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Google Pushes Openness Over Rooting
jamlam writes "The Android developers blog has a comment from their dev team on the recent 'rooting' of their Nexus S phones. It contains a call from Google to handset manufacturers to open up their phones to give users choice. But will this ever happen in a market dominated by lock-'em-down cellular networks?"
"It contains a call from Google to handset manufacturers to open up their phones to give users choice. But will this ever happen in a market dominated by lock-'em-down cellular networks?"
No. The only solution is for Google to roll out their own infrastructure and run their own telecommunications network. They're big enough to compete with the other big boys like At&t.
But, but...Google will be mining our data and knowing everything about us...
Like At&t doesn't?! Also, Ph1r5t P05t. May we all have a comfortable and hassle-free series of end-of-year rituals.
Give'em choice? That sounds too American. Why would we do that?
I don't understand this. Google, the creator of the software, has basically said "we want this to be changeable by the user". Which means that, by locking the OS down, the manufacturers are going against the spirit of the developers' wishes. Why didn't Google put a clause in the manufacturer/provider contract "The user will always be allowed full access to the device being managed by this operating system"?
"It contains a call from Google to handset manufacturers to open up their phones to give users choice."
What possible incentive would they have to do that? The vast majority of consumers already have all the choice they want.
IMHO they should give up on the pointless closing of an open door and give us an open phone if they are going to use an open system. Nokia don't give a shit even if I boot my n900 into a completely different OS and have done nothing to prevent me from doing so. Why should these other vendors care apart from aiding and abetting carrier restrictions?
If you can put latest and greatest Android on an end-of-lifed handset they haven't gotten money for in two years, they get nothing.
If they successfully lock things down so that you need to buy a *new* handset to get the snazzy new features. If most of the reason people get new things is for software, then the hardware vendor has their own interests in making sure their stuff comes along for the ride.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
GPLv3 require manufacturers to provide modification instructions for their devices.
The article, along with some of the above comments, bring me back to my disgust with the so-called "Open Handset Alliance". I was under the impression that all the companies involved in this "Alliance" would be moving toward more open and user-choice-oriented hardware and software designs. So far, Google themselves seems to be the only one living up to that. Locked bootloaders, e-fuses, hardware write-protection... IMHO, Motorola, Samsung and HTC do not deserve to call themselves members of the Open Handset Alliance.
Sig? What's that? Oh, 'signature'...and it's supposed to be witty? Right...
Who cares, he still pays the bills, and is more likely to upgrade to premium hardware as well. Half the cellular services are crap, people will buy music from iTunes or Amazon because the carrier music store still encrypts and is twice the price.
More like a correction of Engadget's hysteria and a lamentation at the lack of openness.
The gist of it is that Engadget claims Android's security is shit since you can root it so easily.
The Android devs respond by saying you shouldn't call it "rooting" since the Nexus S was intended to allow users to install their own OS. To do that, you need to be able gain root access. In fact, they tell you how in the blog: fastboot oem unlock. That's it.
Rooting a phone implies root access was not intended, and you must exploit a security flaw to gain access. If root access was intended from the beginning, how can running the command to do so possibly be considered exploiting a security flaw?
To put it another way, is sudo a security flaw in Linux? That's basically what Engadget is saying, and the Android devs are saying that's stupid, and oh yeah phones should be open so rooting goes the way of the do-do bird.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
All applications are required to declare the permissions they use, ensuring the user is in control of the information they share.
I want more than the application to declare what permission it uses.
I want to be able to run an application that say wants access to my GPS coordinates, but I can say no you get fake GPS access.
The same with internet access, phone directory access, and so on.
I do not want to be restricted to all or nothing, and have to forgo an app all together over a potential security issue.
The best example I have is the Bible app from LifeChurch.tv. I love the app, but for awhile it wanted access to my GPS coordinates.
Why? God knows where I am already LifeChurch. But unlike the nagging iPhone version which I could deny location information every time I ran the app it was all or nothing, location information transmitted.
Heck I want everything the damn apps do logged, if I allow them internet access I want to know what pages and logs on the packets sent.
Then we can really avoid these naughty apps that are transmitting things, because the OS says hey this app is transmitting this user, and the user can say hells no.
I do not ever want to install an anti-virus application to my phone. Never ever, I do not need them on my desktop, do not need them on my phone. Die McAfee and Norton, die!
Just my two cents. Perhaps I should download the source and make my own build. But it would be much easier on me if a Google engineer did it.
I know most Republicans don't like gov't regulating company size[1], but if you truly believe in the power of competition, then you'd want more companies providing more choices.
The "economies of scale" argument is weak for most industries. It was used to justify Detroit's "big three", but Japan encouraged about 7 car companies when it was trying to break into the industry, and this strategy gave them more competitive companies than Detroit.
[1] You don't shrink successful companies, you split them.
Table-ized A.I.
First off, the people who are talking about "rooting" an open platform are morons. The rooting occurs when the carrier and phone manufacturer -- yes I'm talking to YOU, HTC-- put gobs of needless, expensive, and ultimately pointless security on top of stock AOSP.
They want control. The EFF (did everyone donate this year?) helped affirm our rights to control over our own equipment, but the carriers and manufacturers are responding with more and more technical hurdles.
