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Comment by notacoward | Hacker News Reader

Interesting point buried in here: since Android is open source, you could go in and fix the bug, but then because you're not running an official Android version you'd lose access to the Play Store and other services. Something's not really free if there's a penalty for doing it. Since freedom to run a modified version of software yourself is one of the four freedoms of free software, this highlights the difference between free software and open source.

I'm not saying open source is bad and everyone should prefer free software. It's just a good example of the difference between the two in practice rather than in some debate about licenses and the abstract principles behind them.

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You can run the play store just fine on lineageos, which has modifications and isn't official.

https://www.google.com/android/uncertified/ just need to register here as of earlier this year apparently

Apparently Play Store is unaffected, but some other apps - banking, streaming, even Pokemon Go - will break. And your warranty (including hardware) is voided. So I stand corrected, and thank you, but I don't think the correction affects the main point.

Those apps are making a conscious decision to exclude phones/roms not certified by Google. That's their choice.

Generally hardware warranty will remain if it's purely a hardware issue - you can always flash back anyway.

Android is free software in the sense that you can make and distribute modified versions. If app vendors choose to discriminate against those versions that doesn't make it unfree any more than software supporting windows and not Linux makes Linux unfree

> Android is free software in the sense that you can make and distribute modified versions.

I don't think that's enough to make it free software, and "free software in the sense..." is nonsensical. Free software would guarantee the continuance of that freedom. Since that guarantee doesn't exist, Google could place limitations on the Play Store at any time. The fact that they haven't makes the example less clear, but it doesn't make Android free software. Even Google doesn't claim that it is.

Play store isn't part of Android. Even if it was only available to specific phones, that wouldn't make Android unfree.

Play store isn't open source at all.

Amazon was able to take Android and put it on their extremely popular devices with 0 support from Google, no play store. That's what I call freedom

> Play store isn't part of Android.

It is extremely well integrated into it, by design.

Play store isn't part of AOSP.

> Those apps are making a conscious decision to exclude phones/roms not certified by Google. That's their choice.

Isn’t the entire point of Google’s certification process to encourage app vendors to make that choice?

No, only for apps that value certified behavior over accessibility. Typically this is payments (high liability for fraud, higher fraud rates from non-certified users), DRM, and multiplayer gaming (prevent cheating).

Some Android OEMs will allow you to unlock the bootloader and makes changes to the OS without any warranty problems.

The problem with this is that the bootloader is now becoming more and more locked down and the consumers have to jump ever more hoops to unlock it.

Some years ago I had Samsung S2 where unlocking the bootloader was an offline activity. I don't remember how but doing that was quick and easy. Now I own a MotoG4 where unlocking means going to some website, entering my email address and then receiving unlock code in my email. If Motorola knows my email address, or can link the (supposedly unique) unlock code to my phone, what's stopping them from voiding my warranty?

I have a hunch that newer versions of some mainstream phones do not allow unlocking the bootloader, and this is going to become more and more common.

Newest Samsungs cannot be unlocked

Magisk takes care of that.

It’s not legal to void your warranty because you changed some software, unless the software change actually caused the problem you’re trying to get fixed under warranty.

> It’s not legal to void your warranty because you changed some software, unless the software change actually caused the problem you’re trying to get fixed under warranty.

Citation, please?

I’m assuming the poster is referring to the Magnuson-Moss Warrany Act: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnuson–Moss_Warranty_Act

They work. You just need to install additional software. Magisk + safetynet fix.

Yes, but for how long?

Does it matter? There are alternative stores (F-Droid, Amazon, Yalp) and microG for Google login/push notifications.

So if I make a proprietary application that only runs on, say, Ubuntu, does that mean GNU/Linux is no longer really free, since you can't replace your distro with Arch without losing access to my application?

If your application is an intrinsic part of pretty much every GNU/Linux system, then yeah, pretty much.

It's not GNU/Linux that's not free, but it makes it hard to use a GNU/Linux system that is free.

Play store is not a requirement. You can use f-droid or something similar and it has most everything you might need.

I know, and I do. In fact I don't have play services installed at all.

Unfortunately most people consider the play store to be a necessity, so its non-free nature is a problem.

> does that mean GNU/Linux is no longer really free

I'd say it's a bit of a different situation, since the two are not being designed to work together and aren't even being developed by the same people. If the Ubuntu developers made your proprietary app key to the useful running of the system, which is the more exact analogy, then I'd say yeah, they would have made it non-free.

What app is key to the useful running of Android and that refuses to run on a modified system?

there is open source and open source thru google's gates.

on the later you submit patches, they will be included in the next 2 to 3 versions of public release (if they dont't add any feature that impacts google's ad bottom line, for example, adding any sort of referrer control to chrome), then you have to hope that in those 2-3 version cycle your device is still supported, now you just have to wait for the convenient over the ait update provided by your telco or phone manufacturer (in most cases you actually need both entities to take part)

That's not Google's gates, that's the OEM's and the ISP's. Google can only control that for their own devices, and the Nexuses have always been some of the most modded ones.

Google own the merge rigths, and what goes into each version. and their process timings ensure that by the time you patch is out, your device is not getting updates anymore (update timeframe that they set both in contract with oem or via "example" via their nexus series)

What merge rights? You can build Android yourself and install it directly on your phone, and let others do the same - unless if the OEM's and ISP's gates prevent you.

unless "your device" is the emulator, there is no way to get hold of drivers or firmware for anything other than lifting them of an blessed rom ... and only if you can get the parity you need with the kernel you are using.

there's a very good reason the "supported device list" of all forks is always very, very small (even with the outlandish claims on most of them such as "supported. touch screen and modem still not working" )

just becuase the build steps for your fork project automates some of that driver/kernel lifting, doesn't make it any better.

And all of that is also gatekeeping by the OEMs.

Mobile technology moves so fast Android can't keep up with the support of all hardware out there, so you can't simply buy any smartphone and expect everything to work with the latest Android release.

It's not Android that can't keep up, it's SoC manufacturers that are lazy.

This is a poor example because Play is its own set up apps licensed by Google (paid for by manufacturers) and not core to the os itself.

> I'm not saying open source is bad and everyone should prefer free software.

Why not?

Because that debate tends to get very contentious. It's an important debate to have, but I've already been in it many times and watched it even more so I'm not particularly in the mood to go through it this morning.

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