It’s the same thing with the Linux kernel

It’s funny you should mention this, because Google has needed to adapt this for mobile and are already open source. If the opportunity existed for a “free” and open source version of Android to be embraced by consumers, there are many such options today, like GrapheneOS (or even forking AOSP, for that matter).

My concern is that if the major contributor to that steps out, the volunteer community will need to substantially step up.

Consumer devices ship with proprietary software which is licensed all the time

The reason I called out your example of Red Hat is to illustrate how enterprise is financing a free consumer experience.

With a very limited enterprise market, it’s not realistic to expect this to apply to an almost exclusively consumer product.

So there are two options. Either we don’t have an open source Android and in addition to the license cost of GMS, OEMs would have to license the OS itself. The alternative is that OEMs shoulder the development cost of their own fork of AOSP, which would simply be passed on to consumers. Either way, this would drive up the price of devices.

I’m not sure why you’re speaking in hypotheticals about what Android could be if it had license fees, as it’s readily available in open source under the Apache license today and, despite that, steadily losing market share.

Android is already largely open source. Yet it takes a massive investment from Google to continue developing it and curate the app store with it.

I’m genuinely struggling to envision how we move from the current situation to a somehow better but more fragmented ecosystem that doesn’t negatively affect consumer experiences. Whichever way I’ve approached it, it plays in the favor of one company in particular who already has a leading market share in the US, and I truly don’t see how that would be better.

My interpretation of what the proponents of separating Android from Google are arguing is that it’s exactly Google Play, Gmail, Google Maps and the other parts of GMS that must be uncoupled.

The primary ways in which the Mozilla Foundation earns money is through search partnerships, donations and grants. Guess who is the major contributor.

As for Red Hat, this comes down to subscriptions or enterprise offerings, neither which really apply to a consumer OS unless you’re willing to pay a subscription fee out of pocket. I doubt there will be much to be earned from offering consulting or training, either, unless they make Android exceedingly confusing to use.

The only companies that would pay for Android are OEMs who are already making thin margins, and effectively it’d drive the price of non-iPhones up. The alternative is that OEMs take the Huawei option and fork AAOS and develop it at their own expense.

What do you mean by “get”? Who will be funding the creation of all these OSes? The phone margins are already razor thin.

Valve could do that today already for free. Why would they pay for it instead?

Android would be unprofitable and unsustainable in isolation. So that would leave each OEM to build their own thing, but to make a long story short, everybody would just get an iPhone. So then I wonder, if making such a ruling would create the void for a monopoly, what’s the sense?

Apple requires developers to go through a Notarization process, much in the same way that Google intends to introduce restrictions to sideloading on Android. How is this different?

Interesting perspective. So the suggestion is to redirect our blame away from our elected representatives or even from electing representatives that run on a campaign that aligns with our priorities.

Yet Apple has been able to profit from their walled garden for decades now. Doesn’t that set a precedent that it’s okay? I honestly don’t blame Google for going this route—it’s inaction from our policymakers that has created the space for abuse.

What I meant with “things like this are awful for the web,” I meant that automation through AI is awful for the web. It takes away from the original content creators without any attribution and hits their bottom line.

My story was supposed to be one about responsible AI, but somehow I screwed that up in my summary.

I’ve developed my own agent for assisting me with researching a topic I’m passionate about, and I ran into the exact same barrier: Cloudflare intercepts my request and is clearly checking if I’m a human using a web browser. (For my network requests, I’ve defined my own user agent.)

So I use that as a signal that the website doesn’t want automated tools scraping their data. That’s fine with me: my agent just tells me that there might be interesting content on the site and gives me a deep link. I can extract the data and carry on my research on my own.

I completely understand where Perplexity is coming from, but at scale, implementations like this Perplexity’s are awful for the web.

(Edited for clarity)

That was an interesting read, thanks for sharing!

No doubt they are all overpriced, but I thoroughly researched my Škoda before buying it in 2020 and it was competitively priced, especially with its reliability score and relatively low maintenance cost. In my case of course anecdotal, but I’ve had no issues after 90,000 km with a lot of Autobahn.

Ah, my apologies. I had interpreted your message to suggest that pouring cement from a robotic arm fully replaced all of the construction work of framing and finishing all of the walls of the house, interior and exterior, plus attaching them and insulating them, with a single step.

I understand your point, but have you driven a VW in the past decade? They are reliable, relatively easy to repair and have comfortable interiors that aren’t with “hard plastic.” Perhaps you’ve confused VW with Ford?

Spoken like a person who has never been involved in the construction of a home. It’s effectively doing the job of (poorly) pouring concrete which isn’t the difficult or time consuming part.