These short-sighted obstacles cost them money in R&D, which is ultimately passed on to us, the customer, or absorbed by their stockholders. These technical measures (locked emmcs) are pointless, immoral, bad for business, and an entire subculture has emerged dedicated to sidestepping them.
Google has some mixed motivations here, but one thing I can think Google might do about this is to license their Google apps (or "Gapps"-- Maps, GMail, etc.) to community firmware so that they can legitimately compete with the carriers in the market. The competition and choice would benefit the consumer (example: Gingerbread is already running on the T-Mobile G2 and Froyo is available only on other platforms through community roms not offered by the carrier, who has abandoned older phones.). Plus support for community roms would help Google reach those customers who are now "locked out" of the Google market.
The downside might be more support headaches or returned bricked phones for the phone companies. But can't they look at that as a potential new market? Yeah, when you sell someone a computer and they trash it, it's a headache. A headache you can charge them to fix. Right now people brick their phones after trying to install a rom in the shadows and then return them. If phones were treated by carriers as the computers they ARE, it would be no different than someone trashing their DELL and needing Best-Buy or whomever to reinstall Windows. Or maybe they'd pay $10/hr in support.
The point is-- if tomorrow people were locked out of their computers' operating system by the manufacturers or told what software they could run on their laptops by their ISPs, there would be revolt (I would hope). But we're slowly being conditioned to accept such control starting with smartphones, working up to tables...
what's next?
and modifying that requires rooting.
Answer to question asked in summary: maybe
The operators say that misbehaving phones can disrupt their network. That could be true for a very large number of bad phones.
The truth is that I don't know a out any "mod" touching the radio stuff.
It's just FUD.
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
It's not Google's fault. They simply had no concept of what they were doing.
I'd love to see Google provide a cell service. He'll I'm tired of Sprint, T-mobile, AT&T, and Verizon. They all equally suck in one way or another. Not to say that Google could do better. But, Hey; I'd love to see them try! I would try their service!
where the headline gets a Bill Murray Scarlett Johansen treatment!
The downside is that lax security such as this combined with the "smartphone as a controller" model will result in a bloom of the same sort of malware that we see on the WinPC today.
IMO, the tech community has not learned anything from the last 30 years about platform security.
I've got no lock-down issues, tested several sims in different countries; I can write apps in any language I like and review code of how other people hacked together an app thus creating a nice dynamic mind share environment. Unfortunately Nokia doesn't support and market this phone well enough, soeven though it such an awesome phone its market share (and thus amount of users/contibutors) is quite low.
I mean, it's basically as open as Debian of which it's based of and many scripts work just as well on my desktop as on my phone. - That is what openness is supposed to be.
It can be done- the Palm Pre/Pixi/WebOS was/is that way. There was no NEED to "root" the phone, because they gave everyone root access by just entering developer mode. It was wonderful- very hackable, very nice. If you screw up the phone (which I never did), no big deal... it is "unbrickable". Just power it on with a key held in, download the current image from the web and flash it back to normal. Why the carriers didn't lock it down, I don't know.
If Android could do that, then I would be very happy. It is irritating when carriers put junkware on the phone, especially stuff that launches automatically and runs/does stuff you don't want.
but when you don't want a contract here you can switch to one of the countless prepaid providers, take your old number with you and pay very little
In the United States, you can take your old number with you to an MVNO, but usually not your old phone. Each carrier has a different set of frequency bands. Verizon and Sprint use (what I've been told are subtly different variants of) the CDMA2000 system, and AT&T and T-Mobile run their UMTS service on different frequency bands. And unlike T-Mobile, AT&T doesn't even unlock your phone for you after your contract has expired.
Linux is GPLv2, not GPLv3. This allows TiVo devices to run Linux but enforce verification of the manufacturer's digital signature, and Linus Torvalds is perfectly happy with that.
I am still standing.
They have done nothing that offends me.
They have taken a picture of the outside of my house from the public road.
They have found my WiFi encrypted - this removes implicit permission to access.
They have computers holding my email - if it is private, it is encreypted.
I used their search engine for free.
How have they knocked me over?
I'll see your Constitution and raise you a Queen.
Not a fanboi but I can say T-Mobile didn't screw with my Android. Also "Unlimited Data" still means that, unlike the Asshats at Verizon and ATT that have the nerve to legally tell you unlimited data means 5GB or whatever. Then here comes Joe Asshat public and says "Oh, unlimited means 5 GB! OK- here let me bend over a little farther to make it easier for you".
If you have root, then you can edit /etc/hosts to block ads and other garbage which would otherwise just be wasting all that precious 3G bandwidth, not just on the web, but even inside apps. It's a win for everyone!
Well, everyone except developers and content providers, but why would the carriers care about them?
Google needs to understand and accept the fact that root access equals true openness.
I've said it before and I'll say it again in the hopes that Google is listening. Google, use just some of your billions of dollars, your business might, your juggernaut capacity / might / influence in the telecomm industry to sell a cellular phone data-only plan at $40.00 or less and I will gladly buy your Android branded, unshackled, full capability (Google) phone at full retail price! What you would give me _that I can't get now_ is a fair price for service WITH a phone device that I can use as I please. To wit, tethering, SIMPLICITY of payment, no gotchas from the likes of the majors.