[HN Gopher] Swinging back to open standards
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Swinging back to open standards
Author : jrepinc
Score : 70 points
Date : 2022-11-17 17:32 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (puri.sm)
(TXT) w3m dump (puri.sm)
| focusgroup0 wrote:
| Check out Urbit. It has a decentralized app store that anyone can
| publish to. Write once, deploy to all users.
| echelon wrote:
| Doesn't help with Apple App Store and Google Play Store, which
| is how the majority of American consumers conduct their
| computing.
|
| Deploying software to mobile devices should be the same as
| desktop computing.
|
| Apple and Google argue their stance is for user privacy and
| security, but they can still maintain a central catalog of
| malware and remove bad apps by signature. Permissions flags and
| controls can work without a store. Apps can be required to
| report their provenance, which opens up means for manual or
| automated review.
|
| Google technically allows apk downloads, but they're "scary"
| and most users don't know how to perform them. This is as good
| as disallowing open installs outright.
|
| Google and Apple won't ever do this unless the DOJ tells them
| they must.
|
| I would argue that an antitrust action against these two app
| stores is essential to remove an undue tax on innovation and to
| strengthen the market for competition. It's not like money
| cannot be made on devices and services and that neither company
| doesn't already have the upper leg on these fronts as well.
| intrasight wrote:
| >Deploying software to mobile devices should be the same as
| desktop computing.
|
| It is the same: open your web browser.
|
| I really hope the government doesn't get involved. Because I
| desire the reverse. Software companies should stop making
| apps and just provide a better web experience. If consumers
| stopped installing apps, then software vendors would invest
| in open standards.
| hinkley wrote:
| > Deploying software to mobile devices should be the same as
| desktop computing.
|
| When the orders of magnitude change, so too do the solutions.
|
| We already know how much trouble the general public has
| experienced managing desktop computing. We even have app
| stores for that now. Market penetration for phones is even
| bigger, is a more uniform distribution by age group, and has
| many fewer options for troubleshooting if something goes
| wrong.
|
| Running homebrew on your phone is not the same as running it
| on your PC (and I avoid doing even that, because I care about
| configuration capture)
| kitsunesoba wrote:
| > Google technically allows apk downloads, but they're
| "scary" and most users don't know how to perform them.
|
| No matter what happens, this will continue to be true for
| some percentage of users because they've come to associate
| downloading software from random sites with things like
| malware and adware, and not without reason; while there are
| perfectly legitimate software packages that can't be
| distributed on the Play Store for one reason or another, by
| far and away the most common reason for APKs not being on the
| Play Store or users sideloading is because the app in
| question is doing something shady or the user is pirating
| apps from dubious sources that turn the apps in question into
| trojans.
|
| Even in the desktop world there's some level of trepidation
| with downloading from websites, particularly on Windows where
| search results are littered with things like shady SEO-
| optimized download sites, and that problem pre-dates all
| modern app stores.
|
| The question is how to solve that. I don't think the answer
| is to give up and say it's unsolvable and just has to be
| lived with, especially since doing so isn't going to engender
| support from those who cling to app stores for safety
| purposes.
| simonblack wrote:
| If you're going to invest in the latest fad proprietary 'thing',
| you have to be prepared to lose all your investment in that
| 'thing'.
|
| Companies fail. All too often that proprietary 'thing' they had
| becomes non-supported and you have to just throw away everything
| you have connected with that 'thing' such as files written in
| formats that nothing can access, or hardware that there are no
| supplies for, etc, etc.
|
| When was the last time that you were able to buy a 16-hard-
| sectored 8-inch floppy? When were you last able to access that
| Wang-written word-processing file? Can you even buy a fresh
| video-tape for a Betamax video recorder?
|
| If you stick to open hardware and open software formats, you can
| still find them useful even decades after their makers have
| turned to dust.
| pphysch wrote:
| I think the reason the pendulum swings back is more mundane:
| reduced availability of capital. Companies that survive must "do
| more with less" and will no longer be paying out the ear for a
| SaaS that barely gets the job done.
|
| Most SaaS will go out of business. Dev cycles will shift
| proportionally to working more on enterprise systems and the open
| standards that support them.
| hinkley wrote:
| There's a derivative there with fashions too. When the gold
| rush is on people line up to invent a wheel. After a while the
| Trough of Disillusionment kicks in and you get either late
| adopters or people who expect hazard pay for continuing to work
| on things, so at the same time the money is drying up, the
| money you do have begins to buy less and less, which is a
| feedback loop.
