Yep. PC openness is totaly a bug and not a feature of the capitalism. We should cherish this situation and fight for it because it really feels like the other long term alternative is techno-fascism.

I think I have an old comment about this, but there is an actual `adb sideload` command for installing an apk on your phone from your computer. Since it's from your computer and not the phone itself, it's sideloading and not frontloading, I guess. Weirdly, and wrongly, people have also started to use the term to refer to just installing apps from outside the official appstores, but that's not sideloading. It's just installing an app. It's a normal Android feature. You can just grab a .apk file with your browser and install it like you would a .exe file on Windows.

iOS on the other hand historically required a jailbreak for this. I think that's where the confusion started. Android doesn't need a jailbreak, it doesn't need root (privileges), it doesn't need a custom ROM. You can just install stuff, it's normal. I think iOS users don't realize how different Android is and they just start repeating words like sideload and root without knowing what they mean, assuming it's just Android-speak for a jailbreak. They don't realize there's no jail in the first place.

I am aware English is a living language, and if enough people are wrong for long enough, they stop being wrong, but it's certainly painful to witness.

> It should be just "run a program"!

More accurate would be "run a program not approved by Google"

boot into Recovery, run "csrutil disable" and do whatever you want (not a recommendation)

Richard Stallman has spent basically his entire career trying to convince people that all software should be free as in freedom, so that people truly control the devices that they own--preventing things like Google being able to lock users out of the ability to install applications on a device that they purchased.

Read up on the principles of the Free Software Foundation if you want all the details.

Stallman has a long history of being very abrasive and ideological. He is the kind of guy who makes zero concessions for practicality, and he insists on prioritizing user freedom because he has always feared that otherwise users will be locked out of having the ability to truly control their computers. It's always been kind of easy to laugh at his crusade because of how zealous he is, and how absurd the scenarios he warns about seem to be. The thing is... he seems to have been right the whole time. Companies really do want to lock you out of controlling the devices you own, and do so at the first opportunity. So... Stallman was right.

Probably https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html , mentioned elsewhere in the thread.

I find Stallmans views are best summed up by this quote from him:

“I could have made money this way, and perhaps amused myself writing code. But I knew that at the end of my career, I would look back on years of building walls to divide people, and feel I had spent my life making the world a worse place.”

In this case it worked out well as a rhetorical device to make you look it up and learn something. Sometimes leaving out something for the reader to wonder about is more powerful.

They're not going to publish device trees for pixel phones, so what hardware will you use?

Commercial apps and services will require passkeys and device attestation, so you'll only be able to use open source software even if you have a device to run it.

The walls are closing in, and it's not just mobile. It's only a matter of time before passkeys are used to block Linux users from the commercial Internet as well.

Google's stated reason for doing this says nothing about it being for market reasons, but rather for "security".

> This is not fascism, this is just a rational move from Google

Google is not very separable from the US government, and they use illegal monopoly everywhere without any oversight.

"Government overreach" by a private corporation? Let's see what wikipedia has to say about that:

> A fascist corporation can be defined as a government-directed confederation of employers and employees unions, with the aim of overseeing production in a comprehensive manner.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism#Fascist_corporatis...

Google goes even further than that: they do not only control and oversee all production via the Play Store, they also control all usage of their products. And while it may currently not be government-directed, they certainly are government-protected as long as they're allowed to run the only app store in town.