
You have the right to install whatever you want on your computer, regardless of whether that computer is on your desk or in your pocket. That's a hill I'll die on. I'm dismayed to see that this sentiment is not more widespread in this of all communities.
by marcprux - FWIW, thank you and the team for all the hard work. Me and my family use it to install, discover, and try out many of the genuinely useful and really cool, high-quality Apps on our de-Googled devices and truly appreciate it. I could never imagine using that ad-ridden, user-tracking, scam-infested, filth-flinging abomination they call Play "Store". The only thing that's worse is GCM - you don't even see it's there as a regular user.by twothreeone
- Hey, I hope you have a nice day. F-droid is one of the communities which was really a key role in, what open source project should I recommend if given the power to, for people to gain maximum impact on, and f-droid was one of the tops in that charts, so much so that I really tinkered with android apps creation with rust/tauri just to create an android app for f-droid (building android apps is hard I must admit, which makes my appreciation for apps on f-droid even more lovely)
> You have the right to install whatever you want on your computer, regardless of whether that computer is on your desk or in your pocket. That's a hill I'll die on
I feel like there are some phones, I will say my honest experience, I had a xiaomi phone which required me to unlock the bootloader for me to root it/ remove the spyware that I feel it has, I never felt safe really (maybe paranoia?) but I wanted an open source operating system on it and that required me to unlock my bootloader
Which required me to create an MI Unlock / MI account which then later required me to open up a windows computer and try to do things with the windows computer
I didn't have a windows computer, I am a linux guy and I didn't want to touch windows and I tried any option available on linux (there was a java thing and some other exploit too but both failed)
Later, I tried to actually install win-boat and tried to install the mi tool in it after so many nights of work and I tried and it actually opened but it asked me for the otp to sign up but I don't know if I overwhelmed their system or not but their OTP just straight up didn't show on the phone's sim I had registered on.
That OTP not coming after 5-6 tries, I am not sure if they had detected it was win-boat or what, but idk, that effectively locks me out of ways to unlock the device and remove some spyware functionality I think it has.
I feel like this case made me feel as if although I had a device, it feels like a license when you think about it. This is true for many other consumer devices as well and thus, people accepting the fact that their devices have become similar to licenses, not hardware which they own, but rather software which they rent
> I'm dismayed to see that this sentiment is not more widespread in this of all communities.
I feel like your message is in the right heart, and its honestly okay, sad even, that some part of the community didn't respond to your message in agreement.
But Honestly, please don't lose hope because of this, You and people/foundations like f-droid,linux etc. inspire a sense of confidence for a good future while actively working on it. I was thinking of trying to host some f-droid mirror but I didn't personally because I was a little skeptical of getting any notices or anything after the f-droid team had created a blog post about something similar.
Also one thing, I would try to tell you is that you are trying your best. And that's all that matters. What doesn't matter is the past or the future or how the community responds but rather doing what you think is right with correct intentions which I think you do a perfect job in.
Doing the right thing can be difficult but maybe in a world where doing the right thing isn't rewarded as much in even mere appreciation or sharing the sentiment whereas doing the wrong thing is financially rewarded. its a complicated world we live in, but hopefully, we all can try to make it a little more beautiful for us and our future generations by trying to do things the right way no matter how hard they are, just because its the right thing.
I may speak these things but I myself regularly contradict these. So I don't feel the best guy speaking this stuff but I just want to say that f-droid really means a lot to me, a recent example is how I ditched that xiaomi phone, used my mum's old moto phone, tried to install termux from playstore but it couldn't download for some reason from play store because it was android 8 yet theoretically it should work, but I then opened up f-droid and installed it from there and I am running a termux/gitea server on it now :)
Please, have a nice day, F-droid/you deserve it, I just hope that you recognize that there are people's lives that you have touched (like my termux thing and there are countless other stories as well) and how impactful the project is.
Lets use this comment as a way to show our appreciation to f-droid in whatever ways it has touched our lives and how effectively google's recent moves are really gonna impact f-droid/ hurt us as well. How I wouldn't have been able to run git server on my phone if it wasn't for f-droid and so much more.