How a few legitimate app developers threaten the entire Android userbase (Ars Technica)

Posted Oct 17, 2015 17:23 UTC (Sat) by ncm (guest, #165)
In reply to: How a few legitimate app developers threaten the entire Android userbase (Ars Technica) by tinko92
Parent article: How a few legitimate app developers threaten the entire Android userbase (Ars Technica)

Rootability would be great but would solve nothing connected with this problem. Only a vanishingly tiny fraction of owners are mentally equipped to use such a feature, and only vanishingly tiny fraction of phones have any alternative firmware available to put on them, anyway. Those alternatives have their own security problems and update-channel problems.

Accountability could be helpful if it could be made to work, but the legal "industry" has very mature and sophisticated tools at hand to sidestep such obligations.

Solutions that don't actually work can be worse than no apparent solution at all.

A system of required source-code escrow and insurance deposits, with a separate agency to roll out automatic updates for affected hardware, could be made to work. I doubt anything short of that could. (Likewise for home routers.)

How a few legitimate app developers threaten the entire Android userbase (Ars Technica)

Posted Oct 17, 2015 19:39 UTC (Sat) by dashesy (guest, #74652) [Link]

I rooted my phone (Galaxy SIII now few years old) so I could secure my phone against Stagefright. If the vendors provide and easy path, of course that would be preferable.

How a few legitimate app developers threaten the entire Android userbase (Ars Technica)

Posted Oct 17, 2015 22:44 UTC (Sat) by tinko92 (guest, #102129) [Link]

I do agree with you, that rooting doesn't solve all of the security issues, although I do think that it can provide ways to work around some of them. But my point was that they should in fact be regarded as seperate issues.

I would not agree that only a tiny number of users can make use of rootability. There are apps that require root access for uses which can be interesting to larger fractions of users like advanced call blockers, Titanium Backup or crapware removal. Besides, it's a freedom issue, so there is no justification required to demand rootability.

I agree that accountability can be a difficult issue. It might be more helpful to try to push vendors of smartphones and of parts like SoCs, radios, etc. to mainline their drivers, so that providing upgrades becomes much easier and less expensive overall. Also that would make fixes available to everybody. If they'd also manage to seperate their "skins" from the OS, we could get seperate:
- kernel updates, which would require hardly maintenance apart from shared driver maintenance through the kernel community and a phone-specific config-file that specifies the modules
- Android updates, which could be gotten directly from AOSP
- TouchWiz/etc. updates, which could be delivered by Samsung as just another apk that serves as an implementation for a Launcher

Of course this would work against the vendors tactics to lock users into their platform and to force them to buy new phones, but these tactics justify boycott anyway.

How a few legitimate app developers threaten the entire Android userbase (Ars Technica)

Posted Oct 18, 2015 0:17 UTC (Sun) by ssmith32 (subscriber, #72404) [Link] (5 responses)

Only a tiny fraction are mentally equipped? oh please. It's not that hard. Maybe they don't care enough to put in the effort, because a phone is just a phone to many people. Sure I like to root and install new roms, and screw around with my phone, but I'm a computer geek. Lots of people are other kind of geeks. It doesn't mean they lack the mental ability, just the motivation.

mental toolbox

Posted Oct 18, 2015 6:53 UTC (Sun) by ncm (guest, #165) [Link] (4 responses)

I suppose that, in your world, motivation is a physical substance.

My wife is probably more intelligent than you, but she is not mentally equipped to root her phone, or to perceive a need to do it.

mental toolbox

Posted Oct 18, 2015 12:24 UTC (Sun) by Trelane (subscriber, #56877) [Link] (2 responses)

> My wife is probably more intelligent than you, but she is not mentally equipped to root her phone, or to perceive a need to do it.

Honestly, the latter is the root of the problem, not the former.

There are lots of folks who aren't trained to fly airplanes, repair drains, install an electric circuit, or fix a car. Yet a lot of folks fly in airplanes and have functioning drains, electrical systems, and cars.

It seems very strange to me that we as a society are so content to keep computing weird in this regard.

mental toolbox

Posted Oct 23, 2015 6:42 UTC (Fri) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link] (1 responses)

> It seems very strange to me that we as a society are so content to keep computing weird in this regard.

I don't think anyone is "content" with the current state of computing; yet no one, absolutely no one wants to pay for the enormous quality cost of trying to make computers secure and reliable.
They're the most complex systems ever made - for both good and bad reasons.

mental toolbox

Posted Oct 23, 2015 11:19 UTC (Fri) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link]

> no one wants to pay for the enormous quality cost of trying to make computers secure and reliable.

unless you have a finite-time algorithm for the halting problem, the cost is infinity.

mental toolbox not needed, use cash

Posted Oct 19, 2015 1:54 UTC (Mon) by gdt (subscriber, #6284) [Link]

To talk about motivation is to miss an important point: simply pay someone who is motivated.

I do that with my phone today: I could replace a broken screen on my phone, I have the tools, but I'm happy to pay someone to do it.

If there was a formal way to root the phone then I'd do the same: I could install a replacement less-buggy OS, but I'm more likely to pay someone to do it. Probably the same someone I'd get to fix the screen.