|
| People are not wanting to roll their own cloud, or index their
| own logs. They want to chew on other problems.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| So, our freedom of association was yet another thing that the
| wash of free capital on the US was harming. Good to know.
| jancsika wrote:
| With regard to Purism the company:
|
| Folks should be wary about ordering from Purism until/unless
| Purism shows clear signs in the future that it will give _timely_
| refunds to customers who do not want to continue waiting for the
| Librem 5 device they ordered years ago. (For the purposes of this
| post, let 's assign the value of _timely_ to be no more than 30
| business days from the original request for a refund.)
|
| Worse, Purism continually sets new deadlines which they continue
| to fail to meet.
|
| As it stands, there are lots of reports of Purism telling the
| customer that they may only receive a refund when Purism claims
| that particular device is ready to ship to that customer. This is
| against their original terms of service and AFAICT isn't legal in
| the U.S.
|
| Many users have contacted their state's attorney general to
| complain about this business practice. I'm confident I can simply
| link to the purism subreddit and readers here will instantly find
| relevant reports about the difficulty of receiving a refund:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/Purism/
|
| To be clear-- my complaint isn't about Purism not being able to
| ship Librem 5 on time. My complaint is about their unethical
| practice of withholding refunds from customers who clearly and
| reasonably request one after patiently waiting to receive their
| devices.
|
| In fact, a number of the complaints on that subreddit were posted
| only after the customer claimed they had been emailing Purism for
| _over a year_ to obtain a refund for the device they ordered but
| never received.
|
| Edit: clarification with the word "timely" added, a definition of
| "timely" provided, and a few other stray clarifications to be
| maximally generous.
| pessimizer wrote:
| I fear this is another setup where you're not buying a product,
| you're actually financing a company that is going to pay back
| the loan with a product that they haven't built yet.
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| To add some context: the Librem 5 project started with a
| crowdfunding campaign at the end of 2017. The initial
| projected release date was early 2019, but the project caught
| delays and eventually started shipping preorders in quantity
| in late 2020 (early revisions started shipping to backers who
| opted in for those at the turn of 2019/2020 already). At this
| point, however, the world was well into component shortage,
| which ended up severely impacting the production. Right now
| the shipping queue is at the preorders from early 2019 (with
| some thousands of phones already shipped) and is expected to
| reach the present somewhere in the first half of 2023. The
| product is certainly "built yet", it's just shipping slower
| than anticipated and, in turn, still has a queue of preorders
| from years ago to fulfill (I believe the most dense preorder
| periods have been handled by now though).
|
| Disclosure: I work for Purism as a software dev.
| monopoliessuck wrote:
| Hey I remember that crowdfunding campaign! If the shipping
| queue is at 2019, why is my refund for an order from 2017
| not processed?
|
| First you guys said it was because I had to wait until my
| batch was going to ship. I waited. Now no who knows and no
| one will talk to me beyond saying "maybe soon?" and
| throwing their arms up. I'm a FOSS advocate and loved the
| idea of the Librem and even the idea of paying more for an
| ethical device, but this all leaves a very bad taste in my
| mouth and I'm not alone.
|
| Any info would be appreciated. The email volleyball doesn't
| ever yield any new information month to month to month...
| seba_dos1 wrote:
| I don't know much about how refunds are handled, sorry.
| As far as I'm aware, the crowdfunder preorders were never
| supposed to be refundable (as that kinda defeats the idea
| of crowdfunded development); the refund policy in the
| shop was meant to apply for regular sales of things that
| were already available to buy there, which were just
| laptops and accessories at that time. I know that some
| refunds are being issued anyway, with the caveat that you
| have to wait for your phone to be ready to ship
| (otherwise the company would have to effectively cover
| for your withdrawal, as the components and production are
| already financed with that money). That's all I know.
| abhorrence wrote:
| It's sad though, since the laptop was such a refreshing
| experience when I had one many years ago.
| monopoliessuck wrote:
| I ordered in October 2017. I gave up a few years ago and tried
| to get a a refund. I'm in the "queue" for one, but it's just
| been years and years of being screwed around with "reasons". I
| send an email every month or two asking about it to no avail.
