Free Software on Android

[Tzafrir Cohen]

On Wed, Dec 28, 2011 at 01:18:16PM +0200, Nadav Har'El wrote:
> Hi, I recently bought an Android machine (a Samsung Galaxy Player 4.0),
> and am quite enjoying it. Superficially, it isn't very similar to what
> we've come to expect from Linux machines, but in my opinion the Linuxness
> still shows through in many ways that are hard for me to enumerate.
> 
> Anyway, something which surprised me a bit is that although Android
> itself is free software, there seems to be very few free software
> apps, and even fewer high-quality free software which I'll be proud to use.
> The biggest (and only?) repository of free-software ("open source") apps
> I could find was f-droid, with around 150 apps.
> 
> I was wondering - am I missing something? Is there a thriving community
> of Android free software writers that I somehow missed, and someone can
> point me to it?
> 
> It got me thinking why when Linux started, free (open source) software
> thrived on it while commercial software was hardly available for it.
> Why is it the other way around with Android?
> 
> I think I found a couple of reasons:
> 
> 1. When Linux started and became popular, people did not have the
>    illusion of being able to make money from selling applications.
>    Richard Stallman didn't think he can become rich from selling copies
>    of Emacs. David MacKenzie didn't think he can sell his version of
>    "ls" to Unix users for $1 each. On other other hand, on Android, following
>    Apple's lead, developers fell into the illusion that they can become
>    rich by selling apps - and thus unless they have a strong ideological
>    motivation to give out free software (in the GNU sense), they think -
>    why NOT sell it on the market? Or why not make it free and make a few
>    dollars from ads? The latter tendency - to stick ads everywhere, in
>    at least 90% of the free apps I looked at - is by far the thing I hate
>    most about Android so far.
> 
> 2. When Linux became popular, source still meant something to most, or
>    at least many, people. People could compile from source, and had the
>    compilers preinstalled and knew how to use them after reading a short
>    "INSTALL" help file. With Android, 99.99% of the users wouldn't know how
>    to use source even if you drop it on their head. In fact you can't
>    really use the source if all you have is your android machine - you need
>    an additional machine, with a complex cross-compiler installation.
> 
> I think that there are things that can be done on both points, and I wonder
> what other people think:
> 
> Regarding point 1, I'd like free & open source software to be a more
> visible option to Android users and start to replace ad-ridden
> closed-source free apps. Why can't the good open source software be more
> prominently visible on the android market? E.g., what prevents me from
> paying for an Android market account ($25, one time) and then uploading
> the good free software that I find and help make it more visible? Has
> anyone ever done that?

Talking's easy. If you care so badly about that, install e.g.
CyanogenMod on your phone, and don't install any of the properitary apps
(they are not included in the main CyanogenMod distribution).

Free Software is not very useful when it is a single program. It becomes
an obvious atvantage when it is a complete stack. Free Software has its
hands tied behind its back in a proprietary application market where
dependencies are frowned upon.

Next set up a build environment on the phone.

Also note that with the help of qemu and schroot you can get a
natively-looking arm chroot on your own Linux PC, assuming that Android
processes will run on a standard Linux kernel.

That said, another issue is the non-free software you use indirectly
through cloud service providers. But that is a different issue.

> 
> Regarding point 2, wouldn't it be nice if it were possible to have a
> programming language which you can use to program the Android, on the
> Android itself, and run applications? Applications written in that
> language could be downloaded in source code form and run, and modified
> by the user, without needing any cross-compiler setup or an additional
> computer. Is anyone aware of such a programming language for Android?

/bin/sh ? There are plenty of others, actually.

-- 
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