This is pretty concerning, especially as FDroid is by far the largest non-google android store at the moment, something that I feel is really needed, regardless of your feelings about google.
Does anyone know of plans to resolve this? Will FDroid update their servers? Are google looking into rolling back the requirement? (this last one sounds unlikely)
I agree it’s a bit concerning but please keep in mind F-Droid is a volunteer-run community project. Especially with some EU countries moving to open source software, it would be nice to see some public funding for projects like F-Droid.
> please keep in mind F-Droid is a volunteer-run community project.
To, me, that's the worrying part.
Not that it's ran by volunteers. But that all there's left between a full-on "tech monopoly" or hegemony, and a free internet, is small bands of underfunded volunteers.
Opposition to market dominance and monopolies by multibillion multinationals shouldn't just come from a few volunteers. If that's the case, just roll over and give up; the cause is lost. (As I've done, hence my defaitism)
Aside from that: it being "a volunteer ran community" shouldn't be put as an excuse for why it's in trouble/has poor UX/is hard to use/is behind/etc. It should be a killer feature. Something that makes it more resilient/better attuned/easier/earlier adopting/etc.
The EU governments should gradually start switching to open source solutions. New software projects should be open source by default and only closed if there is a real reason for it.
The EU is already home to many OS contributors and companies. I like the Red Hat approach where you are profitable, but with open source solutions.
It's great for governments because you get support, but it's much easier to compete, which reduces prices.
Smaller companies also give more of their money to open source. Bigger companies can always fork it and develop it internally and can therefore pressure devs to do work for less. Smaller companies have to rely on the projects to keep going and doing it all in house would be way too expensive for most.
> I like the Red Hat approach where you are profitable, but with open source solutions.
The Red Hat that was bought by IBM?
I agree with your goals, but the devil is in the methods. If we want governments to support open source, the appropriate method is probably a legislative requirement for an open source license + a requirement to fund the developer.
It seems like every other year I read a story about Munich switching to Linux. It keeps happening so evidently it's not sticking very well. Either there are usability or maintenance problems, or Microsoft's sales and lobbying is too effective.
It's interesting to me how people panicked about the idea that 23AndMe's bankruptcy implies that some unknown, untrusted third-party will have their genetic information, but people are also crowing at the idea that a company that has purchase history on all your smartphone apps (and their permissions, and app data backup) could be compelled by the government to divest that function to some unknown, untrusted third-party.
I'm not quite sure if I'm over reading into this, but this comes across as a snarky response as if I've said "boo, fdroid sucks and owes me a free app store!".
Appologies if I came across like that, here's what I'm trying to convey:
- Fdroid is important
- This sounds like a problem, not necessarily one that's any fault of fdroid
- Does anyone know of a plan to fix the issue?
For what it's worth, I do donate on a monthly basis to fdroid through liberapay, but I don't think that's really relevant here?
This has now become a major issue for F-Droid, as well as for FOSS app developers. People are starting to complain about devs because they haven't been able to release the new version for their apps (at least it doesn't show up on F-Droid) as promised
1. That's still perfectly possible
2. We're talking about x86_64 CPUs here that have been open to install your own software basically since they existed
The minimum is now eight cores on a die for both AMD and Intel, so running a quad core system means staying on 14nm. You may loudly criticize holding back on a quad core system, but you aren't paying $47,500 per core to license Oracle Enterprise database.
The eight core minimum is a huge detriment for commercial software that is licensed by core.
This, and this alone, shatters your argument. Any other questions?
There are at least six Android app stores in China that have more than 100 million MAUs each: Huawei AppGallery, Tencent MyApp, Xiaomi Mi Store (or GetApps), Oppo, Vivo, and Honor stores.
Funny true story: I got my first smartphone in 2018, a Samsung Galaxy A5. I have it to this day, and it is the only smartphone I ever used. This is the first time I hear about Samsung Galaxy store! (≧▽≦)
> Are google looking into rolling back the requirement? (this last one sounds unlikely)
That's apparently what they did last time. From the ticket:
"Back in 2021 developers complained that AAPT2 from Gradle Plugin 4.1.0 was throwing errors while the older 4.0.2 worked fine. \n The issue was that 4.1.0 wanted a CPU which supports SSSE3 and on the older CPUs it would fail. \n This was fixed for Gradle Plugin 4.2.0-rc01 / Gradle 7.0.0 alpha 9"
why you read "google build tools cannot be built from source and it was compiled with an optional optimizations as required" and assume the right thing to do is to buy newer servers?
I'm not assuming anything, this is from a ticket for fdroid on google:
> Our machines run older server grade CPUs, that indeed do not support the newer SSE4_1 and SSSE3.[0]
I.e. the problem is because fdroid have older CPUs, newer ones would be able to build. I only mentioned it in terms of what the plans to fix might be. I have zero idea if upgrading servers is the best way to go.
Does anyone know of plans to resolve this? Will FDroid update their servers? Are google looking into rolling back the requirement? (this last one sounds unlikely)