[HN Gopher] GitHub Should Start an App Store
___________________________________________________________________
GitHub Should Start an App Store
Author : quaintdev
Score : 504 points
Date : 2021-01-31 16:07 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ankshilp.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ankshilp.com)
| jsharf wrote:
| Along these lines, it would be really cool to see GitHub begin to
| approach the source code infrastructure that Google has
| internally. If they added a good build system (heck, just use
| bazel) and a feature to build code in the cloud, and a web IDE
| and better code review system (of course, all with open protocols
| -- it's git after all), we could have a much more standardized
| open source environment-- the overhead to working on a new open
| source project would be lower since you wouldn't have to figure
| out how to build it. It would also make it significantly easier
| to add dependencies and integrate software together.
| throwaway1986_ wrote:
| No. Stop it. This is NOT what GitHub is for. Yes, it has become a
| place for software where users may download packaged "apps" from.
| But this is only a byproduct of GitHub hosting software. Do not
| ruin GitHub for me please. I don't wanna sound like a jerk, but I
| don't wanna have to deal with the same people who leave horrible
| comment on the App Store and Play Store. I'm sure you have good
| intentions, but this is a really stupid idea.
| [deleted]
| u678u wrote:
| I was thinking why we need an app store at all. It does make
| sense for security and discoverability. However maybe it makes
| sense to have multiple app stores. So you my phone I could have a
| Google one and Microsoft one and maybe a new company that
| specializes in this.
| jsharf wrote:
| Along these lines, it would be really cool to see GitHub begin to
| approach the source code infrastructure that Google has
| internally. If they added a good build system (heck, just use
| bazel) and a feature to build code in the cloud (of course, all
| with open protocols -- it's git after all), we could have a much
| more standardized open source environment-- the overhead to
| working on a new open source project would be lower since you
| wouldn't have to figure out how to build it or how to build
| dependencies. It would also make it significantly easier to add
| dependencies and integrate software together.
| aero-glide2 wrote:
| We need an app store which isn't hosted by the big 4
| l0k3ndr wrote:
| It surprises me that how much dependent we have become on these
| big corps (here it's a choice between Microsoft and Google in the
| article). But at the same time, Wikipedia exists and is an
| awesome thing without being owned by these firms. Brings me to
| the question which I don't have any answer - Why can't we have a
| open source app store totally developed and run by community and
| which recovers it's hosting cost with privacy-friendly ads and
| certain share of app revenues? It can host itself on a
| combination of clouds, and whether an app can be removed or kept;
| would be decided by community voting; not just whim of a bigco.
| jugg1es wrote:
| I would support github creating a different entity that could act
| like an app store, but I do not think that github.com is best
| served by pivoting to anything other than what it does right now.
| xenihn wrote:
| Why do people keep referring to Github as Github and not
| Microsoft when discussing business decisions?
|
| Github is not "backed" by Microsoft. Microsoft owns them.
| Github is Microsoft. This article is asking Microsoft to start
| an App Store, which they have already done. It's called Windows
| Phone Store. The article should be asking Microsoft to rebrand
| Windows Phone Store, not asking Github to make a new app store
| altogether.
|
| I see the same thing happen with Twitch and Amazon. It feels
| like people don't understand how much influence and control is
| exerted on even the most independent subsidiaries, and how that
| control only increases year-over-year. Especially when it comes
| to something that generates money.
| jugg1es wrote:
| Not sure what your point is. There is still a brand called
| GitHub. It's the same reason people call it YouTube instead
| of Google.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Who needs app stores?...
| justplay wrote:
| Sorry to be skeptical, but as the web is already evolving at a
| faster pace, and if web-assembly succeeds, we might don't even
| need another app/play store.
| danShumway wrote:
| But... why?
|
| Github has very few attributes that make it suitable as an app
| store. Sure, you could add payments on top of it, you can make an
| interface for downloading releases or subscribing. Or anyone else
| could build an app store and just use Github repos as an upstream
| if they care about that stuff. The Github API is good, it
| wouldn't be hard to for any existing app store to add more
| integration.
|
| And how would this help with anything? Is Microsoft better
| positioned than Amazon to get apps onto Android devices? Is
| _anyone_ positioned to get a 3rd-party app store on iOS?
|
| What does this solve that FDroid doesn't already solve, how would
| it better than what we have, and what does Github's core
| functionality (hosting source code) have to do with distributing
| apps? If the goal is just to have reproduceable builds or
| something, most consumers don't care about that.
|
| I don't understand what's unique about Github that means they
| would have any advantage in this space. Most of what the author
| is saying is that they trust Microsoft. But Microsoft _has_ an
| app store. Why wouldn 't they just focus on improving that? If
| they can't get that store on Linux or iOS, why would Github be
| different?
|
| I really just don't get what Github could do that would make me
| as a consumer prefer it over FDroid as a distribution channel.
| And Windows is already a reasonably open platform already.
| Certainly on Linux, there's no advantage whatsoever. I feel like
| there's something I'm missing, I don't understand the gist of
| what the poster is trying to say. I don't get what the point
| would be.
|
| The only thing I can think of would be adding better support for
| payments and buying things from repos. But going down that path
| is problematic because the whole point of Github is that the
| releases and code that you list is public. A tightly integrated
| system that made paywalled build artifacts would be a downside,
| not an upside. The stuff they're already doing with sponsorships
| is a much better direction for them to go.
| 0df8dkdf wrote:
| Hmmm the main issue is not an App Store. It is rather how Android
| is packaged. There is F-Droid type of store out there, it is just
| that it is not in the play store. As for iOS there really no
| proper way to install except jailbreaking any way. The bottom we
| don't need another App Store, rather a FOSS distribution of OS
| for Android (e.g: https://www.replicant.us/about.php ) that kind
| like the Debian distro for desktop Linux. As for iOS, is Darwin
| still open source, maybe a distro for iPhone with an open source
| Darwin fork?
| jhasse wrote:
| Darwin is only the kernel. iOS is closed-source.
| fluidcruft wrote:
| F-Droid doesn't enroll as device administrator on your phone. I
| think Microsoft could easily pull that off if they wanted to
| which would let them push updates and manage applications the
| way Google does. My workplace already basically runs BYOD
| devices through some Microsoft Azure management thing.
| vijaybritto wrote:
| >Unlike Google they actually listen to their users.
|
| Beg to differ. They have far less problems to worry about when
| hosting the only the source code. Now if they host entire apps
| they will most likely be required to moderate the content in the
| apps. Its not a random company. MS will want to maintain their
| brand image and regulations. This will lead to the same problems
| sooner or later.
| grishka wrote:
| One more app store run by an American corporation is the last
| thing we need right now.
| Pfhreak wrote:
| Sounds like a great way to create incentives that undermine
| githubs mission while simultaneously taking a huge amount of
| developer resources for a product that will have niche interest
| at best.
|
| Building app stores is hard. Moderating app stores is hard. Both
| are significantly different from running GitHub.
|
| While I appreciate the author's intent here, this just doesn't
| feel like it was deeply thought out.
| fbelzile wrote:
| I don't know though, Microsoft already runs multiple app stores
| (Xbox & Windows, Edge). I don't see why they couldn't build it
| out for another platform or at least figure out some kind of
| arms-reach integration with Github -> Microsoft Store.
|
| This could be a nice come back into the mobile sphere they lost
| out on. As a developer, I completely agree that Microsoft
| earned my trust over the years.
| acct776 wrote:
| There's pushback on another app store from Microsoft because
| nobody wants more walled gardens.
|
| The pendulum has shifted, and it's swinging towards PWA.
|
| Per Microsoft, Outlook is now a progressive web app.
|
| App stores are dying - they're just going to take a bit to
| timeout.
| krisgenre wrote:
| >>The pendulum has shifted, and it's swinging towards PWA
|
| Didn't Firefox recently announce they're discontinuing PWA
| features?
| crocodiletears wrote:
| Only for desktop, I think.
| wubin wrote:
| FF only removed the SSB (site specific browser) feature
| on desktop which was in an alpha state. There was no
| announcement that Mozilla was going to remove the entire
| PWA features (such as service workers).
|
| PWA is a set of modern web standards. "Supporting PWA"
| can mean many things but "Removing unfinished SSB"
| doesn't mean "Removing PWA".
| [deleted]
| Closi wrote:
| > The pendulum has shifted, and it's swinging towards PWA.
|
| It has for some things, and for others native is king.
| Native just delivers experiences that PWA can't (yet).
|
| To take a simple example - let's consider a 'timer app'. On
| iPhone I ask Siri to set me a timer for 5 minutes, it sets
| the timer and I walk away from my phone. 15 minutes the
| timer pings on my watch where I can accept it. There are
| multiple steps in this user story that a PWA currently
| struggles with, including:
|
| * (Reliable) backgrounding
|
| * Siri integration
|
| * Notifications
|
| * Apple Watch support
| throwaway3699 wrote:
| These are all artificial problems created by Apple,
| though. The first three are all doable on Android PWAs,
| and you can do everything with a TWA in the Play Store.
| Closi wrote:
| I don't disagree, although I think these reasons do mean
| that it's far too early to say "App stores are dying" as
| in the post I was replying to - at least in Apple's case
| they are still central, and even seem to be becoming more
| core with deeper integration into MacOS.
|
| Also, in this context, a TWA isn't useful as the post is
| about avoiding an App Store / central control using PWA.
| mjoin wrote:
| GitHub has been expending its services, diverging from its
| original intent (e.g. remote visual studio code).
|
| I disagree. I think providing that a way to distribute
| applications through GitHub, with builds certified as coming
| from the original authors, would be beneficial.
| [deleted]
| mojuba wrote:
| Agreed, I doubt GitHub will do this but you know what, anyone
| could start an App Store linked to GitHub (or GitX, or all of
| them, doesn't matter).
|
| This has been tried in the past - Freshmeat, SourceForge, but
| that was a different era and also none of them tried to upgrade
| and modernize. So now there seems to be a niche opening for
| this in 2021.
