Google is tightening control over Android under the guise of ‘security,’ but this crackdown on sideloading is a direct hit to digital sovereignty and FOSS. I’ve written about why this matters for our privacy and the future of open platforms. What do you think—is this the end of Android’s ‘open’ era?
If a single company has this level of control over our devices we’ve already lost.
Can you imagine a company like dell decided tomorrow to only allow installation from their specific vendor locked market? People would just not buy those products, you wouldn’t be demanding dell let you install linux, you just buy something else.
Even if i had to use a pc that’s 10+ years old, id choose that over using a new pc that can only run vendor approved software. I cant imagine anything a new devive like a phone might have that would change my mind about it.