Cricket [he/him]

  • 2 Posts
  • 104 Comments
Joined 4 months ago
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Cake day: June 4th, 2025

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  • And you think Rufus with magnitude of options and Ventoy will leave users with fewer problems?

    I agree with most of your post except this item. Balena Etcher caused major problems for me when I tried it (to be fair, years ago, so I don’t know if they’ve resolved/improved the issues), and I’m an IT guy. It borked my USB drive pretty bad, and I had to jump through hoops to get it working again. I don’t remember the details, but I do remember that Ventoy has been much less problematic so far. Rufus was also OK.




  • “subscribed” is the exact same thing as “all”

    It shouldn’t be! If you subscribe to a couple communities, your “subscribed” feed on the front page should only show posts from those communities. The “all” feed will show posts from all communities that everyone on your instance (server) subscribe to. “Local” should show posts only from the communities hosted on your own instance.



  • If you’re using a browser and follow a direct link to a Lemmy post or comment in another instance, the link takes you to that other instance where you don’t have an account.

    If you wish to interact with that thread by commenting, voting, etc., one easy way I’ve found to get to my local instance’s copy of that thread is to copy the URL of the other instance’s thread and search it using your own instance’s search menu. This will usually bring up the local copy of that thread as one of the top results. You can then interact with that thread through your instance with your existing account.

    Links to communities have a mechanism that automatically translates the link to the local copy, which is to add an exclamation mark in front of the community address and then select the correct community in the inline search that comes up, which produces a link like this: [email protected]

    Unfortunately, I don’t believe that kind of mechanism exists for posts (threads) or comments yet, but perhaps it’s something that the developers will consider in the future.



  • When you suggested that Android is licensed because the government restricted who could use it, that’s what you said. I don’t understand why this is confusing.

    That’s not what I said. What I said was that the fact that Google blocked Huawei’s ability to use Android’s Google Services on their devices at the government’s orders meant that the they had a mechanism that allowed them to do so. Namely, the proprietary license for the Google Services. Do you dispute this exact thing, not some twisted version of what I said? I don’t understand why this is confusing either.

    Any other open source project is susceptible to the same fate, ergo they’re the same thing. I already explained this.

    How so? Do you have any examples of an organization blocking someone from using a common open source license like GPL, MIT, or Apache License, with the possible exceptions of GPL license violations or export controls for things like cryptography, etc? The fact that Google didn’t block Huawei from using AOSP most likely means that it was easier for them to ban Huawei through their proprietary license to Google Services than through the Apache License for AOSP.

    AOSP is Android. This seems to be where you’re getting confused.

    This seems to be where you’re getting confused too. I’ve already explained multiple times that what I mean by “Android” is the full suite (AOSP + GPS + GMS) that an OEM would need for a mass-market phone. AOSP is not enough for that. No OEM in their right mind would try to market a mass-market phone with pure AOSP and no Google Services.


  • Yes you are. You are claiming that open source and “licensed” are the same thing, because the government can get involved and take away someone’s right to open source.

    That’s not at all what I’m saying. Please point out where I said that open source and licensed (i.e., proprietary licensed) software are the same thing? First, I’m not saying anything about AOSP, which I recognize is fully open source and which I use myself. I’m talking about full Android, the trademarked, licensed product, which includes AOSP (open source) plus GPS and GMS (proprietary) components. We’re talking about Android phones here, before you go “but but but”.

    From the link above:

    “The “Android” name, the Android logo, the “Google Play” brand, and other Google trademarks, are property of Google LLC and not part of the assets available through the Android Open Source Project.”

    “Use of the “Google Play” name and the Google Play Store icon is allowed only in association with devices licensed to access Google Play. For a list of devices licensed to use Google Play, refer to Supported devices.”

    Second, a combination of open source and proprietary components is not fully open source, do you agree with that at least?

    It doesn’t matter if it’s useless or not, because it’s not part of Android

    It very much does matter in the case of Android because AOSP without the proprietary components is limited to a market niche. Show me one really popular phone or phone brand which does not use Google’s proprietary Play Store. Maybe there’s some edge case that doesn’t, I don’t know, but it would be the exception that proves the rule.

    Its obviously not useless because Huawei continued using using Android, minus GPS and GMS, as does Amazon.

    Both had to either develop their own app store or rely on a 3rd-party app store, I don’t know. But they’re definitely not using Google’s Play Store, and thus are limited to market niches like I mentioned above.


  • It’s either failure to understand or you’re intentionally twisting my words. I’m not challenging the definition of open source and I’m not claiming open source and proprietary software is the same.

    Let me restate and clarify what I’m saying:

    • For giant corporate OEMs like you listed, all else being equal, it makes not much difference to them in their choice to use Android on their phones whether Android is open source or proprietary. The only significant difference between the two is that open source allows them to further customize and perhaps contribute back to the OS source, if they desire to do so. If Android were proprietary and had the same market and lack of fees (or even reasonable fees to allow them to still be profitable), they would still use it.
    • The complete Android system has a unique vulnerability to attacks like the one on Huawei (compared to another open source OS like Linux), because of its deep dependence on Google’s (proprietary) play services and mobile services. The Huawei case illustrated that GPS and GMS are proprietary, are licensed, the licenses can be pulled, and Android is pretty useless to a giant corporate OEM without those two proprietary components. That’s why I’m sometimes using “open source” in quotes, because Android being open source is only useful to an OEM as long as they agree to Google’s GPS/GMS licensing.

    I hope you understand my points now. If you still want to argue either of them, I think we’ve reached a dead end.