|
| Make an App Store platform everyone would love to be on. Get
| developers on board by giving them first 2 years for free, then
| a moderate membership fee. Take a reasonable cut from IAP's
| against providing customer support for the
| payments/chargebacks/fraud. Just make it awesome, reliable and
| fair.
| rvz wrote:
| I'm not convinced by any of the arguments the author points out
| which would actually address the problem of App Stores.
|
| Essentially they are arguing for Github (Microsoft) to host and
| have an App Store on their platform and control it because they
| _listen to their users_ , which is quite frankly a very poor
| reason.
|
| Cydia and F-Droid packages are already 'App Stores' which you
| can install apps via pressing 'Add to Cydia' or 'Add to
| F-Droid' buttons on the publisher's website. You're free to add
| whatever app and install whatever app you want without Apple /
| Google stopping you, and its decentralised.
|
| The same has been said for desktop apps (Native or Electron),
| which have been hosted on the publisher's websites for years,
| without the need of an App Store. I can imagine an 'App Store'
| equivalent for Desktop which works like Cydia and F-Droid which
| allows users to discover and install an app with a simple deep-
| link into the App Store. Linux has this already, equivalents
| for Windows and macOS are possible but it should _not_ come
| from GitHub.
|
| The above approaches are already there and are completely
| decentralised. Unlike the author who is going for another
| centralised App Store in the hands of GitHub / Microsoft
| (again).
| tutfbhuf wrote:
| No, they shouldn't. Centralized App Stores isn't the way to go,
| look at recent examples of (temporarily) removed Apps like Matrix
| from Play Store. A decentralized App Store (e.g. based on IPFS)
| would be great.
| confiq wrote:
| Why there is no regulation about this? My hardware and I do
| with that whatever I want...
| BaggaDonuts2 wrote:
| Not gonna happen. Anyone could start an App Store and use GH's
| api's to file issues with developers repos anyway. Microsoft owns
| App Center (formerly Hockey App) which allows apps to send
| diagnostics to devs for crashes and the like. I'd expect similar
| features for GH in the longer term future. But an App Store -
| prob not. Apple is particularly difficult to develop on and
| deploy to their store as it is. You can only deploy to test
| devices with custom policies (app center makes this easier) or
| jailbreak your device. There's no way Apple will ever release
| their monopoly on their App Store. So you'd be looking at an
| android only App Store (plus windows for whatever that is worth)
| zoobab wrote:
| TOS feudalism no thank you.
| joana035 wrote:
| > Microsoft has been playing good by the developers for years
| now.
|
| Let's wait and see history repeating itself. I don't buy that and
| I will never forget.
| [deleted]
| zoobab wrote:
| TOS feudalism dictated by Microsoft, euh no thank you.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| I thought from reading the headline it was a genius idea, but I
| think after reflection there are at least two major barriers to
| this working:
|
| 1. There is no GitOS. So the target environment would be so
| variable and high friction that it's unclear to me how GitHub
| would manage clean builds and installation.
|
| 2. I'd say MOST repos aren't anywhere near ready to run. Making
| an automated binary/msi/apk/ pathway would almost certainly lead
| to broken packages for the majority of repos.
| johnisgood wrote:
| It is almost like the author forgot that GitHub is owned by
| Microsoft (despite mentioning it, sigh).
|
| "Tired of big tech censoring apps? Let's have big tech manage an
| app store, that'll solve it".
|
| or
|
| "Tired of one big tech censoring apps? Let's have another one,
| the one and only!".
|
| Plus I am sure others have mentioned it by now but GitHub Issues
| for user feedback is going to suck big time.
| fullstackwife wrote:
| This idea would take it to another level, because it would also
| mean that the "big tech is in control of my source code and
| release process".
| [deleted]
| GriffonWizard wrote:
| Here's a question:
|
| Why do we even need app stores? Why can't we all get comfortable
| downloading from the Web on mobile like we are on the desktop?
|
| The only benefit to them I see is discoverability, so instead of
| building "stores" why don't we build collections of applications
| from around the Web and display them in an app store-like
| interface. Developers can submit applications, they will show up
| in our "store" making them searchable and discoverable by users,
| and when users hit download it will take them to the developers
| Website to download and install an apk or whatever.
| carapace wrote:
| > They were awesome during youtube-dl debacle.
|
| The debacle IMO was all the folks who thought GH taking down
| youtube-dl was newsworthy at all in the first place. The
| infantile dependency is the problem, not the lack of yet another
| gatekeeper.
|
| > I trust [MS] more than Apple and Google.
|
| Thank you for the LOL. Look, VSCode is nice but don't be so
| naive.
|
| Anyone can start an "app store", but can they make money at it?
| If MS thought they could make money running an app store would
| they hesitate? (Also, they already _have_ an app store.)
| alfonmga wrote:
| I don't trust Microsoft.
| titzer wrote:
| Please don't. This is where I put my code right now. Don't become
| irrelevant garbage like SourceForge from which we'll all have to
| migrate anyway.
| COGlory wrote:
| This is a great idea. I can't wait for my favorite apps to get
| banned by yet another centralized authority!
| rvz wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| I'm afraid all the reasons the author lists, just boils down
| to: _' GitHub (Microsoft) should host all our apps because they
| listen to their users!'_
|
| What could possibly go wrong?
| petters wrote:
| Not sure about the app store, but: it would be great if GitHub
| could provide binaries that were guaranteed to be built from a
| certain commit.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| At the very least, that should be provided for NPM packages,
| since Microsoft now own NPM.
|
| Having those packages verifiably built from source could
| technically be done by any trusted third party, so it's a pity
| that this project didn't take off:
|
| https://hackernoon.com/what-if-we-could-verify-npm-packages-...
| monadic3 wrote:
| This is a comically terrible idea.
| cool-RR wrote:
| More like, someone should make an app store that uses any
| compliant repo as an app.
| [deleted]
| heavyset_go wrote:
| GitHub is unable to enter the mobile app distribution market
| because Apple and Google leverage their monopolies in the mobile
| OS market to limit competition, or outright ban it, in the mobile
| app distribution space.
|
| It'll take some serious antitrust action before real competition
| will be allowed to improve costs and experiences for developers
| and users alike when it comes to mobile app distribution. In the
| meantime, Apple and Google will continue to keep a stranglehold
| on the app distribution market like they have for over a decade
| now.
| confiq wrote:
| there is Amazon Appstore!
| heavyset_go wrote:
| I have the Amazon Appstore on my Android phone. Google does
| not allow Amazon to compete on feature parity with the Play
| Store. Amazon's Appstore cannot do background installation of
| apps, batch installation of apps, or automatic upgrades if
| the device isn't an Amazon device.
| thekyle wrote:
| Also, the Galaxy store and F-droid
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Google has restricted Android such that only the Play Store
| can implement background installation of apps, batch
| installations and automatic upgrading of installed apps.
| F-Droid can implement those if you give it root access, but
| manufacturers go out of their way to prevent users from
| rooting their devices.
|
| I need a Samsung phone to use the Galaxy Store.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| I don't disagree with the theory, but note that Microsoft already
| has a store. Perhaps the answer here is 'Microsoft should expand
| its store from just Windows to Windows and github stuff."
|
| It will be interesting if a 'pay per use' model for software can
| emerge in the independent/casual source market.
| [deleted]
| jijji wrote:
| I think ICANN would be a more appropriate app store than
| Microsoft. At least its an impartial non-profit, instead of a
| for-profit org that has a colorful history of screwing over
| almost everyone.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| Screw app stores. Mobile is the only place where you _have_ to
| use a portal to install an app, and it 's just a power play.
|
| Let me just install an app by browsing a regular website, not
| being funneled through somebody's portal. That's how every other
| computer in history has installed apps. It's not perfect but it
| certainly has none of the downsides of app stores.
| garrepi wrote:
| > Unlike Google they actually listen to their users. They were
| awesome during youtube-dl debacle.
|
| I wouldn't say they were "awesome" during the youtube-dl stuff.
| They were slow to respond and non-transparent about what was
| happening behind the scenes.
|
| Also, user's have been calling for GitHub to terminate their
| contract with ICE for a long time now[0] to no avail.
|
| GitHub is better than most, no doubt, when it comes to
| "listen[ing] to their users" but they still have a ways to go.
|
| [0](https://github.com/drop-ice/dear-github-2.0)
| notsureaboutpg wrote:
| GitHub won't terminate any contract with ICE now that they are
| owned by Microsoft, who has a ton of government and military
| contracts
| acct776 wrote:
| In contrast, I was surprised with how "quickly" it was
| resolved, compared to my expectation.
|
| MS is beholden to US.gov through contract cash and unspoken
| agreements - those ties are lessening, but are still pretty
| deep.
| rovr138 wrote:
| It wasn't an issue with the US government.
| nabla9 wrote:
| If there is stance to be made, it should be principled.
|
| Today it's just companies reacting to any specific issue
| internet mob in social media has. They ban specific people or
| organizations based on mob activity.
| newbie578 wrote:
| I could see GitHub having an App Store, would like to have them
| as an alternative to Apple, but that is not the optimal solution.
|
| I do not wish for 10 App Store's to exist in the world and have
| to distribute to each one.
|
| There already is the best platform available, it is called the
| Web. The problem is Apple purposely holding back PWAs so they can
| keep earning their Apple Mafia Cut.
|
| I truly belive that for most apps excluding games, PWAs are the
| way to go. Truly cross platform, low on download speed, and can
| have almost identical functionality like most of the apps.
|
| That is why I am stocked for Flutter Web, when it gets production
| ready, it can truly be a game changer. I am currently forced to
| make mobile apps, since PWAs are just not that popular nor ideal
| (Apple problems as I stated above), but I am using Flutter which
| is honestly fun and the best solution.
|
| Make Apple (and Google, although they already have access on most
| of it) to their API, that is most notably the ability for PWAs to
| push notifications.
| rychco wrote:
| In some ways I feel like this is coming in the not-so distant
| future. You can already auto update releases every commit, get
| paid via sponsor, and receive "reviews" (issues). It's inching
| steadily towards an App Store already. They seem to be adding
| social media features too, the user profile README being the most
| notable example recently.
