Comment by Sebb767 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Sebb767 | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> The resigning stuff is because they alter the apps to fix dependence on Google play apis and gsuite apis.

Except the article clearly states:

> Amazon wraps your app with code that enables the app to communicate with the Amazon Appstore client to collect analytics, evaluate and enforce program policies, and share aggregated information with you. Your app will always communicate with the Amazon Appstore client when it starts

Now, the original reason to do this might have been benign and well-intentioned, but the result is bad already. This is for now, who says they don't simply add ads like Google [0], or even without the developers knowledge like SF [1] once did? Ubuntu tried to only implement a search and it backfired badly [2], I hope this goes down a similar path.

As a side-note: Of course I'm very happy that competition to the PlayStore is getting some love. This is direly needed. But Microsoft could have gone with F-Droid easily. Trading a bad thing for something worse does not fill me with joy.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27643208

[1] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/05/sourc...

[2] https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2012/11/01/ubuntu-search-am...

> But Microsoft could have gone with F-Droid easily.

Slipping that in at the end really hurts your argument. Microsoft opting to use F-Driod would be worse than starting from scratch and only benefit F-Droid.

Presenting F-Droid as an equivalent to any of the large stores is like trying to say a lending library in someone's front yard is the equivalent to Barnes & Noble or Amazon.

It's borderline delusional to compare F-Droid to the big players in much the same way it's silly to compare FOSS apps like GIMP to Photoshop. Sure it performs the same core function but they're in completely different classes.

They aren't equivalents unless you willfully ignore a lot of differences and that is just dishonest.

I did not read Sebb767's comment that way. I read it as one user thinking about alternatives and stating what is technically possible. Technicaly no one needs an "app store", i.e., middleman, to run a program on a computer; meantime, F-Droid works. I think the strange analogies you make are just abstractions you have created in your mind. The comment you replied to offered no such bizarre analogies. HN is a site for intellectual curiosity. Trying to censor or bully free-thinking users into accepting the narrow-minded marketing of large corporations like Microsoft and Amazon is arguably not this forum's highest and best use.

> I read it as one user thinking about alternatives and stating what is technically possible

You're exactly right; my thought process was "if they want to go with an existing store, F-Droid might be an option".

> Trying to censor or bully free-thinking users into accepting the narrow-minded marketing of large corporations like Microsoft and Amazon is arguably not this forum's highest and best use.

I think cptskippy just wanted to say that F-Droid is in no way a suitable replacement; since he read my comment in a different way, he just emphasized this more than necessary :)

As 1vuio0pswjnm7 already correctly pointed out, my suggestion was based on the fact that if they wanted to go with an existing infrastructure, F-Droid would be a possibility.

> It's borderline delusional to compare F-Droid to the big players in much the same way it's silly to compare FOSS apps like GIMP to Photoshop. Sure it performs the same core function but they're in completely different classes.

I disagree with that. The software itself is clearly irrelevant in this case as they will hardly run the actual store app on windows and the required infrastructure is not a big problem for Microsoft. The existing app base is what matters.

To be fair, though, I wasn't aware of how alive the Amazon app store actually is.

> Your app will always communicate with the Amazon Appstore client when it starts

One of the consequences of this is that apps refuse to start if they haven't been able to connect with the Store in the past `x` days.

F-Droid is just way too small, it has ~4000 apps vs ~500000 for Amazon's appstore.

Have you actually spent time in the Amazon android ecosystem?

It's absolutely terrible. Total amount of available apps is not a good metric for quality.

Agreed. 95% of all those apps are useless and rehashes of existing apps in some way. And the only reason the whole thing doesn't fall over is because of semi-random search that "spreads" some portion of user downloads to lower quality (or less popular) apps, thereby incentivizing the spaghetti-throwing-at-the-wall ecosystem that is the app stores.

Curation models are better in that sense, because they have a limit that forces a quality filter. The alternative is just an evolution of the spam model. You see it with Google turning the web into blog spam, YouTube with videos, ebay/Amazon/aliexpress with "products", and the app stores with their 5million "apps".

My guess though is that most of these apps haven't been updated for years.

I mean, we could also ask Apple to officially support Homebrew while we're at it. The bottom line is... well, the bottom line. Microsoft is very willing to diversify it's partnerships as it's heading into a new decade, and I bet Amazon wasn't adverse to shaking some money their way for routing it all through their services.

It's not great, but it's significantly better (imho) than if they had exclusively chosen the Play Store. It's a creative way to gently pressure developers to publish to additional marketplaces, which indirectly pressures Apple since the Microsoft Store now doesn't force developers to route payments through their system (thusly reducing Microsoft's "cut" to 0% for many apps)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com