| I'm apparently marked "priority", whatever the hell that means.
|
| I've lost all faith in purism as a company.
| BackBlast wrote:
| The web is, frankly, the most open and level information and
| business playing field in the history of the earth. The ability
| for Joe Random to start a business on that platform, run
| compatible tools, and get in front of worldwide customers has
| simply never been greater or easier.
|
| Yes, there are a lot of proprietary players today. Particularly
| all mobile platforms, and some gatekeepers like search and
| attention claiming groups in social media. But the web still
| dominates as the primary platform, and it remains quite available
| to everyone.
|
| We don't have to "swing back", it's already here in front of us.
| We could utilize it better, and reject some of the platforms
| holding us back. But that's up to each individual.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > The web is, frankly, the most open and level information and
| business playing field in the history of the earth.
|
| What in the world does that have to do with open standards?
| This is just Panglossian guilt-tripping about people who dare
| suggest that something about the status quo be improved; Dr.
| Pinker swooping in to berate us about this being the best of
| all possible worlds.
|
| edit: anyway, why talk about how open the web is when we can
| talk about how open x86 architecture is, or how available
| textbooks about how electricity works are? How can you complain
| about open standards when everyone has electricity piped to
| their home that they can do anything they want with? The
| fairest of farities, the most opportune of opportunities...
| lambic wrote:
| Until I can chat with all my friends regardless of which chat
| app they happen to use, we need to swing back.
|
| Open internet standards aren't just about the web.
| [deleted]
| criddell wrote:
| Does the solution to your problem have to be free (as in $0),
| or are you willing to pay? Are any of your friends in
| countries under sanction right now (like Iran or North
| Korea)?
| jjav wrote:
| > Does the solution to your problem have to be free (as in
| $0), or are you willing to pay?
|
| That's a different axis.
|
| Solutions need to be open (interoperable) standards. That
| means I must have the ability to sit down and implement all
| of it myself and it'll interoperate with everyone else.
|
| Whether you pay or not is separate consideration. If I
| implement everything myself I pay nothing other than a lot
| of my time. Alternatively I can pay someone else to
| implement it for me, or buy a pre-built solution from any
| number of vendors, or subscribe to a SaaS solution from
| other vendors.
|
| The key is interoperability between all these. Like HTTP or
| SMTP.
| criddell wrote:
| That exists - XMPP.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _Until I can chat with all... regardless of which chat app_
|
| I should remind you that your application and their
| application will share your messages but may have very
| different privacy policies.
|
| (Some problems will persist and still require further
| assessment and decision and possibly division.)
| bamboozled wrote:
| There should be no privacy concerns , there should be
| encryption
| mdp2021 wrote:
| ? When your message is readable on the other side, on the
| app which we are supposing has a "problematic" privacy
| policy, it is unencrypted. Encryption is a matter in
| transmission. The data acted upon (e.g. displayed) on the
| other application has to be finally unencrypted, or
| decrypted.
|
| Alice sends message "Hi" to Bob through app Alpha; it is
| encrypted during transmission; Bob receives it on his app
| named Beta - but Beta manages the message in fully
| readable form, "'H'-'i'", and does what its coders want
| with it.
| lrvick wrote:
| While it requires some work to setup, Matrix bridges to all
| major messaging platforms now.
| vkou wrote:
| And I won't be satisfied until Emacs can run Windows 95
| binaries [1], but I'm not sure that it's either on Microsoft
| or on Richard Stallman to make this happen.
|
| There is no shortage of open protocols that you can use to
| communicate with all your friends. I don't see that you
| should be able to compel application vendors, that all build
| on top of open protocols into any interop they don't want.
|
| [1] Emacs is, after all, an operating system with ambitions
| of being a text editor.
| loudmax wrote:
| > But that's up to each individual.
|
| I'm with you, but my friends and family are all on Instagram
| and Discord, even if they're using the browser version of those
| apps. There's a lot of interest in Mastadon since Musks'
| Twitter antics. I hope it takes off, along with Matrix, but the
| network effects are really powerful.
|
| It's nice to see all the development going into WebAssembly as
| it promises independence from proprietary desktop OS's. It also
| allows proprietary applications that are even more locked into
| a vendor's subscription model than traditional desktop
| software. So yeah, more web is great, but we can't assume that
| the web and open standards are the same thing.
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(page generated 2022-11-17 23:00 UTC)