|
| Edit: It's interesting to notice throughout the comment section
| all the places where 'App Store' has been (presumably)
| automatically capitalized.
| [deleted]
| rvz wrote:
| > They already host source code of millions of apps. Release
| integration should be trivial to implement.
|
| So that it too can become an Apple / Google App Store where it
| can also control which apps, repositories are allowed or not?
| Essentially you're moving to another centralised platform, but
| the reason is because they _' listen to their users'_? No thanks
| and no deal.
|
| Hosting an app repository on your own website is fine and already
| decentralised. So far, Cydia and F-Droid are doing it right with
| being a potential alternative App Store.
| rmsaksida wrote:
| I think what's more important is somehow getting Apple to allow
| alternative app stores in their phones. While Android phones are
| the most popular in many (most?) countries, iPhones are still
| very common and make it so solutions in one distribution platform
| don't extend to all phone users.
|
| Once a competitor is able to operate in both Android and iOS, I
| think we will see a real threat to official app stores, whether
| it's Github behind it or someone else.
| jberryman wrote:
| I'm not sure what my point is here exactly, but: debian has had
| an "app store" for 20+ years that works brilliantly, can be
| trusted not to fuck with or spy on you, has never pulled youtube-
| dl/nmap/etc (as far as I know), (while also being naturally free
| of forum software for white supremacists (bonus!))
| ljm wrote:
| Debian's software repo is fantastic but has a deliberately high
| barrier to entry and chooses stability above all else.
|
| Hosting your own apt repo isn't as difficult as it looks (all
| you need is a static file server) so it's a nice way to host
| your software if you have a collection of it.
| jcastro wrote:
| You're being quite selective here, sure the Debian way has it's
| positives but let's not pretend that model is free of problems
| -- there's been plenty of software that has been removed or is
| not allowed in Debian, and once you want a newer version of
| something that isn't in there then getting what you want can be
| difficult if you're not an expert, etc.
| yepguy wrote:
| How about an app _mall_ rather than an app store? Like F-Droid
| with multiple repositories (the "stores" in this metaphor), but
| also supporting authentication, paid apps, and store fronts to
| display recommendations and stuff.
| quaintdev wrote:
| Author here, I am afraid my blog is hosted on a Raspberry PI and
| it might go down because of HN traffic. If that happens, the
| mirror of the post is at
|
| https://telegra.ph/GitHub-Should-Start-An-App-Store-01-31
|
| Did not expected this to blow up. Thanks for the critical
| feedback. You guys are tough crowd :)
| jitendrac wrote:
| Do you Host it at Home with static IP or DynDNS?? and which
| internet service provider do you use? Edit:Found its BSNL
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| neduma wrote:
| or Make it available in github gist
| ben_ wrote:
| I like what you've done with hugo!
| quaintdev wrote:
| Thanks to Austin at https://austingebauer.com/about/ for
| creating the devise theme.
| 2Gkashmiri wrote:
| isnt there already f-droid which is doing a slow but nonetheless
| a great job?
| Gedrovits wrote:
| They have "Releases" which can be improved to provide binaries
| considered as "App Store".
|
| Just download the proper release for your platform and
| Rock'n'Roll.
| ksec wrote:
| This doesn't answer the question, an App Store for what?
|
| iOS / Mac? Appel doesn't even allow anything alike on iOS, and
| for Mac, Apple could pull out developer certificate for whatever
| reason.
|
| Android? Will that be bundled by Phone markers? If not how are
| the 2.5B of Google Android users going to get it?
|
| Windows, what are the benefits?
|
| I am not understand the reason other than I want an App Store
| that is not coming from Big Tech. And arguably Github _is_ part
| of Big Tech ( Microsoft ).
| epanchin wrote:
| I would love a github logo on other app stores; verifying the tag
| hosted on github was compiled and released to the app store
| without modification.
| disposekinetics wrote:
| No one should have an 'app store', the entire concept is user
| hostile. A general purpose computer should be able to execute
| what I wish it to execute and it's inexcusable that a company
| would think they know better.
| franciscop wrote:
| > This is a minor but users will be able to raise issues with
| developers directly instead writing comments over app pages which
| I think you would agree completely suck.
|
| Would love to hear OSS App authors thoughts on this. I've seen
| some complaining about the review system on the App Stores, but I
| think it could also add a lot of maintenance burden, so wondering
| what they think.
| WhoIsSatoshi wrote:
| I am totally behind that. The Ethos of the platform and the
| visibility it has are priming it for acceptance and its own
| market. When Open Source crystallizes around it, this could be
| the spark to break the duopoly of the mobile platforms (by
| framing a hypothetical future alternative), AND provide Desktop
| OS's an Ethos-First platform for releases, where the developers
| would want to be on their best behavior from the get-go.
| bullen wrote:
| The only thing that matters is recurring payments with automatic
| VAT! Nobody provides this service yet?!
|
| If you just want to sell a one-off app use itch.io, they charge
| and pay VAT for you! (but they don't have recurring)
| mapgrep wrote:
| People are raising some good concrete objections but I wonder if
| there isn't the kernel of a good idea here.
|
| Maybe GitHub should be offering additional services to better
| help pipe projects into _all kinds_ of app distribution
| mechanisms. App stores, platform package managers (apt dnf ports
| homebrew), language package managers (gems pip maven CPAN npm
| etc), stand-alone installers (dmgs install exe-s), maybe even
| containers.
|
| These services could form a layer with some autonomy from the
| underlying project -- the author of the project rarely handles
| alll (or sometimes any) of the distro channels.
|
| Anecdotally I feel like most of this stuff happens outside of
| GitHub, which is fine and actually good, but maybe there are
| things GitHub could do to smooth the process? To help the
| original authors arrange things in releases or set metadata in a
| way that's useful downstream to packagers?
|
| But some of it happens in projects already, sometimes for a
| desktop type app you'll see a dmg or some other installer right
| in the project files. This could probably be more standardized.
| tom_mellior wrote:
| > But some of it happens in projects already, sometimes for a
| desktop type app you'll see a dmg or some other installer right
| in the project files. This could probably be more standardized.
|
| I agree with your interpretation. GitHub already allows
| projects to publish release builds. They could provide a new
| search form that looks somewhat like an "app store" where you
| could search for ready-to-install packages.
| hardsoftnfloppy wrote:
| > Github is Microsoft > Have you ever used the Windows Store?
|
| /thread
| john_moscow wrote:
| The reason why centralized app stores (and autocratic
| dictatorships) suck is because once you delegate enough power to
| a single entity, they will ALWAYS have an incentive to start
| using this power to protect their own interest and not yours.
|
| The arguments like "unlike Google, they actually listen to their
| users" sound similar to "this guy is a complete tyrant, but look,
| his interests are aligned with ours, for now". History has shown
| where this road goes.
|
| I think, the only way to have a fair "app store" is to somehow
| model the recommendation mechanics of the pre-monopoly era. 50
| years ago you would learn about a new product from your friends
| (i.e. people you trust) or a newspaper you would buy (i.e. the
| "influencer" you trust). Each person had their own circle of
| friends and trusted "influencers", and made their decisions based
| on them. There wasn't any central authority that could apply the
| same ranking algorithm to what 100 million different people get
| to see.
|
| This could be modeled fairly well with decentralized mechanisms.
| Where the weight/rating of an app is different for each user, and
| it strictly comes from the approval of that app by the people
| they trust. If you get too much spam this way, just track down
| the source in your trust network and untrust them.
| ohazi wrote:
| They're not _really_ app stores, but community-managed free
| software repositories (e.g. Debian) work astoundingly well next
| to the shit-show that is every commercial app store I 've ever
| seen.
| meerita wrote:
| It sounds a good idea, but The road to hell is paved with good
| intentions. The only way to ensure pure, non controlled by corp
| distribution of software is and was BitTorrent. Microsoft may be
| good today, but may not in the future.
| nhoughto wrote:
| You build an App Store if you own the platform, not just because
| you want to.
| karakanb wrote:
| I have a question regarding the moderation needs of stores: why
| exactly do we need stores for mobile devices, whereas we don't
| have any store or moderation for installing application on
| computers, or visiting websites?
|
| Except various edge cases, you can technically visit any website
| that is served from any server, or you can install any
| application that has the correct binaries for your platform. What
| makes mobile devices different in this regard?
| zests wrote:
| A walled garden is a plus for most consumers. Especially non-
| technical consumers who want to download something and be sure
| it's not spyware that will brick their phone. If you want to be
| able to install anything you can buy a pinephone but I can't
| imagine it would be fun to install anything on a pinephone.
|
| Apple offers a walled garden as an offering to i-device users.
| Other companies try to mimic Apple's success. Mobile devices
| simply do not have the same "must be able to install anything"
| requirements that a standard computer has.
| amelius wrote:
| > If you want to be able to install anything you can buy a
| pinephone but I can't imagine it would be fun to install
| anything on a pinephone.
|
| If an application is properly sandboxed, and I can fully
| control the permissions of that sandbox, then I see no
| problems with that.
| MayeulC wrote:
| > I can't imagine it would be fun to install anything on a
| pinephone.
|
| It's actually fun to do "apk add audacity" (yeah, there's
| also multiple gui frontends...) and have it installed and
| working as well as on desktop. OK, that one uses a
| traditional desktop interface, but it is still usable. Plug
| it into a docking station and use a mouse and keyboard +
| screen if you prefer.
|
| Okay, that's not really sideloading, especially as each
| distro has its packaging format. You can use flatpaks for
| this (and they are sandboxes), some CIs provide builds as
| flatpaks (KDE does this).
|
| One issue is that Linux executables are still very much
| architecture-dependent.
| zests wrote:
| If you take off the linux hobbyist blinders you will see
| that having to type in "apk add audacity" and getting a
| mobile unusable interface is a non-starter for 99% of
| people. Compare that to the experience of typing in to a
| search bar that loads suggestions and gives results with
| pictures and ratings and descriptions.
