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Comment by nimbius | Hacker News Reader

This isnt going to be a popular post because the HN crowd is very much a "China bad" crowd but I hypothesize China will likely step in and offer a fork that's compatible with open ecosystems not under the direct control of the us state department. This might be in the form of commits and investment in fdroid and pinephone, or a tiktok like alternative to the wests walled garden.

Edit: this will likely exist "uncensored" in other markets but conform to the PRCs standards and practices domestically, similarly to how tiktok operated prior to selling a version specifically taylored to US censorship and propaganda.

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Not a chance. A fork that is under China's control, maybe, but not an "open" fork. They don't even pretend to have that as a value.

You may theoretically find it advantageous to use such a system anyhow. To a first-order approximation, the danger a government poses to you is proportional to its proximity to you. (In the interests of fairness, I will point out, so are the benefits a government may offer to you. In this case it just happens to be the dangers we are discussing.) Using the stack of a government based many thousands of miles/kilometers away from you may solve a problem for you, if you judge they are much less likely to use it against you than your local government.

But China certainly won't put out an "open" anything.

Not sure if you have been following the LLM space or even the emulator handhelds space, but Chinese companies have been doing great with putting out open source software lately.

Or the TikTok space - TikTok got worse privacy/data collection wise after the US government intervention/acquisition.

https://arena.ai/leaderboard/text?license=open-source

The irony is that software coming from China is a lot more open than western software. Biggest examples are huggingface models mostly coming from Chinese institutions. Its also strategicaly wise for China to go this path.

> China will likely step in and offer a fork that's compatible with open ecosystems not under the direct control of the us state department.

Where you been? They already had Huawei get kickbanned by Google and made their own OS (it's not more open): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HarmonyOS

Maybe a shift to Huaweis HarmonyOS with its android compatibility layer or SailfishOS if they play their cards right.

As far as HarmonyOS i dont see many uptakes outside strict US free requirements as the other OEMs are lazy and also dont want to be locked into a competitor.

SailfishOS looks like its your time to faceplant once more , by not having a proper stratergy on monetizing on the many missteps from the current monopoly.I thonk at this point they need a leadership/biz stratergy overhaul - the tech is nice and polished, user demand is off the charts for an alternative . And they are just .. missing. Not even in th e conversation.

As of version 5, HarmonyOS doesn't have the Android compatibility layer. There are emulators that allow APKs to run, but they're a bit clunky.

Ah if they can get the emulators to the level that Rosetta worked on OSX would be acceptable for hardto port apps.

Pinephone is tragic, bought a bunch of Pine64's devices (PP, PPP, PB, PBuds, arm tablet, eInk tablet) but old tech, missing drivers, can't blame em no money no drivers... Still the community on Discord is great/helpful people.

That'd be great but I'm not feeling like the Chinese market is too worried about open development. I got a Huawei Watch 5 as a gift and I liked it enough to try to develop my own apps (their app store is a wasteland) but to my surprise Harmony OS is not Android compatible (just Android based somehow). The watch's developer mode is useless. Trying to register a developer account is almost impossible and it seems they only allow chinese nationals and there's no plan to open registration. I couldn't even download their custom IDE (something like Android Studio) without an account.

Maybe it's just my experience.

As far as I know, China forbids open bootloaders on its territory so it's not where you'll see any open ecosystem.

Not Google controlled for sure but also not open.

I don’t think China will do that at all. They’ll move to HarmonyOS.

Competition needs to come from somewhere due to lack of antitrust enforcement in the US. If not China then hopefully elsewhere.

The US system is dying from lack of competition.

> a "China bad" crowd

Government bad. Big government worse.

I would rather put my phone in the microwave than run Chinese Communist Party OS.

Half, or more, of the world thinks exactly the same in regards to the US

If 50% of the world started running the CCP backed fork and 50% of the world ran the US backed fork, which one would you choose for your phone?

Whatever one that lets me install what I want

If there were truly no other choice, CCP without a doubt. At least they claim to have good intentions, whether that's true or not

The Chinese one, obviously.

Chinese of course. Never used it. Can't wait to test out something different.

Meanwhile the NSA and Mossad can see you fapping on your phone and scan your face in real time and you're implicitly fine with it

This is what lack of options does to a MF

This made me laugh cause of how true it is.

Nah, that can't be true. Just imagine the traffic peak the first day after NNN if they're streaming from your phone in real time.

I'm just imagining the poor intern at the NSA having to sit in a dimly lit room with an array of 64 x 64 monitors mounted on a wall, watching the O-faces of thousands and thousands of fat, balding, middle age men for hours straight.

Yeah, I’m amazed at how far the western surveillance apparatus has been able to coast on plausible deniability. Folks, please don’t stick your head in the sand domestically just because there’s an even more obvious or egregious example abroad.

Say it with me: “Living in a police state is bad no matter who’s running it”.

Why? If I had to choose, I'd much rather use a phone controlled by a jurisdiction in which I don't live or have any business.

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