Keep Android Open Saga (2/6)

A beautiful draconian garden

Google already has started locking-down android, and, is a few months from completely locking it down. Visit keepandroidopen.org for more information on how it affects you, and, what you can do about it. I will try to make this series to help you understand why we (as a species) are in this situation now. This post is part 2.

Appstores grew in scale. A lot of applications started appearing on it. This software included all possibily imaginable categories - dating, matrimony, games, productivity, health. It is exactly hard to say when and why, but, a lot of nefarious apps came to be available on the appstores. On linux it wasn't much of a headline-news kind of a problem. On android...well, news spread like wild fire. Case in point is an app called Blue Whale. I am intentionally not going into horrific details about that phenomenon. 

Appstores (not just Google's) became a little bit stricter on allowing software to be available on their platforms. In Google's case, a few developers thought that Google's rules were too draconian or strict. For e.g., A clever android developer, made an app which might allow the owner of the phone to control the phone's wifi. And that app lived on the playstore for a while. Many people would have downloaded and became fans of the app. The os developers, on one fine one day, advocated against it. "Software shouldn't over-pressure your hardware". (There is valid reason for this). However, in the end, such applications would be dropped from the appstore. On the other hand, our developer would have had genuine users for this fictious app. They must have had some use for it. And now that google android os developers decided it is a bad thing the users and the concerned app developers, had to suffer disappointment.

That isn't the entire story, however, it is probably one of the reasons "many other" appstores came to sprout. These appstores were specifically for the android operating system. In other words, these alternative appstores were intended to supply software on android phones. But, how were people able to install such software onto the phones? I suppose a lot of MS Windows users of the 90s era might introspect and have an answer to that question. If the answer doesn't come to you, perhaps, become a little social and ask around. 

I made up a fictious scenario to explain why a "walled-garden" came to exist. And "bad fruits" in that garden would be plucked off. Perhaps the use of the word "draconic" in the title is a bit harsh. Because in this fictional scenario the corporate is correct. Why?! Phones are relatively delicate devices. They are powered by lithium batteries. They need to be operated with care. If some software exerted the battery too much the phone could blow up (or explode) on my hand or other body parts, (my eyes for e.g). I could sue google for damages. It is a pessismistic way of putting it. But on a more nobler note, Google is actually trying to protect you - the consumer, by bringing "restrictions" on its platform. 

I hope you'd come to understand that certain people will be concered about these restrictions. They are a small group. The others (i.e the majority) see a very colorful garden where they can get "software they want" downloaded and installed onto their phones.

You probably already understand that "bad fruit" in the context probably means an app that defies a corporate os developer's norms. In the next post, you will have a much wider concept of the term.

Thankyou for reading.