|
| I like the pinephone and am going to buy one myself but I'm
| buying it because of linux reasons, not because I actually
| think it will be a good daily driver.
| [deleted]
| amelius wrote:
| > I have a question regarding the moderation needs of stores
|
| Moderation is orthogonal to stores.
|
| We don't need stores. Some people might need _filters_. And
| multiple filters could exist for different audiences (children,
| grandmas who lack computer knowledge, etc.)
| villasv wrote:
| App stores exist on mobile because they're good business for
| who controls them.
|
| They need moderation because stores comes with policies.
| turbinerneiter wrote:
| > Backed by Microsoft. Microsoft has been playing good by the
| developers for years now. I trust them more than Apple and
| Google.
|
| Maybe we shouldn't trust MS, but ourselves.
|
| A MS controlled App Store is as bad or good as a Google or Apple
| controlled App store. Good for some peace of mind and trust, that
| they won't distribute malware ( ... already broken tough), bad
| for the fact that they control it we would still rely on the
| benevolence of a dictator.
| worik wrote:
| Yes, this.
|
| Some of us remember Microsoft setting personal computing back
| ten years by using their market power to foist sub par, frankly
| rubbish, system software on computer users.
|
| There is no sign they have changed their business practices. It
| is just now they are the underdog.
|
| Full respect is due to MS for turning their business around,
| but they are playing catchup now. If they ever get back out in
| front, watch out!
| sschueller wrote:
| All fine and good but what we need first is an antitrust case
| against apple and google just like we had against Microsoft back
| in the day when internet explorer was pre-installed.
|
| Just now we have a situation where you can't even install an
| alternative app store in one platform and the other one is
| crippled.
|
| And don't tell me apple has a small market share or you can use
| another vendor. Back when Microsoft was being forced to open up
| it was as extremely easy to install another browser and they
| still had to go to court.
| georgyo wrote:
| Branding does matter, but friction would be extremely rough.
|
| Windows is ironically an extremely open system. All users are
| very used to doing what other platforms would call side loading.
| And all apps on windows have developed their own methods for
| receiving updates.
|
| The Microsoft store for windows is pretty sad. Not because the
| interface sucks, at least not more so than google or apple ones,
| but because there isn't a real incentive for developers or users
| to use it.
|
| Searching for a ssh client on the windows store shows ZERO free
| options, and all of them look worse than PuTTY. They are in the
| windows store strictly for visibility; which is a good use of an
| app store. But without the major players who don't need the
| limited visibility of that store, they users won't think to look
| there for their needs as well.
|
| If Microsoft rebranded their app store the Github app store, Or
| made some easy pipeline for github actions to publish to their
| store; there would be a fair amount of people yelling "Embrace,
| Extend, Extinguish" as well as fearing that microsoft is using
| the good will of GitHub to get to a similar world of the closed
| gardens of the others.
|
| Lastly, Microsoft has not done so well in the mobile phone
| markets. Creating an android store similar to F-Droid would be a
| hard sell and limited appeal. Google very likely won't let you
| install the windows app store from the google app store. Apple
| will never allow a competitor on their platform _at all_ unless
| legally required.
|
| I don't see how a GitHub app store could succeed.
| pier25 wrote:
| > _but because there isn 't a real incentive for developers or
| users to use it_
|
| Not true. It solves app distribution, install, and updates. We
| used it for an education app a couple of years ago and it was
| great.
|
| Before that we used Electron with Squirrel and it was horrible
| for our users. For some reason the app wasn't installed in the
| start menu and if they deleted the desktop shortcut it was
| impossible for them to find it again.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Sidebar: It's incredible that Microsoft itself now uses
| Electron with Squirrel for apps like GitHub Desktop and
| Microsoft Teams: It violates every notion of how Windows apps
| are supposed to be installed, wrecks havoc with enterprise
| application security policies, and is just the sort of
| aggressively irritating silent updating garbage that makes
| Microsoft's primary users, businesses, irritated as heck.
| benibela wrote:
| I have plans to put my Windows apps in the Microsoft store,
| because I have heard it is cheaper than getting a code signing
| certificate which would be renewed yearly
|
| But I switched to Linux, so I could not use any of the
| Microsoft tooling. Unless the store deployment can run on WINE?
| Kwpolska wrote:
| You should set up a Windows VM. Not only for the store
| tooling, but also to have a way to test your software on the
| platform you're offering it on.
| pjmlp wrote:
| So what happened to Github is the enemy and everyone should move
| into Gitlab?
| ratsmack wrote:
| A better solution would be an entirely community driven app store
| that is not beholden to any corporate influence.
| danShumway wrote:
| FDroid exists already.
|
| Okay, it doesn't host proprietary apps, but whatever. The point
| is, this isn't a tech problem anymore, it's not a problem where
| someone can just make a new platform to solve everything.
|
| Google has contracts with phone manufacturers that ban them
| from adding 3rd-party app stores alongside Google Play. And
| none of these app stores are going to show up on iOS. It's a
| cultural/legal problem at this point.
|
| Otherwise, community maintained (even private) software repos
| are already a thing. We don't really need people to build more
| of them, we need people to start using them, and for mobile
| platforms to support them.
| ratsmack wrote:
| >Google has contracts with phone manufacturers that ban them
| from adding 3rd-party app stores alongside Google Play.
|
| That's kinda like Microsoft requiring a payment for every PC
| sold whether their OS was installed or not. Predatory
| contracts from a monopolistic company... who would have
| thought.
| [deleted]
| jariel wrote:
| We need multiple app stores with legislation on providing access
| and default searches, much in the same way EU will require
| devices to allow users to select default search etc..
|
| A good amount of competition will help solve a lot of problems,
| and very strongly highlight the ant-competitive practices
| inherent in these value chain verticalizations.
|
| I respect Google wants to form a Union to influence who can and
| cannot be on YouTube, at the same time, I want absolutely nothing
| to do with some foreign special interest group dictating content
| to me, so let's have some choice, thanks.
| beckman466 wrote:
| 'GitHub Should Start an App Store'
|
| ...or we should all join the distributed app revolution made
| possible by holochain's DHT+git+signatures+gossip Rails-like
| distributed app framework, and use holo's app store to download
| and use fully distributed apps [1]?
|
| [1] http://holo.host
| forbiddenvoid wrote:
| Or we could just stop using app stores.
|
| Honestly, I've yet to find an argument for the existence of an
| app store that holds water. Let people install what they want.
| Provide reasonable paths to update and upgrade and cut out the
| middle layer.
|
| The layer of control that Google and Apple exert over people is
| anti-competitive. But the answer isn't competing app stores. I
| don't need someone to tell me what I can or can't install on the
| operating system on my device.
| risho wrote:
| all you need to do is look at the windows ecosystem vs the
| linux one to realize how important a software hub is. windows
| is a place where people download random one off pieces of
| software that may or may not be safe, will likely never be
| updated, and will sit and rot on your computer until the end of
| time, and are entirely unvetted whereas linux maintains all of
| your software for you, keeps it frequently up to date, manages
| dependencies and does at least SOME level of vetting. there
| definitely are problems with current implementations of app
| stores in phones, but the idea in general has been a huge boon
| for security and maintainability. if you think that android
| would be better off without google play you are insane. people
| would be running insecure nonsense that would be doing stuff
| like stealing their bank information and all sorts of stuff.
|
| if your problem is the fact that apple restricts people's
| ability to run software that they haven't explicitly allowed,
| then I agree, that is a problem. that isn't a problem on google
| as you can install any apk you want.
| deathanatos wrote:
| I think it's easy enough to imagine implementations that
| allow the addition of software vendors to the package system
| that permits regular updates. Many of the Linux package
| managers (e.g., Apt, Portage) permit this; for example, on
| Gentoo, I install Steam by adding Valve (/Steam) as a place
| that the package manager can obtain packages from.
|
| That's not to say Apt/Portage are by any means perfect; the
| nature of how they are configured is definitely not going to
| be friendly to your typical Windows user. But I think it is
| _possible_ to wrap that in a UI that adequately expresses
| "okay, you're adding the ability to install software from
| this vendor, and [the package manager] will help keep it
| patched & up-to-date."
|
| I think we also need to combine that with better security
| models, so that desktop software isn't necessarily granted
| access to everything by default.
|
| But UI design trends have spent the last decade "simplifying"
| UIs down so much that they fail to solve the problem at hand.
| forbiddenvoid wrote:
| This argument really doesn't resonate with me. Like, if
| people want to download trash on their Windows computer, who
| am I to stop them? You can do that on your Mac and Linux
| devices too. People don't need to be protected by App Stores.
|
| I'm not only concerned about that, though. The standard 30%
| cut of revenue flowing through the app if it was downloaded
| from the app store is also an issue.
|
| In general, App Stores create a 'marketplace' where one
| doesn't need to exist. That it's the default method of
| getting software isn't really a benefit because it makes
| self-distribution harder (or impossible - which is really the
| anticompetitive issue here).
| risho wrote:
| i agree that you should be able to do whatever you want
| with you device. if you want to download malware or try to
| manage it all yourself, then you should be able to do that.
| i think that out of the box, by default, having things
| managed by a package manager makes sense, especially for
| normies. this app store monopoly doesn't exist on android.
| you can very easily install fdroid or any other app store
| whenever you want. this issue does exist on ios though. if
| you would want to argue that alternative app stores or
| package managers should be front and center out of the box,
| I'd be more than fine with that as well.
| villasv wrote:
| > They already host source code of millions of apps. Release
| integration should be trivial to implement.
|
| Release integration is trivial for anyone. It's the easiest and
| most irrelevant part of the app stores.
|
| > Unlike Google they actually listen to their users. They were
| awesome during youtube-dl debacle.
|
| And controversial on others, like shutting down Popcorn Time's
| repository. As any other, they'll listen if there's enough
| outcry.
|
| > Backed by Microsoft. Microsoft has been playing good by the
| developers for years now. I trust them more than Apple and
| Google.
