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Comment by nzmsv | Hacker News Reader

Open? In what universe? They are blatant GPL violators: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/hl09g7/onyx_boox_chi...

Open because it runs Android and I can install any apps I want and even root the thing if I wanted to. (And by default it runs without google play services)

Compare this to the Remarkable who probably does not violate the GPL but whose software platform does not allow me to simply add more functionality.

Good example of “practically open” to “technically in the GNU sense ... bla bla bla”.

Isn't remarkable a simple linux system with qt applications that you can modify as you like?

It's not as simple, though. The stock Qt application which contains the entire GUI is completely closed-source meaning that if you want to do even something as simple as adding a simple menu to launch your custom application you have to binary-monkey-patch the main GUI exec. This is as terrible as it sounds.

> whose software platform does not allow me to simply add more functionality

https://github.com/reHackable/awesome-reMarkable

So on one hand I have a few applications by some dudes on github and on the other I can install apps like firefox, the kindle app, read-it-later clients like wallabag, etc.

I think the phrase here would be "no consumer friendly customization".

Personally I would choose the reMarkable rather than any Android one _precisely_ because I find the reMarkable to be the one that is "more open in practice" one (it even lets you know the root password by default), even though Android is technically much more open source. By experience, I know the former category of devices tends to age much better.

With the limited internal storage there is not much future-proofness to me. A folder I sync to my device with PDF, books, etc. is close to 6GB. There is not much room left for others.

The way it looks remarkable wants to introduce a paid cloud service. Also ironically, they are very closed down in their communication.

There's a practical angle to this too. Without them opening their kernel modifications you are at the mercy of some small company in China for all future support and security updates.

I JUST learned this googling around because of this post.

This is such a bummer to me — I’m not going to toss my 6” Onyx but I probably won’t buy one of their other products now.

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