They want to harvest the data, without Google's control, and give none to Google.
this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2023
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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
There still is some google stuff in there, like for example phoning google servers to check internet connectivity among other stuff.
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).
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
All I'm hearing is that we might be able to hack these devices and put full Linux on them.
All I'm hearing is a subscription to remove the adverts on the command line.
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.
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?
In the beginning? Sure. Later? Well, you know, security and all, think of the kids!
Hahahaha cool, Linux with ads and tracking and all the spyware you could ever want.
A third competitor for Android and iOS would be amazing. But not if it's Amazon..
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/
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? 🙄
Surely this other monopoly will save us
Ugh I don't know which is worse. Next timeline, portal gun.
Cool. Another OS to avoid.
Oh so I won’t be able to sideload streaming APKs onto any new Amazon devices? Guess you can fucking keep your shit hardware then
But that would also mean you can sideload a whole another OS, maybe?
Locked boot loader says otherwise
Curious if it'll be opensource and mobile linux distro. If Amazon gets into the mobile linux game, the mobile phone market might change radically.
You seem confused. Amazon is in the business of stealing open source project in order to sell them as AWS services, not making them.
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.
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.
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)
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.
A quick search confirms that MacOS is based from proprietary BSD UNIX code. It is not compatible with Linux
hopefully they'll design some package manager incompatible with android at the most basic level - and then double down when it's proven to be a huge mistake. a good tick upwards for dev jobs, but the time for actual competition was over 10 years ago. this will fail miserably.