|
| This is situational and opportunistic. It can change any day. In
| fact, managing an important app store is exactly one way to
| re-(un)-balance this relationship.
|
| > They could finally give the desktop the app store it deserves
|
| Microsoft won't have GitHub compete with the Microsoft Store and
| its newer efforts like winget. It would unermine their unifying
| vision that has been in the works for years for no benefit.
|
| > This is a minor but users will be able to raise issues with
| developers directly instead writing comments over app pages which
| I think you would agree completely suck.
|
| Sure, lets pipe user feedback directly into GitHub issues. Good
| luck with that if you have a hundred issues a day.
|
| I don't think there's a single angle that would paint this as a
| good idea. Phone manufacturers like Samsung are in a much much
| better position to try. And indeed they have been trying an
| failing.
| trident5000 wrote:
| If you think Microsoft wont turn their back and get on the
| ban/censorship train like any other company I believe that
| would be a mistake. They will have some "woke" employees and
| journalists grill the executives and then they will cave to mob
| rule just like the rest.
| villasv wrote:
| > they will cave to mob rule just like the rest
|
| Would they? Microsoft is still serving ICE, despite all the
| "grilling".
| kibwen wrote:
| Is hand-wringing over "woke" bogeymen the next evolution of
| grousing unironically about "SJWs"?
| crumbshot wrote:
| I think it is, and it's also a useful conversational
| marker.
|
| As soon as someone starts complaining about "woke" and
| "SJWs" and "cancel culture" and so on, I know I can just
| switch off and disengage, as anything they have to say on
| the topic will be some reactionary bullshit they're
| parroting at me.
| gfodor wrote:
| I highly advise you write down somewhere what sort of event
| it would take for you to change your belief that this is
| nothing to be concerned about.
|
| Then, at least do a cursory check to see if such an event
| has occurred already, it may well have.
|
| https://mobile.twitter.com/thomaschattwill/status/135419437
| 4...
| kibwen wrote:
| The first thing would be for someone to actually define
| "woke", as opposed to slinging it around as a
| conveniently-nebulous catch-all to describe people
| they're opposed to (see also "liberal" and
| "conservative"). What is the woke manifesto?
|
| If you have something to say, then please just say it
| without couching it behind vague terms and "you can
| connect the dots yourself" conspiratorial thinking.
| ralusek wrote:
| The illiberal left.
|
| Liberals believe in universality under the law, free
| speech, individualism, color-blindness, markets, equality
| of opportunity, rule of law.
|
| The illiberal left, whatever you want to call them, are
| precisely the opposite. They believe in contextual
| application of the law, faction and outcomes-based speech
| tolerance, racial/gender/religious collectivism, and
| therefore racial consciousness, find markets to be
| inherently exploitative, determine equality/equity in
| accordance with population outcomes, and tailor systems
| around producing equitable collective outcomes, and
| believe in designing systems that are less principled in
| their means so much as they are pragmatic in pursuit of
| their ends.
|
| As a liberal myself, I find this faction of the left
| (AOC/Robin Diangelo/Ibram X. Kendi/Ilhan Omar etc) to be
| the furthest political faction from my own.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| The thesis of the illiberal left isn't that universality
| under the law shouldn't exist, the free speech shouldn't
| exist, that individualism shouldn't exist, that color-
| blindness shouldn't exist, that equality of opportunity
| shouldn't exist, or anything else.
|
| The thesis is that those things _don 't exist in the real
| world_. And it goes further than that, by saying that
| those things cannot exist in our society unless major
| changes happen. But the goal of abandoning liberalism is
| not actually to abandon those things, but to actually
| really realize them.
|
| The thesis is that our current systems _are not_
| principled either in their means or their ends.
|
| And it is true. Free speech is proportional to your means
| to challenge threats to your livelihood. Rule of law,
| universality under the law, equality of opportunity,
| simply do not exist - depending mainly on your socio-
| economic status but also on other axes such as racial
| perception of the individual by society, and so on.
|
| Equally, the thesis isn't that we shouldn't have color-
| blindness, simply that the current social and material
| reality makes this impossible. As a result of this,
| attempts/pretensions at color-blindness simply make the
| problem worse.
|
| If you didn't notice, the conclusion of the lefitst
| project after gender equality became progressive
| weakening and then almost abolition of gender - and I
| mean this in the strictest sociological sense of gender
| as the perception of a set of social attributes related
| to sex. The exact same set of theories are applied to
| race, before racial abolition there must be a realization
| of the existence of racial identity (which is indeed the
| definition of race in the leftist sense - racial identity
| is completely orthogonal to traits and genetics, it is
| indeed a completely cultural and social phenomenon and
| process), then true racial equality, then essentially
| complete racial abolition.
|
| Systems that actually provide real equality of
| opportunity will always provide actually equitable
| collective outcomes on the average.
|
| Equally, the leftist opposition is not to markets
| themselves. The leftist opposition is to our current set
| of property relations and to the relationships of
| productions. Attempts to change those when the time is
| not opportune have been disastrous, so the aim is to
| compensate and slowly work towards actually fixing them
| using state intervention that ancillary limit the freedom
| of the free market. But there is no inherent opposition
| to markets at all.
|
| This worldview is only a few decades younger than
| classical liberalism itself, and started with the
| disappointed third estate of the French Revolution. Put
| simply, the thesis is that classical liberalism failed to
| achieve its promises of liberty, equality, and
| fraternity, and that making good on those promises
| requires more careful and less idealistic theories of
| society and social change than the idealist ones of
| classical liberalism.
|
| I just thought you would enjoy not arguing against
| strawmen.
| ralusek wrote:
| I don't understand how I was arguing with a strawman,
| when your entire argument is explaining WHY the left is
| illiberal. I said that the illiberal left differs from
| liberals in that they don't, for example, find color-
| blindness to be a reasonable strategy for eliminating
| racism. You go on to explain why the illiberal left
| doesn't find color-blindness to be a reasonable strategy
| for eliminating racism. No strawmanning was done, nor was
| a moral judgment.
|
| To address some of your points. You say
|
| > The thesis is that those things don't exist in the real
| world. And it goes further than that, by saying that
| those things cannot exist in our society unless major
| changes happen
|
| Liberalism doesn't make a claim regarding whether or not
| things exist or not. It is a fixed compass of procedural
| principles. Completely consistent of means, independent
| of ends, and independent of the state of things. You
| can't say that "free speech doesn't exist in the real
| world," when free speech is a procedural description of
| the way the system should run. If there is a failure of
| free speech to be applied unilaterally, that isn't a
| failure of liberalism, so much as an implementation
| error, and a failure to actually run the system as
| described. Your argument is like saying that "habeas
| corpus doesn't exist because the Japanese were interned
| in WW2." Habeas corpus is a procedural description of a
| process. What happened in WW2 wasn't habeas corpus not
| existing, but an implementation failure where habeas
| corpus was not implemented.
|
| Much of the liberal ethos was present in the country
| since the get-go, and the failures of the country were
| actually failures of implementation. How can you have
| slaves, how can you treat people differently in
| accordance with their race, how can women not vote, in a
| country whose espoused ethics describe systems that would
| in no way tolerate these failings? The strongest leaps
| forward in progress have come from making the claim "this
| is what the liberal ethos describes, and this is how
| you're failing at it." MLK or the suffragettes are making
| the case that they're being denied their ability to act
| as individual actors, being denied equality under the
| law.
|
| Now, compare this to the modern left.
|
| > If you didn't notice, the conclusion of the lefitst
| project after gender equality became progressive
| weakening and then almost abolition of gender - and I
| mean this in the strictest sociological sense of gender
| as the perception of a set of social attributes related
| to sex.
|
| You have described the exact opposite of what the modern
| left is. In the 60s-00s, the movement regarding gender
| equality was primarily what I would have described as a
| liberal movement. One that is hyper focused on
| individualism, and asserting that identity could exist as
| independently from sex or race as one wanted. If you are
| a girl, and you have short hair, and you like fighting,
| and skateboarding, and you're sexually attracted to
| women, that is as valid an expression of what it means to
| be a female as any other variant. This is an anti-
| collective, purely individualistic position, and is spot
| on with the liberal assertions of individualism and
| (gender)-blindness.
|
| The modern leftist position is a complete inversion of
| this. If you are a girl, and you have short hair, and you
| like fighting, and skateboarding, and you're sexually
| attracted to women, are you sure you're not a boy? Your
| gender presentation is rather male, you must at least be
| non-binary? Do you see how this is a complete inversion?
| It goes back to making the assertion that these gender
| expressions are actually fundamentally to be associated
| with fixed collectives. I find it to be a much more
| powerful expression for a man to have long hair, wear
| dresses and makeup, love whoever they want to love, and
| say "I'm a man, and this is what being a man means to
| me." I don't take any issue with that same person
| asserting that they're a woman, I just think, again, that
| it could not stand in starker opposition to what is
| clearly the extension of the liberal movement regarding
| gender identity.
|
| I'd keep discussing more of your points, and I'd be happy
| to continue later, but I'm honestly slightly apprehensive
| by your tone that you might not actually be interested in
| a conversation. Like I said, though, if you're looking to
| continue the conversation genuinely, then I'd be happy
| to.
|
| In summary, I think the illiberal left DO think that
| universality under the law, free speech, individualism,
| color-blindness, equality of opportunity shouldn't exist.
| Your argument is that they do think that they should
| exist, but believe that they don't exist. My case against
| this is that, not only do I virtually never see any of
| these things espoused as values by leftists, but often
| see them ridiculed. And as I said, these are all
| descriptions of procedural means, they are not ends. So
| you literally cannot believe in those things if the
| procedures you want to see implemented are done so in
| pursuit of corrective ends. I can't say I believe in free
| speech, but then restrict the speech that I think that is
| harmful to the equitable outcomes I want. Controlling
| speech in pursuit of outcomes is itself the opposite of
| what free speech is. The desired outcomes are irrelevant.
| To then say that leftists "don't believe these shouldn't
| exist," is not correct. They very much don't believe that
| these procedural systems should exist, because none of
| the procedures they design or implement remotely resemble
| any of these systems.
