Nice read!
I agree. Now a happy owner of the Fairphone 2 with Open Source Android build http://code.fairphone.com/, the app-ecosystem is still a struggle. To the point where people are writing up great posts how to circumvent the issue by using NoGApps and microG. https://forum.fairphone.com/t/pencil2-living-without-google-2-0-a-googl e-free-fp2/11587/301 Getting hands on APK's outside of F-Droid is something I haven't looked much into yet. Signal is mentioned in the linked post, but that is partly because the project is unwilling to allow distribution via F-Droid, even aside from the Google Services integration. Still the end-result is that I can only use Signal on a non-free device :(
So indeed, the ecosystem is degrading, both on the side of the hardware (drivers and such), as with services and the app-ecosystem. The free- software die-hards can cope, but it remains a struggle.
On the upside, I have bought a commercial phone (Fairphone 2) and transitioned to a free solution with just a couple of clicks on the phone. I hope that that in this way the Google Play store will have more competition, also of free alternatives, to the point where we can no longer speak of lock-in.
On di, 2016-06-21 at 07:27 +0200, Matthias Kirschner wrote:
Torsten wrote an interesting blog post about the tendency that more and more relevant functionality on Android is moved to the proprietary Google Play Services: https://blog.grobox.de/2016/the-proprietarization-of-android-google-p lay-services-and-apps/
I am interested in your views on this.
Regards, Matthias