[conspire] Android app ecosystem

[Rick Moen]

----- Forwarded message from Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> -----

Date: Thu, 12 May 2016 21:29:48 -0700
From: Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com>
To: hangout at nylxs.com
Subject: [Hangout-NYLXS] Android app ecosystem (was: Worlds Biggest Slimeballs)

Quoting Ruben Safir (ruben at mrbrklyn.com):

[snip stuff not remotely of interest on Conspire]

I'm hoping to generalise this discussion to one about the Android
application ecosystem, where I've belatedly arrived and found that it's
1985 again.


What I mean is:  I bought used a Nook Tablet (nice little thing:  Texas
Instruments OMAP4 CPU @ 1GHz, 1GB RAM, 2 x 16 GB flash storage, 7"
diagnonal colour touchscreen) when my throwaway Nook Original died.  
The earlier Nook was essentially a dedicated ePub book reader, so I
never fooled with its specialised preload, but the newer one is a 
Real Computer, so I reflashed it with CyanogenMod / Android 5.1.

CynanogenMod is genuinely open source Android, you understand.  Yet, I
was asked immediately if I wanted to provide Google Account credentials
so I could get to the Google Play (formerly Android Store) online store
and whatever.  (I said no.)  And then the Web browser _also_ wanted me
to provide a Google login (no to that, too).  

At this point, I did a little remedial reading about Android APK app
bundles (filename extension .apk):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_application_package   You can get
these puppies one way or the other; they're Zip archives where the main
offering is Java-like compiled bytecode for the local Android Runtime
(ART), successor to Dalvik.  The APK can optionally also contain
native machine binary code for any of several Android-supported CPUs, 
but I'm guessing the processor-specific code extents are rare(?).

So, you mostly have Google's analogue to Java bytecode in a compressed
app bundle.  HTTP-fetch an APK to the Nook Tablet, and the UI asks if
you wish it to be runnable as an application.

Doing the above with either application files or data files (e.g.,
digital books) is called 'sideloading' -- i.e., being in charge of what
goes on your own device is considered so eccentric a practice that it
requires its own special verb just to talk about it.


Which brings me to the other part of the code ecosystem:

The bit where it's 1985 again is that Google Play and (on a quick check) 
half a dozen online 'stores' classify code as 'free' (gratis) or not 
but say nada about licensing, punting entirely on that.  'You want to 
know if an APK is open source or not?  Research it then; knock yourself
out.'

So, are there also collections of APK codebases that _do_ take the
trouble to clarify licensing?  Or do we need to start one?

I could be perfectly happy merely collecting on my Nook Tablet every
book ever written -- but it'd be nice to efficiently find other leading
open source applications for Android.  I notice VLC for Android exists
and logically tops my list, but I wonder what else.

Suggestions?  Places that curate / catalog / reveiw open source Android
applications?


[1] The CyanogenMod people occasionally have feet of clay
http://review.cyanogenmod.org/#/c/5677/
Notice the pushback was that giving users full control over 'privacy
mode' permissions and allowing the user to feed empty lists or falsified 
data to data-miners would 'piss off developers, carriers, and probably
Google'.  Of course, any user is free to apply such a patchset to a
local fork.

----- End forwarded message -----