| gfodor wrote:
| Well articulated and a good example of why one ought to
| be able to cleanly argue both sides of an argument if one
| expects to be taken seriously.
|
| I would take issue with your first point: many of those
| who ascribe to these theories believe that the principles
| you mention like free speech are inherently platonic:
| they _cannot_ be achieved in any meaningful sense,
| regardless of what is done, due to the inherent nature of
| human beings. The measures you refer to often do not have
| the goal of bringing about justice through mechanisms
| other than coercion of society against its inherent
| nature (Ie, by force.) So I would argue that many abandon
| the goal of achieving them in the first place due to
| their unattainability. Ironically, honest liberals
| acknowledge the realities of the difficulty of ever
| attaining them in full - however the liberalist approach
| is that there is no other moral effort other than to try
| to close the gap as small as reality will permit, and
| that ultimately the method of _steady, incremental
| progress_ towards attaining these things will in fact
| result in the best of all possible worlds.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| I certainly agree that a lot of those ideals are
| platonic, though not at all. It's important to note that
| I'm only limiting myself to those arguments for the
| purposes of the argument.
|
| I also agree that steady, incremental progress has a lot
| of value, and that there is probably a bit more
| improvement that is feasible within the liberal
| framework, which is why I'm glad to work with liberals on
| those.
|
| The issue I have with the liberal perspective on this is
| that most of the imperfection (or gross deficiency,
| depending on the specific aspect) ultimately originates
| in economics, both socially and economically. The result
| of this is that (reluctantly) I had to recognize that
| these deficiencies are not solvable within the liberal
| framework, as it presupposes the economic and social
| relations that cause the issues. That said, I don't think
| that this change of framework shouldn't be done
| incrementally, if such a thing is at all possible.
|
| On the moral side, though arguing morals of the internet
| quickly gets hairy, the leftist argument (this one I
| consider incomplete), is that there is quite some
| absurdity in claiming that using coercion for the goal of
| changing social relations in a way that will clearly
| improve society, since liberal society itself is
| ultimately based on massive amounts of coercion, which is
| reproduced by the perpetuation of the current framework.
|
| I'd also take issue with the idea that society has an
| inherent nature which social change butts against.
| Indeed, not only are the mechanisms for social change,
| coercive as they may be, themselves a part of society and
| not extrinsic to it, but there is very little in the way
| of inherent nature as far as society is concerned, as
| society itself has seen almost total change in a great
| many ways as the relationships between the self, the
| social, and the material changed.
|
| That said, I certainly understand your position, and my
| goal wasn't really to attempt to debate which viewpoint
| is right - not only is it that I cannot fully do them
| justice, but the nuances of of each one of our
| contentions I think merit a full thread or more by
| themselves. I just think a lot of liberals do not really
| understand the illiberal left at all. I think the peak of
| this was the Peterson vs Zizek debate, where Peterson
| read the Communist Manifesto once, and then operated in
| idees recues for the actual positions of the illiberal
| left, in the process completely missing the point and
| leading to a non-debate.
| gfodor wrote:
| I'll define it to be anyone who either explicitly or
| implicitly buys into the core elements of the doctrine
| slash religion of pseudo-postmodern Theory.
|
| One of the common patterns of this is the assumption that
| guilt-by-extra-vague-association (such as having a Parler
| account) or silence-is-complicity are reasonable ways to
| motivate extra-judicial justice against people, such as
| getting them fired, as was done here. These are
| fundamentally illiberal philosophies, both in their
| content and their explicit rejection of liberalism as a
| force for good in society.
|
| I wasn't couching what I was saying in any way. I was
| saying that if _you_ do not think the kinds of behavior
| we are seeing where people 's lives are being ruined by
| mob justice are anything other than "bogeymen", you ought
| to write down where the line is for you to honestly
| reconsider your position. In any situation where society
| slips slowly into madness, a lack of self-recognition
| where ones breaking points are contributes greatly to
| that slide.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| > if you do not think the kinds of behavior we are seeing
| where people's lives are being ruined by mob justice are
| anything other than "bogeymen"
|
| That's not how I took their response at all. I believe
| they were specifically picking up your derogatory use of
| the term "woke". If you meant "illiberal", why not use
| that term? It's far less ambiguous and less loaded.
| gfodor wrote:
| Check the author of the comment you are referring to,
| it's not me. For what it's worth, I do not use the term
| "woke" for the reason you mentioned, but if someone asks
| what definition I would apply to it if I had to (as I was
| here) what I wrote is my answer.
| pavlov wrote:
| The American right has spent the past 35 years inventing
| scary new names for the same nebulous concept of a
| Marxist horde threatening to prevent them from speaking
| honestly.
|
| It's been known as "political correctness", "social
| justice warriors", "wokeness" and certainly a bunch of
| other names. The fundamental premise doesn't change
| because it's rooted in some deeper fear.
| [deleted]
| dane-pgp wrote:
| Do you think that no one has ever unironically used
| "politically correct", "social justice warrior", or
| "woke" to describe themselves or their opinions?
|
| I'm not saying that the response to it isn't rooted in
| some deeper fear, but that doesn't mean that the
| phenomenon they are afraid of doesn't exist.
| pavlov wrote:
| Of course it exists, but for decades it's been cast into
| a mold that pattern-matches a longstanding reactionary
| anxiety.
|
| Just like "cosmopolitan" is a neutral/positive adjective
| by its dictionary definition, but has a very negative
| connotation in certain right-wing and/or anti-Semite
| circles.
| MereInterest wrote:
| My first exposure to the term "social justice" was
| several years ago, when a family member began working
| with local jails and businesses, personally visiting and
| establishing relationships with inmates, and working to
| help reduce recidivism by arranging jobs for former
| inmates. I have never heard the addendum "warrior" added
| as a self-description, and have only ever heard it
| applied as a term of mockery from the right.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| > I have never heard the addendum "warrior" added as a
| self-description, and have only ever heard it applied as
| a term of mockery from the right.
|
| I'm reluctant to name specific individuals, but there are
| people who embrace the "SJW" term for themselves. For
| example, the flair next to the username of this semi-
| famous developer[0] is a self-description that he is
| known for.[1]
|
| Perhaps you could argue that he is being ironic, but it
| is a self-description and he certainly doesn't mean to
| mock people who identify that way.
|
| [0] https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/2fddvg/im_mat
| thew_ga...
|
| [1] https://ostatic.com/blog/matthew-garrett-quits-
| kernel-to-do-...
| simias wrote:
| Oh no, poor literary agent caught posting on Gab, a far
| right white supremacist website, and losing her job.
| Thoughts and prayers.
|
| More seriously if you think that's a problem IMO the
| solution is to ask for better employee protection laws so
| that people can't be fired at will. This is not a free
| speech problem IMO, it's a worker right issue.
|
| And if it turns out that her contract did mention that
| she shouldn't publicly engage in something that would
| damage the company's image or something of the sort,
| well, that's just the way it works really.
| [deleted]
| throwaway3699 wrote:
| Seriously.
|
| Gab isn't a far right white supremacist website. It's
| just right wing Twitter. I don't understand where all
| this hyperbole comes from but it's a perfect example of
| the low-information individuals we have in society today.
| ryanlol wrote:
| Twitter is right wing Twitter, Gab is decidedly a far
| right website.
|
| Just take a quick look at the comments on the top stories
| in the "Gab trends" section:
|
| https://trends.gab.com/item/60163b8f144291532b8bccb0 Bill
| gates conspiracy theorists
|
| https://trends.gab.com/item/601682466beb1e3de3156fe1
| "Pence is a traitor!"
|
| https://trends.gab.com/item/6016992e144291532b8d5986
| "Socialists are murderers!"
|
| Are these normal right wing talking points?
| throwaway3699 wrote:
| The populist right has been systemically purged from
| Twitter. It's not that Twitter is left wing but they ban
| right wing thought, leading it to be a slanted echo-
| chamber. Gab is definitely right wing Twitter.
|
| I've seen equally whacky things trending on the left
| side, e.g. "Russian Ads on Facebook won Trump the
| election".
| triceratops wrote:
| > equally whacky things trending on the left side, e.g.
| "Russian Ads on Facebook won Trump the election".
|
| Why is that "whacky"? There were Russian ads.[1] They
| obviously _intended_ to affect the election result
| (because why bother otherwise). Whether or not they were
| actually successful in affecting the election is
| unknowable. But it 's not flat-earther-whacky to think
| they succeeded.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report#Social_me
| dia_ca...
| throwaway3699 wrote:
| The right is saying the same about election fraud.
| Neither have any basis in reality beyond circumstancial
| evidence. Neither should dominate the conversation so
| heavily and yet... here we are.
|
| Both left and right have it's stupid moments, if you
| can't see that it's you with the bias, not me.
| triceratops wrote:
| I don't think you understand what "circumstantial
| evidence" is.
|
| I'm aware I'm biased, but in this case the facts are in
| plain sight for Russian ads. A Republican authored that
| report. You may think yourself unbiased by saying "both
| sides are the same" but both sides are in fact not the
| same at all.
|
| The "right" may say the same about "election fraud" but
| saying is not the same as having a well-sourced report,
| and federal investigation that netted multiple
| indictments and convictions.
| lenkite wrote:
| Just about anyone who disagrees with the left is classed
| as [White Supremacist/Nazi] these days. And it's not just
| whites. [Whiteness] is a term being applied to people of
| colour too when they don't fall in line with the re-
| education program. Orwellian doesn't even begin to
| describe the nonsense afoot today.
| jwond wrote:
| > [Whiteness] is a term being applied to people of colour
| too when they don't fall in line with the re-education
| program.
|
| For anyone who doesn't believe this is a thing, here's a
| Washington Post article:
|
| "Opinion: To understand Trump's support, we must think in
| terms of multiracial Whiteness"
|
| https://archive.is/d6Ydz
| gfodor wrote:
| The actual posts I saw were on Parler, and she wasn't
| posting anything even remotely connected to white
| supremacy, just normal things you would post on Twitter.
