Hans-Christoph Steiner @eighthave@librem.one

@thomasfricke @signalapp @OpenTechFund @TheAtlantic Lucky OTF is popular with the US Congress because it is quite effective, a majority of both Democrats and Republicans support OTF. After the first attempt to shut down OTF in the first Trump administration, Congress changed the law to require the money to fund #FreeSoftware and to require security audits, as well as requiring that OTF specifically has money dedicated to it.

#OpenTechnologyFund #OTF #Congress #Trump

@thomasfricke @signalapp @OpenTechFund @TheAtlantic this whole case is a clear example for how the US Federal Gov works. Before #OTF, the money went to a proprietary software firm #UltraSurf, which also refused to do security audits. That firm has been paying #KatrinaSwett to lobby for them to get the money away from OTF. https://www.axios.com/2020/06/23/falun-gong-us-agency-global-media

@thomasfricke @signalapp @OpenTechFund @TheAtlantic The good news is that the #Trump administration had such a weak case, they just rescinded the grant termination once it came to court. The court also kept the case open, despite the Trump admin arguing it was moot, until they actually paid #OTF the money they were owed. Now OTF has been paid:

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.278630/gov.uscourts.dcd.278630.19.0.pdf

#OpenTechFund #FreeSoftware #OpenTechnologyFund

@fdroidorg here's info on Google's sponsorship of ECIPE

https://corporateeurope.org/en/2021/08/lobby-network-big-techs-web-influence-eu

#Google funds this #EU think tank to put out policy papers saying #DigitalMarketsAct will break their lovely #PlayProtect scare screens, making us all less safe and "it require[s] Google to allow developers to insert links inside their Play Store apps".

https://ecipe.org/publications/eu-dma-undermine-security-mobile-operating-systems/#_ftn13

As I've always said in relation to the #DMA, let @fdroidorg compete on trustworthiness. I'd love to see this think thank include analysis malware rates of #CalyxOS with #FDroid and compare that to #GooglePlay #security

@1br0wn Yes indeed, it would be great to have a community controlled version of #AOSP. The hard part is that Google still is the largest contributor to Android by a large margin. The ROM projects have started to work together, but not enough to get community control. The #CalyxOS team has put quite a bit of effort into trying to get this idea going. The key would be to get companies to switch to a community-controlled version, e.g. Samsung, Xiaomi, Huawei, Oppo, etc.

@danslerush I agree, it is definitely a not good. My guess is that Google is feeling the heat from the #DigitalMarketsAct and other monopoly-busting actions around the world. So they are scrambling for ways to keep control of those massive monopoly profit margins. If they cared about streamlining development, they would go fully open. That's well established and proven as a way to efficiently develop large software projects, e.g. Linux, Chromium, Firefox, GNU/Linux distros, etc.

"Exclusive: Google will develop the Android OS fully in private..."

Looking again at https://www.androidauthority.com/google-android-development-aosp-3538503/ I really think that was a PR piece, e.g. #Google's PR firm put together the story for #Android Authority. Its got all the markings, the "Exclusive" part, the uncritical eye "Google is simply consolidating its development efforts into a single branch", minimizing harm to custom ROMs, "custom ROMs will largely also see little change" etc

#AOSP #PublicRelations #FreeSoftware #ClosedSource

@michaelharley I'm feeling quite good about it, I've been using #FDroid as my main app store for years now. But of course, I'm biased ;-)

@johns nice! Is this feature documented anywhere? I couldn't find it.

#apksigner v35.0.2 is now in #Debian trixie. The v3.1 signer rotation stuff needs testing. Please try it out!

Getting apksigner from Debian has two key advantages over the Google binaries:

* They are reproducibly built.
* They have an actual free software license.

I'm starting to think I must be a bot. I'm no longer human. I see so many prompts on the internet asking me if I'm human, or triggering "anti-bot" protections.

@Bubu A very nice write up, I like the approach. I think the key is that he simply asked them for support. Lots of FOSS devs don't want to ask, I know that from myself. Asking for donations, or even nagging, is well know to work. Like Wikipedia. I wonder if it would be possible to eliminate the friction to donating so much that FOSS devs could make a living without having to learn how to run fundraising campaigns? Maybe it just isn't possible.