Is this not the happy medium Google is trying to hit?
Power users can unlock their bootloader and do whatever they want. This is still officially supported, with vendor blobs officially provided.
By default things are restricted to deliver a happy user experience in the context of the average person that just wants a product that works. But you're free to do whatever you want. There's (usually) even controls to remove restrictions from apps manually without doing the custom ROM route, but there is always the ultimate power user toggle there of "flash a custom ROM"
Huawei recently stopped allowing bootloader unlocks.
Unlocking the bootloader is becoming increasingly rare.
To be honest, ignoring the back and forth between the discussions here, am the only one that doesn't get WHY the firebase library isn't open source? It could just be GPL right? Most of the interesting stuff happens in the backend anyway, so what's the issue.
Am I also the only one that thinks this gives google the chance to lock out/cripple third parties like huawei or other non certified android vendors from distributing Android apps that were built for the play store.
This is a bit of "you get what you buy" territory. Google's devices have official bootloader unlock capability and always have, with instructions here: https://source.android.com/setup/build/running - already updated for the Pixel 3a & 3a XL even. You take your risks when you buy something that doesn't advertise that.
> Most of the interesting stuff happens in the backend anyway, so what's the issue.
I think most of the interesting stuff on the device is even in Google Play Services and not in the firebase library. I have no idea why the client SDK can't be open source, but how much does that even matter?
This was not mentioned at any time during the purchase and they would not take my phone back.
Buying unlocked phones from the start can be an expensive downside, but being free from contracts and carrier bullshit can be a huge upside.
If google was trying to hit some sweet spot (I'm not willing to give them the benefit of the doubt here any longer) then they would not spout such obviously wrong BS to scare users into submission. Conversations and telegram both put the work into doing push notifications The Right Way (TM) so scaring users about this is stupid at best.
You don't have to be a kernel hacker to build & flash AOSP. Google has a guide on it: https://source.android.com/setup/build/running
But whether or not you consider this a "power user" or not is obviously less clear cut. How you define "power user" does of course change things. The point is just that there is the ultimate escape hatch of flashing a custom ROM, and it's not THAT hard to do, especially with all the tools out there to flash things like LineageOS super easily. You may not understand what it's doing, but it is at least sitting on officially supported things for the devices Google sells.
A bit of a tangent but I'm a "power user" and still can't get rid of the stupid warning in the beginning. Definitely not a happy medium.
Where does Apple say that GPL code isn’t allowed on the App Store? I ask entirely out of my selfish need to avoid unpleasant surprises later on.
https://forums.developer.apple.com/thread/18922
Essentially it works like it should anywhere else: If you don't publish source code and someone complains, you're out. In an ideal world Google Play would hold itself to the same standards.
However, the App Store does impart restrictions which are incompatible with GPL, so it's not so much that Apple doesn't allow it as it is that GPL doesn't allow it.
Apple has no official statement on this of course, but we know how they feel about GPL code given that they've removed every bit of it from their OS over the last few years.
E.g. Git is on GPL version 2 still (and probably forever), and Apple continues to update that in a relatively timely fashion.
See for example https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/6109/is-it-possibl... .
This is an Apple problem, not FSF.
And this is what you call a geek bubble. In the grand scheme of things most people don’t know what the GPL is and out of those, only a minority care about it running on their phone.
No, that would be a regular No True Scotsman.
> So you have friends that are not geeks who know about the GPL and care?
Did I say that? No, I didn't say that. I said I don't know anyone who is happy that Apple disallows GPL. This includes people who have no idea what the GPL is.
Some people here like iOS for the reasons you described. However I'm willing to bet, unless you can show me otherwise, that it's a vocal minority. I don't know of anyone personally who is happy that Apple disallows GPL code.
Comparing Apple's digital Fort Knox with Google's unsupervised free-for-all is a false dichotomy.
There exists a happy medium, where power users get all the freedom they want but apps are still by default beholden to certain restrictions. And this is orthogonal to a proprietary API.