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submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by PlanterTree@discuss.tchncs.de to c/opensource@lemmy.ml

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Keep Android Open

In August 2025, Google announced that starting next year, it will no longer be possible to develop apps for the Android platform without first registering centrally with Google.

This registration will involve:

Paying a fee to Google
Agreeing to Google’s Terms and Conditions
Providing government identification
Uploading evidence of an app’s private signing key
Listing all current and future application identifiers

Sign the open letter. And get active to help oppose the enactment of the policy in other ways listed on the website. Are there any more ways to oppose this?

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[-] it_depends_man@lemmy.world 65 points 1 week ago

The big problem with this is that I don't like android.

It works relatively well, it's support is ok, it's probably better than apple because their garden walls are higher. But it's not at all the operating system I would like to have. It's already too restrictive, I have not seen/found good app building docs that make it actually easy and convenient to create "apps" and that massively rubs me the wrong way.

With that move, google is enshittfying android, but that doesn't mean we have to resist the enshittification and keep android, we can also let them do it and move to something else. In theory, anyway.

So I'd like to see more calls for different OS, forks or stuff like

https://www.fsf.org/news/librephone-project

[-] floofloof@lemmy.ca 28 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

For now, Android is the best compromise between functionality and openness that's suitable for daily use, especially GrapheneOS. Hopefully some of the Linux alternatives will develop to that point soon, but by all accounts they're not there yet. So it's worth fighting to keep what we have until we can use something more open.