Hello,
I would like to point to a particular problem with using free software variants
of the Android operating system (LineageOS, etc.): namely proprietary apps that
detect if the phone's software is modified (by rooting or installing custom
ROMs) and then refuse to run if it is so.
Google makes this easy with its DRM mechanism called Google Play Integrity.
This is particularly problematic with software that is important in daily life,
for example banking [1] and government-provided apps. For example, Polish
mObywatel and Ukrainian Diia belong to this category. These apps are published
by the respective governments and used for increasingly many
government-provided services. They refuse to work on LineageOS.
Recently, the proposed version of the eIDAS 2.0 directive seems to require such
behavior of government-issued ID apps. I hope that there is still time for some
advocacy work to revert such changes.
I am afraid that this problem will get worse with time as more people will be
forced not to root their phones. Because of that, rooted phones will get less
frequent and it would be easier for app developers to justify blocking them.
Reversing this situation would then be difficult.
This is going to kill in practice what remains of open source in Android.
Greetings,
Mateusz Jończyk
[1] Reddit thread: Safety Net is making it harder to use or advocate for
LineageOS,
https://www.reddit.com/r/LineageOS/comments/sa3qkq/safety_net_is_making_it_…
Hi,
looking through some public tenders, I found one [1]
from the Council of Europe and their "development kit" says:
The application back-end is built in .NET Core
SQL Server 2019 must be used for development purposes.
from DGA/DIT/DTK(2023)07 [2]
which states
This document presents the Developer's Toolkit, which defines the technical
requirements for application development at the Council of Europe's
Directorate of Information Technology (DiT).
so we get some insights in the IT environment in this institution (which is
seperate from the EU). They use Microsoft's products and the desktop, the
servers and the cloud, and applications can only be developed using those
tools.
While .NET Core and its compiler and VSCodium ware meanwhile Free Software,
the database is proprietary.
Bernhard
[1]
https://www.coe.int/en/web/portal/-/31-january-2024-2023/ao/93-development-…
[2] COE_DEVELOPER_TOOLKIT.pdf
https://rm.coe.int/8-coe-developer-toolkit/native/1680ada90e
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