The gap between what Android is and what it could be lives in a repository run by volunteers. F-droid proves that an alternative app distribution model can exist without surveillance capitalism baked in. Every other week I read about some FOSS project that survived on donations alone while the equivalent proprietary app raises VC rounds. Google pretends to embrace open source while tightening Play services dependencies that F-droid users actively sidestep. Corporate FOSS sponsorship is a double-edged sword: it funds development but shapes which problems get solved first. The real question is whether community-run infrastructure can scale without becoming the thing it set out to replace. #FOSS #Privacy #Android #TechLiberation #OpenSource
Yes and they’ve been very good at pretending it. Maybe early on they actually did embrace open source, but now they have become worse than Apple. Because they are closing up everything they can like the closed garden of Apple, but Google doesn’t have the benefits of Apple at least attempting to tend a somewhat clean garden.
I really dont think that’s a thing that actually happens.