There are a lot of poor people, mostly brown people, who do not have the ability to get one of these licenses.
Some of them are feeding themselves with their ability to write, and Google is literally stealing that food from their mouths.
This is new to me, want to stay on top of it.
To "write", I mean the precursor to "read".
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html
> Are you talking about literature / articles, or software?
All of the above.
> This is new to me, want to stay on top of it.
I am sorry to tell you it is not too new. Google tried this before recently with something called WEI (which you might be able to find on ddg or other search engines): It failed for reasons few people know for sure[1], but the initiative had the same basic bullshit about security, and the same outcomes.
[1]: The story I heard was a couple South-American countries noticed that this would prevent their people from being able to work on software that runs in the Google ecosystem and threatened to block Google en masse. Since then, one of the countries that Google has a lot of offices in invaded one of those South American Countries for conveniently unrelated reasons.
Separately, the process of installing apps that are outside a system app store and aren't verified has also changed, but this is not required by the developer verification feature, and the result seems like a wash to me. The first time you enable installing apps from other sources is harder, but this setting then persists across device upgrades, so the subsequent times go away completely. This now requires developer mode, but apps that check developer mode (I haven't found any in the US) can be mollified with a Tasker task to disable developer mode when launching those apps and enable it again after.
> Should a developer[...] elect to register themself with Google as a “verified” developer, they should expect to sign up for an account and pay a fee, surrender detailed personal information and upload government-issued identification, and then proceed to register the identifiers and signing keys for all the apps they intend to distribute (now or ever).
Those are big impediments to open development. The agreement developers sign states:
> 6.5 If You violate any of the Terms or if You distribute malware or other harmful applications, Google may terminate Your access to the ADC…
But they don't actually define "malware" anywhere in the document. Search HN if you want to hear horror stories about how google handles loose definitions and peoples' accounts.
The correct thing to complain about is requiring developer mode for unverified installs, which doesn't seem necessary, not ADV. If you complain about ADV, of course the legislators are going to ignore you. ADV makes Google builds strictly more open and resolves the complaints of the state.
>The correct thing to complain about is requiring developer mode for unverified installs, which doesn't seem necessary
I had assumed the friction was to dissuade developers from not going through ADV. Isn't it partly for making malware distribution more traceable and campaigns easier to halt on GMS/certified Android systems?
They can already install additional system app stores, so it would surprise me if they can't allow additional verifiers.
> Isn't it partly for making malware distribution more traceable
Enabling developer mode does not make malware distribution more traceable.