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posted by janrinok on Tuesday November 03 2015, @02:22PM   Printer-friendly
from the same-old-routine dept.

It looks like Microsoft hasn't reformed as some would like to think, but has moved its embrace, extend, extinguish policy to the mobile platform. In this article from techrights.org , we see a company (responsible for Mono) with strong MS connections take over an open source project and close it.

LAST WEEK we wrote about Xamarin's disturbing takeover of RoboVM [1, 2], which was a threat to Microsoft's monopoly and domination of APIs (especially on the desktop). Xamarin, for the uninitiated, creates proprietary software that strives to spread Microsoft's .NET to mobile (including Android) devices.

It has only been less than a week and now we learn from Abel Avram that "RoboVM Is No Longer Open Source".

"Following RoboVM's acquisition by Xamarin," explains Avram, "the company has raised the price of their offering and has closed the source code."

Discussion of a fork is in the works:

It has gotten so bad that RoboVM might be forked. To quote Avram, "some developers consider that closing down the source code has to do with Xamarin's acquisition. And some are discussing forking the project, perhaps starting with the sources v. 1.8 which will be pushed to GitHub this week, according to Zechner. It remains to see how successful they are in their endeavor considering that RoboVM is not a trivial piece of software."


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Nerdfest on Tuesday November 03 2015, @03:07PM

    by Nerdfest (80) on Tuesday November 03 2015, @03:07PM (#257959)

    Google: Wants a nice take via Google Play every time somebody adds an app to their phone.

    Android allows side-loading. This complain does apply to Apple though. The other complain about Google is accurate of course. Don't forget Apple's eschewing of standards to enhance the lock-in goodness.
    Sadly, the systemd thing is what scares me the most in this list.

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by quacking duck on Tuesday November 03 2015, @07:59PM

    by quacking duck (1395) on Tuesday November 03 2015, @07:59PM (#258087)

    That first complaint doesn't even fully apply to Apple anymore either. Since June Apple developer accounts capable of loading apps onto personal iOS devices have been free.

    So although you can't just sideload pre-built iOS apps like Android, if the app author provides the source you can compile and load it yourself.

    The big caveats of course is that you need a recent Mac to run Xcode, and the app you want must provide have its source code available. But in principle requiring the user to compile the OSS app themselves is more secure than Android sideloading: the user must be more technically knowledgable, and they have the option to check the source code for security/privacy issues.

    • (Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Wednesday November 04 2015, @03:34AM

      by Nerdfest (80) on Wednesday November 04 2015, @03:34AM (#258259)

      You're *really* stretching the definition of side-loading to fit what Apple allows.

      • (Score: 2) by quacking duck on Wednesday November 04 2015, @02:42PM

        by quacking duck (1395) on Wednesday November 04 2015, @02:42PM (#258369)

        I never called what Apple now allows users to do "sideloading". The only times I used that word were when I said "although you can't just sideload pre-built iOS apps like Android" and that it "is more secure than Android sideloading".

        And, if WillR's comment [soylentnews.org] is accurate, Google is trying hard to make Thelaxon's comment ("Google: Wants a nice take via Google Play every time somebody adds an app to their phone") more true... which was the very point you were trying to refute.

        And since you want to argue definition, sideloading is *exactly* what's going on anyway: "process of transferring data between two local devices, in particular between a computer and a mobile device" [wikipedia.org]. Just because Android users started using it in a specific (and technically inaccurate!) context, doesn't make the term theirs exclusively.

        So no, Apple isn't allowing Android app-like sideloading. But it is now allowing sideloading (by definition!) of unapproved 3rd party software, for free.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by WillR on Tuesday November 03 2015, @08:48PM

    by WillR (2012) on Tuesday November 03 2015, @08:48PM (#258123)
    AOSP Android allows easy side-loading, but Google Android tries very hard to make sure it doesn't work. If your phone doesn't have the Google services installed and logged in to a Google account, an app side-loaded from the Google Android world is probably going to crash immediately. If it does have all that stuff, there's not much point side-loading when you can just... download.