Russia plans Linux-based mobile operating system to rival Android and iOS | Hacker News Reader

Russia plans Linux-based mobile operating system to rival Android and iOS

arstechnica.co.uk

59 pointsprostoalex54 comments

This seems kind of insane, Android is open source already. Just some modifications and any organization with enough funding can have a viable replacement to the Android that Google ships (if in doubt ask the Chinese). I don't see this getting too far. And doesn't Yandex already have a mobile OS of their own?[1] If they want to rival anything, they should try to rival Windows and promote Linux use within Russia.

[1]https://kit.yandex.com/

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ah, i spy with my little eye an enterprise developer in a government institution.

Android is for Google, by Google. The source is put someplace public each release, but development is completely behind closed doors. There is little transparency at all, on roadmaps, status of what is being worked on, status of existing bugs, etc.

If you aren't going to be part of the virtuous cycle of the Android ecosystem / OHA in general and license GMS, it makes less sense to use it as a base for something as grand as whats described in the article.

I think this is the way Google designed it.

Even if development is not public, the source code is licensed as open-source and it can be forked, which is the whole freaking point. Amazon could fork it. Nokia could fork it. One can argue that CyanogenMod is a fork as well.

What makes little sense is to start again, mostly from scratch (or from MeeGo or its successor, which is basically from scratch). This project is a failure before they started working on it.

And good luck finding a hardware manufacturer willing to produce devices with your forked version thanks to Google's draconian agreements with manufacturers.

Given that there are in fact phones on the market that do not include Google's Play or apps, such assertions need references. So what "draconian agreements" are you talking about?

That would be these agreements: http://bgr.com/2014/02/13/google-play-terms-of-service/

“the agreement places a company-wide ban on Android forks, saying OEMs are forbidden from taking ‘any actions that may cause or result in the fragmentation of Android’ and specifically disallows distributing or encouraging a third-party to distribute ‘a software development kit derived from Android.'”

Not so very open after all?

The people who have forked android have great difficulty finding OEMs to manufacture thrir devices as the list of those who don't have agreements with Google is rather short.

No one ever said that Google's services were open. The operating system itself is open. instead of starting from 0, Yandex could just modify Android and have their own market, maps... People been bitching about fragmentation in Android for years, when google changed their agreement to counter it, people are now bitching about the agreement.

The problem is that even if they create their own marketplace etc. any manufacturers who have an agreement with Google will be unable to manufacture any devices running the forked version. The restriction is company wide for the OEM.

The political motivation is transparent, there is nothing insane about protecting your ill-gotten wealth - in classical Eastern European style, the technical feasibility of this project is of little importance to the politicians whose whims are promoting it.

Ill-gotten wealth ? AFAIK Russia gets its wealth mostly from oil.

And that wealth goes straight into the pockets of corrupt officials instead of the common people, or at least infrastructure.

But then, if they make their own phone OS it does go to infrastructure, or doesn't it?

Don't buy the "Android is open source" whitewashing. They just do code drops of some parts as open source where it suits them, but keep large parts as closed source when profitable/convenient. And the open source parts aren't useful on their own, because the proprietary parts are essential parts of the system's value. And then of course come the services and the platform's tight coupling to them. The services are even more closed - unnecessarily.

Real open source systems have outside contributors and stakeholders, and developer communities. Android mostly just has app developers and a "hacking" scene (xda etc).

Yes there's a small band of Quixotic guys trying to make an open source fork limp along but it's comparable in size (and odds of success) to Amiga users/developers. It's an unusable tech experiment that only runs on a couple of antiquated phones and has no services, not the Android that people know.

The only openness-related reason to prefer Android over iOS is that they still let you install what apps you like on it (sideloading) and the app store policies are slightly less draconian than Apple's.

What about CyanogenMod?

Nothing. Fully open CyanogenMod is called Replicant, and just take a look at its support list. That's how open and free Android platforms really are.

http://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki/Replican...

Those look like it's just missing drivers? Android itself doesn't have much to do with that.

Notice that it's still based on 4.2, there are not so many of devices it can run on and even with fully documented and open platforms like GTA04 it's still a lot of work to make it run.

Plus there's absolutely no way to upstream their work, so it's a massive maintenance burden (one of the reasons they're still on 4.2)

AOSP is just what zurn said above - a code drop. If Android was really an open platform, Replicant either wouldn't be needed or Replicant devs would have much less work to do. Openness of Android is great for Chinese vendors making cheap tablets, so they have a ready system to put on them for almost free - but it's not so good as an open platform.