| She was banned for having an account, as best I can tell.
| This shouldn't surprise anyone. (And your comment
| obviously provides further evidence for why this
| shouldn't surprise anyone.)
| rvz wrote:
| None of the arguments make their suggestion(s) a good idea. It
| solves none of the problems of the App Store as it just
| offloads the work onto Github (Microsoft) who can also de-
| platform who ever they want on their centralised App Store.
|
| It would be business as usual under a different Big Tech name.
| Kalium wrote:
| > Sure, lets pipe user feedback directly into GitHub issues.
| Good luck with that if you have a hundred issues a day.
|
| Given the garbage-grade issues I have often seen from
| professional engineers, this sounds like a complete nightmare.
| quaintdev wrote:
| I was definitely not expecting user feedback to go in as
| GitHub issues. I should have been more clear of what I was
| expecting.
| Kalium wrote:
| Anywhere users can put feedback that they think might get
| to devs, they will.
| numpad0 wrote:
| >> Microsoft has been playing good by the developers for years
| now. I trust them more than Apple and Google. > This is
| situational and opportunistic. It can change any day.
|
| And the way they run a store is consistently horrible that it
| feels impossible to make worse. Full of horror stories, bans
| and rejections, sometimes even random pick deletions since Xbox
| Live Indie Games days, to at least as recent as just few
| quarters ago.
|
| There are reasons why people choose iOS, Android, .msi file
| download from GitHub and so on over Microsoft Store.
| agilob wrote:
| >Sure, lets pipe user feedback directly into GitHub issues.
| Good luck with that if you have a hundred issues a day.
|
| Average user is less than poorly educated about technology.
| Their level of competence when raising a bug is simply
| pathetic, a lot of times. I manage an email server for a
| family, they write to me "email doesn't work", I check issue
| and respond "domain should be gmail.com not gmail,com" (notice
| the comma).
|
| This reminded me how sqlite team was getting emails or calls at
| night, from some random people because another software was
| crashing. User went to "about/legal" and found license of
| SQLite, so obviously they decided to contact SQLite and
| complain on bad software.
| https://github.com/mackyle/sqlite/blob/3cf493d/src/os.h#L52-...
|
| Now imagine facebook api breaks backwards compatibility, so you
| get 1000 of new issues in a day with title "broken", "doesn't
| work", "shit is crahing so gave 1* fix it now I might review it
| later".
| phkahler wrote:
| >> hone manufacturers like Samsung are in a much much better
| position to try. And indeed they have been trying an failing.
|
| Samsung is bothering me. I have an S8 and they want to replace
| all the standard Google apps - including the basic text
| messageing one - with Samsung equivalents.
|
| It's not clear why and I haven't gone looking. It feels like
| they're just trying to displace Google and be another company
| reading my messages and monitoring my activity. I figure I
| don't need another one of those in my life. If their intent is
| to help me by offering privacy respecting alternatives they
| have not done so. I'm also completely unaware of any app-store
| Samsung may have beyond a place for them to push their versions
| of these apps.
|
| Am I wrong? Should I be looking closer at what Samsung has to
| offer?
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Samsung isn't much better than Google on the privacy side.
| They're just replacing all the standard apps to make them
| more in line with OneUI in terms of UX.
|
| But things like Samsung health send data home too
| unfortunately.
|
| They are stepping back from cloud services a bit now and
| letting Microsoft step in, also not privacy driven but more
| financial I think.
| rrdharan wrote:
| Samsung security, privacy and general software qualify are
| all a joke as far as I can tell and it's amusing anyone
| would put them in even the same ballpark as Google.
|
| Dog bites man is not news, and neither are most of the
| Samsung software travesties ranging from software supply
| chain debacles to TV spying to data breaches.
|
| Nobody even cares in the tech community because no one
| expects anything of them.
| glenneroo wrote:
| After installing NoRoot Firewall on my phone, I discovered
| that every single Samsung app was phoning home: camera,
| gallery, contacts, bixby, health, messaging, etc. On the
| upside, I was able to remove 99% of the pre-installed apps
| without any special tools. The only one that refused to go
| was bixy (and no way to reprogram the dedicated button),
| but at least it can be "disabled" and denied all
| permissions via Android's app manager.
| indymike wrote:
| Oems for android apps often have their own contacts, dialer,
| calendar, and home apps. Usually this is to provide a
| differentiated experience, not to surveil you. Some are very
| good... Even better than the stock android experience. Others
| are terrible. Privacy is all over the board (except that most
| are using your Google account for storage so Google is almost
| always there). The vendor app stores often have device
| optimized apps and sometimes have better pricing. An example
| would be adding support for the curved edge on many Samsung
| devices...
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| > Sure, lets pipe user feedback directly into GitHub issues.
| Good luck with that if you have a hundred issues a day.
|
| There's a more fundamental issue: GitHub issues are for
| developers to report bugs and file feature-requests, they
| aren't intended for user support, even if that's sometimes how
| they're used.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| Microsoft tripped over themselves scrambling to make
| advertising revenue as fast as possible and stymied the
| development of their operating system to do so. They have
| turned the user of Windows into the product. They are pulling a
| Facebook/Google and the author has the audacity to say they
| trust Microsoft more than Apple? Give me a break.
| simias wrote:
| >This is situational and opportunistic. It can change any day.
| In fact, managing an important app store is exactly one way to
| re-(un)-balance this relationship.
|
| I agree. Sorting huge, multinational, publicly traded companies
| in friends and enemies list is so obviously bogus and immature
| that it baffles me that this is so prevalent.
|
| Microsoft is not your enemy. It's not your friend (unless
| you're one of the shareholders). It's profit driven and amoral.
| They'll always line up with whatever they believe will maximize
| profits because that their entire reason for existing.
|
| Apparently Microsoft decided that being more FLOSS friendly
| (after decades of trying to annihilate these projects, lest we
| forget) because they decided that it would favor them in the
| long run.
|
| If they ever decide that they stand to make more profit by
| throwing the whole github ethos under the bus they will. A few
| people will make strongly worded blog posts that will reach the
| top of HN. A few employees might even quit and loudly slap the
| door on the way out. Then probably nothing will happen.
| ironmagma wrote:
| Business is amoral; the system is amoral. But every player in
| the system must choose for every action whether to do that
| action or not. The actions they choose will either conform to
| the morals or they will not, so in the end just like the
| individual people that comprise them, companies are (mostly)
| either good or bad. There's nothing that says a company, even
| a publicly-traded one, must not exist for anything but
| profit.
| marcinzm wrote:
| A company is not a static entity and its "morals" will
| change must faster than those of an individual. Moreover
| nothing says that the management of a company must act
| based on their innate morals. Lying for personal benefit is
| a perfectly valid human trait. Humans are also very good at
| justifying anything we do that benefits us as aligning with
| our moral compass. So in the end a company must be assumed
| to have no moral compass in the future even if it has one
| now. Giving a company power now based on its moral compass
| will just mean it has power to abuse in the future when its
| moral compass changes.
|
| Microsoft and Google being recent examples of companies
| shifting their moral compass fairly quickly.
| syshum wrote:
| This really is a generational divide, those of US that were
| around for the 90's and early 00's Microsoft crap still have
| a bad taste for the "new Microsoft" that claims to love FLOSS
| (while still showing many signs of EEE.. )
|
| During that time Google was very friendly to FLOSS, and open
| protocols (remember when GChat was just a XMPP client)
|
| Today MS and Google seems to have flipped, Google now is
| fully embracing Embrace, Extend, Extinguish, where MS seems
| to be attempting to wind that back though with mixed success
| danielovichdk wrote:
| Personally I do not look at companies for being nice,
| sweet, good to the world or whatever other bullshit any
| company will try to convince you to believe.
|
| Do you really believe Microsoft is changing their tactics
| because they want to?
|
| They needed to change.
|
| Their goal which has always been Platform, around 12 years
| ago they realized it had to be open open towards everything
| else than Windows only. Otherwise they would be seriously
| under pressure.
|
| Why do you think Azure is so popular with other platforms
| too, other than ms tech?
|
| Microsoft is really really good at setting and reaching
| goals. They excel at it. And believe you me, that their
| goal is not to approve and support open source because they
| shifted their mindset towards it - it's because they had to
| - and they will make money doing it.
|
| These statements about companies, being kind towards this
| or that, has to be read carefully. They are savages in the
| end and will do pretty much anything to win.
|
| I worked at MS for many years. Not any longer.
| fiddlerwoaroof wrote:
| Yeah, LSP may be turning out to be a good example of
| Microsoft going back to EEE; with a twist, though: rather
| than embracing a pre-existing standard, they're proposing a
| new one
|
| https://github.com/emacs-lsp/lsp-
| mode/issues/1863#issuecomme...
| Phemist wrote:
| I have developed a rekindled hatred for M$ in the past few
| weeks trying to install firefox on a fresh installation of
| windows 10. I counted 5 seperate scare tactics employed by
| M$ to keep you using Edge. I thought they were successfully
| sued for monopolistically coupling Internet Explorer to
| Windows and had a flow in their installation menu's for
| installing competing browsers. I was surprised that this is
| now totally missing!
|
| From what I could see it was also difficult to switch the
| office suite. My OEM installed trial versions of word,
| excel, etc. which were set to be opened by default on all
| related file extensions. Switching to libreoffice was a
| PITA, I couldnt find a simple, one-click way to change all
| these. I had to go over them one-by-one.. (.doc, .docx,
| .dochtml, .docxhtml, .xls, .xlsx, .xlshtml,
| .xslsxhtml,....)
| chrisco255 wrote:
| That's terrible and all, but you can't even really
| install a different browser on your phone. They're either
| Safari wrappers or Chrome wrappers (even Firefox).
| COGlory wrote:
| Since I abandoned Windows for Linux, my opinion of
| Microsoft has improved dramatically. Windows has to be
| one of their worst, if not their worst product. GitHub
| and Azure are both quite good, and Office is at least OK.
