Time to Stop Hunting the Replicants, Decker

One of the actions recommended by the KeepAndroidOpen.org campaign is to "provide feedback directly to Google using their Android developer verification requirements survey". They provide a link to that survey, and I'd been meaning to make use of it for a while.

Then on Tuesday March 10, I used it to very politely tear Alphabet and their subsidiaries a new one. Scroll down to read what I wrote, with some links added for context, in case you want to learn more.

But before we get started, a note on terminology. When I say "Android/Linux", I mean the combo of the awkwardly named AOSP (Android Open Source Project), and the modified Linux kernel it uses. Following the convention of using "GNU/Linux" to describe what most people just call "Linux"; the combo of the pre-existing GNU OS, and the Linux kernel. As distributed in a range of flavours by Debian, Fedora, OpeSuse, Arch, etc, and their many derivatives, like Ubuntu and Red Hat.

An open letter to Alphabet corporation and its subsidiaries about the future of the Android/Linux OS platform.

The whole purpose of an OS is to provide a standardised open platform, sitting between hardware and apps. So that app developers don't need permission from proprietary hardware vendors to develop apps for their devices.

I utterly reject the idea that Alphabet corporation or any of its subsidiaries has any right to police who can develop software for the Android/Linux OS platform. Just as I reject the idea that any company acting as the steward of an OS has any right to do so. Including by requiring app developers to seek permission via a central register, or face their apps being demoted to second-class citizens. Which people have to jump through extra "security" steps to install, if they can at all, or jailbreak their devices.

"Papers please, comrade"? I think not.

Android/Linux was bought by Goggle, they didn't create it. Similarly, its combined value does not come from Alphabet or its subsidiaries, and does not belong to them. It has been cumulatively created along with an entire industry of device vendors, initially via the Open Handset Alliance (OHA), and by independent app developers. If Alphabet is no longer interested in being the steward of the Android/Linux open platform, in keeping with the vision they promoted via the OHA, then I suggest they hand over the stewardship role to someone who is.

In fact, I demand that Alphabet hand over the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) to an independent stewardship body, representing the interests of independent device vendors and app developers. For the same reason the New Vector company handed over stewardship of the Matrix open platform to the Matrix Foundation.

Alphabet have proven over and over again that they cannot be trusted as a neutral steward of digital commons. Not only with these moves to police Android/Linux app developers, and the preceding move to stop developing source code for AOSP in the open, but with a whole raft of anti-commons actions by by Alphabet and its subsidiaries over the last decade. If they do not cooperate with a handover to a neutral body, AOSP will be forked out from under them. Just as OpenOffice was forked out from under Oracle after they acquired it with Sun Microsystems, and for the same reasons.

Now you've got the background, I've got a post drafted about what the software freedom movement can do together to ensure that app developers and device makers still have an open mobile OS platform to build on. I intend to finish that off and get it posted towards the end of next week. Watch this space!