If they want to take surveillance to the next level, leapfrogging the other surveillance states, they could go with a text-based UI that leans heavily on AI - like Wolfram Alpha as an OS. Would save on having to keep up with UI trends and still be bleeding edge.

  User: "Open interwebs"
  Machine: "What internet site would you like to go to?"
  User: "One with email"
  Machine: "Opening email application...you have a message from Mary."
  User: "Say hello to Mary for me."
  Machine: "Reply sent."
  User: "What's on at the movies?"
  Machine: "Based on your location and love of Dear Leader, I recommend X."
  User: "Sounds expensive, how much money do I have?"
  Machine: "You have X in your account, however a Gazprom bill for X will be arriving soon."
  User: "What is the average velocity of an unladen swallow?"

That way your system is always acting as a layer between the user and the content, ensuring you not only know what they're doing, but influence it as well. It would also work on cheaper handsets.

New tanks in the age of unmaned drones and high precision veapons, state sponsored ressurection of dogmatic religions, as if last 3 hundted years of philosophy and sciences never happened, rapid transformation of the ruins of Soviet Union into an olygarhic Orwellian state.. We are still so deep in the past century, ignoring and distorting the objective reality in which we are losers who ma aged to ruin themselves due to greed and ignorance..

There are not a sigle chance of making a successful rival to Android, simply because it requires much more than a huge pile of dumb money and based on self-delusion arrogance.

> self-delusion arrogance

What else do you expect from a country lead by a guy who rides bare chested on a horse in his campaign promos? I might be biased and all, being originally from Ukraine, but this effort is clearly grandstanding and nothing else. Remember, this is the same country where one of the main news anchors goes on TV regularly, and announces how Russia is the only country in the world with with will and the technology to wipe the United States off the face of the planet. Even the politburo back in the USSR days wasn't stupid enough to say something like that, not because it isn't true, but because they understood how mutually assured destruction works. The scary part is, it's possible that the leadership in Russia really is stupid enough to do it.

Nowadays "being originally from Ukraine" is giving people the right to talk shit.

No, being a citizen of a democratic country gives me the RIGHT to talk shit.

> The scary part is, it's possible that the leadership in Russia really is stupid enough to do it.

Putin is many things, but stupid is not one of them.

You are right, he is far from stupid, but he is rather self delusional and who knows if he is all there. Stalin wasn't stupid either, but the man was certifiably insane.

Overall, it makes me so sad, because I think Russia could be such a grate country if it wasn't for their leadership. There many people inside Russia who think the same way, unfortunately they are oppressed and exterminated on regular bases. It's ironic that a country that requires bloggers to register with the government of face jail time is trying to make an open alternative phone operating system to safeguard the users data.

>New tanks in the age of unmaned drones and high precision veapons,

well, it would be only half bad if there were new tanks. In reality it were "concept-tanks" and giving the most optimistic plans and cost - first deliveries in 2018 at $8M/piece (the price projected today, it will grow significantly by then) - it means that Russia will be living through 202x and into 203x with the main body of the tank force being whatever remains by then of the current 5000 total of drivable T-72/80/90 - these old tanks already are and will be even more "lame sitting ducks" for the high-precision smart AGMs of today and tomorrow and the likes.

it will pair nicely with the fastest CPU in the world (Elbrus XXX) and the bridge to Crimea... Everything (including the bridge) will be developed in the innovation center slash nano-City - Skolkovo (built by the nano-President Medvedev (Putin's "mini-me" built using Russian nanotechnologies)) ... All while space missions continue to fall from the sky like summer night meteor shower - second in mere weeks failure - this time it was Mexican satellite - after the recent International Station cargo delivery fiasko... Russia is rising... and falling again flat on the face drunk almost to death on corruption money (and there is no other money there by the way)

bla bla bla

the listing of your submissions is remarkable (https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=trhway):

- Failed body armour test by pro-Russian rebels

- Rebels using RC drone for fire correction in the fight for Donetsk airport

- “Sea Launch” mothballed due to termination of “Zenit” launches

- “Wikipedia” refused to delete the article on cocaine at request by Roskomnadzor

- The Fish Matrix: this gigantic deep ocean sphere will raise 1,000 tons of tuna

What exactly are trying to achieve here?

com'n, man! I never even disclosed the top secret Russian program of special ops and combat crane training in response to western drone programs : http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/sep/06/vladimir-putin-...