| All their Android apps and Android integration are
| excellent. The new Xbox and related services are even
| quite good. Just every time I'm forced to use Windows
| (especially at work where I can't change any aspect of
| it), I'm reminded of why I hated Microsoft so much.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| The thing to experience here, is to try using Google
| sites with Edge: Microsoft has definitely been pushing
| people to use Edge, but it _pales_ in comparison to how
| heavily Google abuses their web properties to shove
| Chrome down peoples ' throats.
|
| Back when I used Gmail, I'd open my email and get not
| one, but TWO separate things, one a popup box, and one a
| top bar, telling me I should switch to Chrome, and
| dismissing it never stuck. It'd come back in a week or
| so. Even once Edge started _running on Chrome code_ ,
| Google stepped up writing new tricks to claim that Edge
| was "less secure" because it didn't direct telemetry
| straight to Google servers.
|
| Google's underhanded push with Chrome has hurt everyone,
| and unfortunately, Microsoft probably can't "target just
| Chrome" in retaliating against such messaging, so Firefox
| gets hit too.
| MereInterest wrote:
| Don't forget about the shady and underhanded ways to
| prevent you from making a local account for a new
| installation of Windows. The first screen you see asks
| for a WiFi password, and I assume that it is going to
| start downloading updates in the background. Instead, it
| prompts you to enter an email address for a Microsoft
| account. The "Learn More" button says that you can make
| an offline account later, but right now they'd really
| like to have your personal information before letting you
| continue.
|
| The only way to actually make a local account is to
| either (a) refuse to connect to WiFi until after an
| account is made or (b) disconnect the router while it is
| trying to talk to Microsoft. Option (a) is inaccessible
| by the time you realize that there is a problem, and
| option (b) is ridiculous and needs to be found on third-
| party suggestions. All so that Microsoft can pull in
| another email address.
| Phemist wrote:
| Oh yes! I am just glad I knew about this behaviour
| beforehand and didn't let the laptop connect to my WiFi.
| My dad would've fallen into this trap _for sure_.
|
| Windows 10 installation has become a maze which only the
| really savvy can escape with their privacy somewhat in
| tact.
| klyrs wrote:
| Yeah, I was there. I have a long view and cynicism that m$
| has retreated to the Embrace phase. To vastly oversimplify
| their governance, they're a new CEO away from Extend and
| Extinguish.
|
| Lately, I _love_ what they 've been doing. Even github --
| there have been disappointments, for sure, but nothing like
| the egregious misbehavior in the bad old days. But given
| their history; given Google's "do no evil" bait&switch... I
| don't want to hand them more power.
|
| It'd be cool if an interested third party could build out
| an app store that automatically sources from github (and
| its competitors), though.
| mulmen wrote:
| > It'd be cool if an interested third party could build
| out an app store that automatically sources from github
| (and its competitors), though.
|
| That's called a package repository and there are hundreds
| (thousands?) of them.
|
| An "App Store" is a vertically integrated package repo.
| wh33zle wrote:
| There is F-droid but its success is unfortunately only
| moderate at best.
|
| Element is actually in the F-droid store but the version
| is outdated.
| klyrs wrote:
| Yeah, I "use" fdroid. Usually that means searching for
| apps, finding their download links broken, and then
| finding the apk on a couple skeezy-looking apk download
| pages and checking that they checksum the same
| (verifying, at best, that the skeezy sites have the same
| possibly hacked apk... ick)
| whatshisface wrote:
| It's repeated very often that companies maximize shareholder
| value, but that's not really true. Companies follow the
| personal interests of their management and employees, in
| proportion to their power within the institution, which
| sometimes involves shareholder value.
| dspillett wrote:
| Given higher-ups are either invested to some extent, or
| otherwise feel their prospects are aligned with the stock
| price because the investors will have them out if it
| doesn't do well enough, so I'd say the considerations
| always involve shareholder value. It might not be the only
| factor, and sometimes other factors win out, but it is
| always a factor.
| [deleted]
| rightbyte wrote:
| Ye. The belief in the "invisible hand" is strong. Boards
| and executives are not more rational than employees in
| general. Why would they not do things because they e.g.
| feel good about it or want revenge - like they were some
| super human well oiled machine.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Furthermore (and I think this is the strongest evidence),
| if companies were really "amoral impersonal shareholder
| value maximizers," enterprise sales would consist of
| leaving a box outside their front door and billing them a
| day later. The fact that enterprise sales is the exact
| opposite of that, opposed to it in every form, is very
| strong evidence against the robot-corporate way of
| looking at it. Of the many techniques for getting
| corporations to do things, as practiced by professional
| influencers of corporate choices, all begin and end with
| relationships. Not relationships with the company;
| relationships with its members.
| shakezula wrote:
| In my personal and admittedly startup-prevalent
| experience with boards, I definitely think they operate
| more emotionally than most might think. Even companies
| I've worked with in the double to triple digit millions
| of worth function on far more emotional and interpersonal
| levels than most might think. Sure, money is the major
| motivator, but it's all a machine driven by humans that
| are gut-based emotion bags.
| rodgerd wrote:
| It's not just startups. I've seen execs at old-school
| companies act worse than a 5 year old, alas.
|
| People are not rational actors, and the myth that we are
| is incredibly harmful.
| [deleted]
| adamnemecek wrote:
| > Release integration is trivial for anyone. It's the easiest
| and most irrelevant part of the app stores.
|
| Go on...
| mdoms wrote:
| > Microsoft won't have GitHub compete with the Microsoft Store
| and its newer efforts like winget. It would unermine their
| unifying vision that has been in the works for years for no
| benefit.
|
| There has never been any indication that Microsoft would
| unilaterally shut down Windows software. If fact they are
| uniquely open in terms of modern proprietary OS's.
| Nullabillity wrote:
| Windows Phone, Windows 8 RT, Windows 10 S (later S Mode).
| There is still a somewhat hidden option to enable sideloading
| (presumably for msix files?).
|
| Yes, so far they've ended up backpedaling every time they've
| tried to enforce the store, but it's pretty clear what their
| intentions are.
| confiq wrote:
| The blog post I guess was referring to android ecosystem...
| confiq wrote:
| I agree with you! With everything that you wrote! However, more
| stores the merrier! We have also amazon store
| lumost wrote:
| > Sure, lets pipe user feedback directly into GitHub issues.
| Good luck with that if you have a hundred issues a day.
|
| This honestly sounds like it could be a feature with the right
| automation. Devs are often separated from customers by multiple
| layers of "flappers" who's sole job is to triage, organize, and
| perform manual resolution of customer issues.
|
| If your app is large enough to receive hundreds of issues a
| day, then it's likely there are entire teams of "flappers".
| What if that could be entirely automated such that customer
| complaints were grouped by pain point, and automatically ranked
| based on how many customers are affected and how severely they
| are affected?
|
| This seems like an oddly practical problem to solve in 2021.
| ROARosen wrote:
| The funny thing about these "reasons" the article writes, is
| that it does not give any reason why GitHub would _want_ to
| create such an app store. Most the reasons stated are basically
| what _we_ will supposedly benefit. There is literally no reason
| from GitHub 's point of view why they would be interested in
| creating such a product to begin with.
|
| Of course, there might be reasons form Microsoft to create an
| alternative to the App Stores say for a gaming marketplace etc.
| But specifically for GitHub I cannot see why they would be
| interested in the overhead.
| treis wrote:
| It also ignores the question of how:
|
| Apple - Blocked
|
| Android - Pointless without a drop in replacement for Google
| Services.
|
| Windows- This is possible, but Windows doesn't really have a
| distribution problem. There's no real need here.
|
| Linux - Again possible, but no real need
| sudosysgen wrote:
| To note though, running Android everyday without GMS is
| very doable, both MicroG and Huawei do it.
| john_alan wrote:
| Why would "Apple" be blocked? You can run arbitrary
| software on macOS.
| treis wrote:
| Sure, but that runs into the same issue as Windows in
| that there's no real need.
| webmobdev wrote:
| Not on ios. And soon that will also change on macOS.
| Irishsteve wrote:
| It would be interesting for GitHub because they have a large
| developer community who push to these app stores already, so
| they have the dev audience, just not the consumer.
|
| They charge said developers a few dollars a month per seat.
| GitHub could somehow instead be taking a 0%-20% cut topline
| revenue from some of the apps they host.
|
| Lots of work to make that happen the upside might make it
| worth while.
| vagrantJin wrote:
| The devs are the consumers. So it can be a niche store?
|
| I dont know what a normal person would be doing on github.
| Irishsteve wrote:
| What I meant is - GitHub could create a Google Play
| store. The supply side (Devs) are on GitHub in abundance,
| so they could have a big catalog.
|
| If GitHub could somehow solve the demand side (Phone
| users) they'd be sorted.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| It's a large pile of _open source_ software. It 's able
| to be redistributed freely, by design. Everyone is in the
| position to take advantage of the catalog, if they can
| somehow solve the demand side -- that's what the entire
| problem of a store is about. F-Droid has been trying for
| years!
| mulmen wrote:
| And you can't see the problem with creating a situation
| where Microsoft is in direct competition with all the
| ways you can already deploy this code?
|
| That light at the end of this tunnel is an oncoming
| train. Not freedom.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| > This is a minor but users will be able to raise issues
|
| I don't think people understand what an average (and below
| average) cell phone user is like. Just read some of the App
| store reviews (fraction of the people that use apps actually
| write reviews).
|
| This pipe-dreaming would come crashing down from being a minor
| issue to major, the wrath of an average user is insane.
| TiccyRobby wrote:
| You already have a decentralized app store, namely Fdroid. I
| think it is pretty decent too. And it is the furthest we can go
| in decentralized app store right now.
| wgm wrote:
| Homebrew for Mac essentially is a GitHub App Store for many
| though not all projects.
| neiman wrote:
| Switch Google with Microsoft?
|
| The king is dead long live the king?
| ok123456 wrote:
| If you want an "App Store" of open source software install
| gentoo.
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(page generated 2021-01-31 23:00 UTC)