• TrivialBetaState@sopuli.xyz
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    9 months ago

    The author is exited but I’m not. I am not a big fan of corporations taking the free work of FOSS developers and turning it into a proprietary dystopia.

    • SmoothLiquidation@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      I think that having a strong public domain is good for everyone. For instance properties like Sherlock Holmes really took off once it was in the public domain and people could write spin-offs and whatnot without worry that a copyright lawyer would come along and sue them.

      Linux is the same thing, Amazon using the kernel and stuff to build an OS on doesn’t take anything away from anyone else who uses Linux as a desktop or server environment, and in fact can lead to some good pass back, even if it is just that the devices are easier to root. Take a look at the Open-wrt project, where Linksys built their router on top of a Linux kernel and it led to a whole ecosystem of open routers. People went out of their way to buy a WRT-42G just with the intent of rooting it, and Linksys got their money either way.

      • CeeBee@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Amazon using Linux isn’t the concern. What OP was referring to are things like their use of Elasticsearch. It’s basically Amazon’s version of embrace, extend, extinguish. It got so bad, that the devs of Elasticsearch changed their licensing as a way to fight against Amazon’s tactics.

        https://www.elastic.co/blog/why-license-change-aws

        Open source is great. But when other companies take the open source code as their own to the detriment to the original open source devs, that’s not sustainable. That behaviour will kill open source.

      • Serinus@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        If it were anyone other than Amazon or Apple.

        Speaking of which, isn’t MacOS Linux based these days? How much have they contributed back? (Genuine question)

        • n0m4n@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          A quick search confirms that MacOS is based from proprietary BSD UNIX code. It is not compatible with Linux

        • deur@feddit.nl
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          9 months ago

          It’s pretty annoying you replied to someone’s nice, well thought out comment with your own bullshit. Then speculated about something you could have googled in 7 seconds max.

  • pimeys@lemmy.nauk.io
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    9 months ago

    Nice! And they will probably differentiate from the competition by allowing GPL applications and sideloading, and having a total control for your privacy and no tracking, right?

    Right?

  • Arthur Besse@lemmy.mlM
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    9 months ago

    oh great, yet another platform that will use free software to restrict what people can do with their computing devices 🤮

    how is this supposed to be a good thing? 🙄

    • wavebeam@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      I’m not sure how this is in any way different from android? Android is free software they use to restrict the computing they devices they sell to push more ads and junkware. This is just a different one. Amazon sucks, so I don’t see what move they could make that could be seen as positive. Just don’t buy their garbage devices.

  • NutWrench@lemmy.ml
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    9 months ago

    I already tried an Amazon Fire tablet, Amazon. No thanks. I returned it. I don’t need a locked-down console that spies on me. Windows is well on its way to becoming that already.

    • Sparking@lemm.ee
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      9 months ago

      I tried to get one since it was 30 bucks, so I’m not too surprised this is how they operated. They are locking down jindles real hard too. Probably going to make a lot of ewaste.

    • Laser@feddit.de
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      9 months ago

      That can be easily done with AOSP, to my knowledge there’s no Google stuff in there. Which is exactly what they’re using right now

      • mathemachristian[he]@lemm.ee
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        9 months ago

        There still is some google stuff in there, like for example phoning google servers to check internet connectivity among other stuff.

        • rentar42@kbin.social
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          9 months ago

          Yes, but those minor traces are easy enough to remove, especially if you don’t care about being “ceritified” by Google (i.e. are not planning to run the Google services).

          • Auli@lemmy.ca
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            9 months ago

            Yes but people are just sideloading GAPPS and escaping their ecosystem. Might even run custom launchers so you can’t experience their ads.

          • mathemachristian[he]@lemm.ee
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            9 months ago

            Right but the topic was about google’s data harvesting and what I meant was that you can’t just grab any AOSP distribution if you want to minimize that, you need to pick one that replaces the parts that send data to google. LineageOS for example still phones google for quite a number of services.

            As far as “easy to remove” goes, I think that’s kind of debatable if you want to do it in a way that’s sustainable long term considering the effort that goes into e.g. GrapheneOS or DivestOS.

            Edit: here is a list of the kind of stuff you need to watch out for if you want to minimize the data sent to google

            https://divestos.org/pages/network_connections

            • rentar42@kbin.social
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              9 months ago

              I was answering under the assumption/the context of of “Amazon wants to release an Android-based OS that doesn’t contact any of Googles services”.

              So, when I said “easy enough to remove” that was relative to releasing any commercial OS based on AOSP, as in: this will be one of the smallest tasks involved in this whole venture.

              They will need an (at least semi-automated) way to keep up with changes from upstream and still apply their own code-changes on top of that anyway and once that is set up, a small set of 10-ish 3-line patches is not a lot of effort. For an individual getting started and trying to keep that all up to do date individually it’s a bit more of an effort, granted.

              The list you linked is very interesting, but I suspect that much of that isn’t in AOSP, my suspicion is that at most the things up to and excluding the Updater even exist in AOSP.

  • KᑌᔕᕼIᗩ@lemmy.ml
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    9 months ago

    The only thing I care about in this is if they will contribute anything back to the open source ecosystem, be it code or anything else.

    • WFH@lemm.ee
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      9 months ago

      No chance. Amazon has a long history of using a ton of FOSS code on AWS and contributing fuck-all.

  • brax@sh.itjust.works
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    9 months ago

    Lmao, they can have fun with that. I can’t imagine it being anything decent. A mobile phone equivalent of a DVD Player OS lol

  • BitSound@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    I know it won’t happen, but it’d be nice if Linux switched to GPLv3. That would at least help somewhat here

    • oxjox@lemmy.ml
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      9 months ago

      I just read an article about how they’re increasing advertising on their Fire TVs. Rest assured, an Amazon OS is an Advertising OS.

      Although, from what I’ve gathered of public opinion online, there’s LOTS of people willing to forgo their privacy in exchange for free shit.

      Edit: Oh…

      They say they expect Vega to begin shipping on Fire TVs early next year.

      And that article https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/11/after-luring-customers-with-low-prices-amazon-stuffs-fire-tvs-with-ads/

      • Patch@feddit.uk
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        9 months ago

        Android is already free software, and see how far that gets you. The kicker is that you’re tied into their services (with all the data harvesting, targeted advertising and monetisation that that involves).

          • baconicsynergy@beehaw.org
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            9 months ago

            Yes, because it is permissively open source, not only are these companies free to build what they want - we are entitled to that same right. We therefore created LineageOS and GrapheneOS, and its really great.

            There’s also a lot of motivated people getting regular Linux distributions running on mobile devices too, so we have that as well

      • Valon_Blue@sh.itjust.works
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        9 months ago

        See, that’s the situation where we just don’t use them. I’m talking about wiping the original OS and putting something that’s really FOSS in its place.

  • 56!@lemmy.ml
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    9 months ago

    Most TV operating systems are already non-android linux based. They mostly just run webapps.