They are just wanna steal government money like always.

Can't agree more. This has nothing to do with "reducing Russian reliance on foreign technology," but rather with plain old corruption and theft.

Maemo/Meego/Jolla rises for the umpteenth time. It would be cool to see Jolla on the dual-screen Yota 2, which has raised over $100K in less than a day, for the North American version, https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/yotaphone-2-world-s-first...

So the USP is that it'll contain Russian backdoors instead of 5EYES ones...

China has tried this twice. There was Red Flag Linux [1](2000-2014) and the China Operating System.(2014-?)[2]. Neither appeared on mass produced devices. Still, I expect that eventually Shentzen will dump US-based OSs for something else.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Flag_Linux [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COS_%28operating_system%29

Tizen, since Samsung's all over it like a cheap suit. And South Korea is a lot closer than the USA and far more easily controllable/nuke-able if they misbehave and put backdoors into Tizen. I could definitely see Tizen becoming China's next mobile OS.

Haha, by new operating system I'm guessing they'll be taking jolla and forking it. If not forking it they'll definitely adopt the same way jolla is controlling its hardware. If the honestly attempt to build a new OS, with s manufacture it will probably fail. I'm excited to see if they do create a new OS. It could be the next breakthrough we've been waiting for in mobile technology.

According to this article and others I found on the subject, it is going to be Sailfish based (thus, heritage includes Linux, Mer, MeeGo, Maemo, Moblin, and whatever other names it had before; And still shares a lot with Tizen.

This is a non starter. Unless device makers push the OS and there is a minimum viable eco system of application, OS doesn't have much legs to travel. See, it is not so easy pushing the Windows OS on Mircorsoft devices.

Or... you can simply mandate all phones in the country be sold with this OS on them.

They're also planning to get to Mars before US or anyone else does.

Plans are like ideas, they're worth next to nothing, execution is king.

The key idea behind deciding whether to fork or not comes from the licenses, patents, and legal bindings. Although android is open source, there are so many patent and licensing issues. Only way to avert it is to go "China", ignore patents inside your own territory. Or, be a good dog and pay for all the claims. Samsung is the only exception who are playing push back and forth all along.

USSR was very famous for reverse engineering western tech and not paying anything for that.

Surely they were famous for reverse engineering key technologies from the West. Unfortunately it seems, they have lost that edge with digital technology. China on the other hand is making huge fotune out of its cloning and reverse engineering business. Their policy? "First make money by cloning and copying, then buy the original product maker once you are ready to expand internationally." Example- copycat company Geely bought one of the most creative automakers Volvo.

Back in Nokia times, there were lots of Russian engineers working on Maemo and other Linux-based OSes for Nokia phones.

It's natural that Jolla kept some of these people on board and that they used their cultural ties to look for Russian state money.

They actually considered four projects (AOSP, FirefoxOS, Tizen and SailfishOS), but first two are maintained by US-based corporations and apparently Samsung is also not reliable partner in their eyes.

When public data is sensitive for each country, every country should have their own system, as long as they can afford it. At least that's what I have learned in post Snowden era. It's much secured for each government, people bound by their own country's law, and even if they are monitored, they will be monitored by their own government. After all, nobody is ever trying to stop NSA from spying on rest of the world! It's only US citizens they are altering policies for. So, why shouldn't Russia or any EU country should have their own OS?

Why do you assume that if country has it's own OS other it will be more secure and safe from spying by other countries?

When each country will have their own OS, 1. NSA won't be able to ask Microsoft to use their master key to spy on people of other countries. They will have to find a way to do that.

2. Policy wise people of each country will enjoy their own privacy and security. Their security won't have to rely on the US senate approval.

3. OS build by each country will work like virtual regional borders for their people. It will be the responsibility of the developers of respective countries on how they manage the security and privacy of their own OS. So, their would be a competitive advantage for public in general.

4. Economically, a lot of required technical work will create more job opportunities. Governments and local businesses will get to bite the share of big, centralized companies.

> Policy wise people of each country will enjoy their own privacy and security.

By "privacy" you mean that only their own government and the foreign intelligence services they have agreement with will be privy to their communications?

Right. We can't stop government agencies in any country snooping and sniffing around. So, why not make that tranparent instead? Once a government actively participates in digital policy making for their own people, people will have their say in it based on how much democratic that country is.

It may not affect the authoritarian regimes much, but will significantly empower netizens of the well developed democracies.

FirefoxOS?

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