Monocultures are perilous not just in agriculture, but in software distribution as well.
Most people get their Android apps from the Google Play Store. It’s not the only way of doing so, however, and there are some apps I get from F-Droid, a free and open source app repository. There are a number of advantages, not least that it lists the ‘antifeatures’ of apps — which usually include things like tracking.
Recently, Google announced that Android developers will, for ‘security reasons’, be required to register with Google, which includes payment of a fee and uploading personally identifying documents. For an organisation that vaunted the ‘open’ nature of the Android ecosystem this seems like a worrying step.
This post outlines what’s at stake. First of all you own your smartphone which means you should be able to install any apps you want on it. To argue otherwise is to argue from a paternalist and potentially dictatorial point of view. You can talk about ‘privacy’ and ‘safety’ all you like, but we should always have the freedom to do what we like with our own stuff unless in doing so we’re harming other people.
For more on this see a history of how we got from ‘running anything you want on your own machine’ to the current crop of walled gardens in this post on Hackaday.
You, the consumer, purchased your Android device believing in Google’s promise that it was an open computing platform and that you could run whatever software you choose on it. Instead, starting next year, they will be non-consensually pushing an update to your operating system that irrevocably blocks this right and leaves you at the mercy of their judgement over what software you are permitted to trust.
You, the creator, can no longer develop an app and share it directly with your friends, family, and community without first seeking Google’s approval. The promise of Android — and a marketing advantage it has used to distinguish itself against the iPhone — has always been that it is “open”. But Google clearly feels that they have enough of a lock on the Android ecosystem, along with sufficient regulatory capture, that they can now jettison this principle with prejudice and impunity.
You, the state, are ceding the rights of your citizens and your own digital sovereignty to a company with a track record of complying with the extrajudicial demands of authoritarian regimes to remove perfectly legal apps that they happen to dislike. The software that is critical to the running of your businesses and governments will be at the mercy of the opaque whims of a distant and unaccountable corporation. Monocultures are perilous not just in agriculture, but in software distribution as well.
Source: F-Droid blog
Image: Andrey Matveev