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Comment by p1mrx | Hacker News Reader

The community could work around this problem by creating an open source general purpose app runtime for Android.

A user would install the runtime, signed by a developer who shared their government ID with Google, and then use the runtime to launch whatever app they want. It's probably infeasible to launch an APK from another APK, so the runtime could be based on WASIX+WebView or something.

We could call it "General Computation". Google could start a cat and mouse game of banning developers who sign the app, but at least this "war on general computation" would be obvious and ironic.

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This would be removed from the app store faster than you can say Jack Robinson.

It doesn't need to be on the Play store, as long as they allow sideloading apps from known developers.

It would be challenging for Google to argue that the app should be banned entirely, as it's basically a web browser with extra APIs, like TCP/UDP sockets.

They would ban the developer, or its key or whatever and ask him to register again and not do this again. They won't allow any workaround like this to exist because then the whole system has no purpose, they need to have control.

I think banning developers just for giving users freedom would be bad for PR. Google would have to admit that they are fighting their own users, not fighting malware.

It wouldn't be any worse PR than the current one. They'd use the same argument to ban that guy's app as they use now to ban sideloading. That it's not secure and it's a protection of users to ban it.

This is "one weird trick" thinking, but there's no tech-based counter if the device manufacturer is determined enough.

Developers shouldn't have to share personal information with Google or anyone. The real solution here is unlocked bootloaders and free/libre operating systems. Anything less and you don't truly own your phone. You can only use it to the extent allowed by Google/Apple.

I think the real question here, aside from how to displace Android and IOS, is: how do the developers get paid for the upgrades, new features, security analysis and fixes, developing new boards and coming up with bsp (board support packages, essentially a "distribution" for hardware manufacturers that works on whatever new boards they relase) and infrastructure of such an OS.

Let's just assume this is about the amount of effort Mozilla puts in. So they'd need to collect ~500 million per year.

Where does that money come from? Presumably the answer can't be Google.

Isn't what you're describing basically just a PWA? Minus the signing shenanigans anyway.

PWAs can't use TCP/UDP sockets. There's probably other interesting stuff in WASIX worth supporting.

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