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Comment by kllrnohj | Hacker News Reader

> There exists a happy medium, where power users get all the freedom they want but apps are still by default beholden to certain restrictions. And this is orthogonal to a proprietary API.

Is this not the happy medium Google is trying to hit?

Power users can unlock their bootloader and do whatever they want. This is still officially supported, with vendor blobs officially provided.

By default things are restricted to deliver a happy user experience in the context of the average person that just wants a product that works. But you're free to do whatever you want. There's (usually) even controls to remove restrictions from apps manually without doing the custom ROM route, but there is always the ultimate power user toggle there of "flash a custom ROM"

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That's what I thought when I bought my Sony phone. Except when you unlock it you run a crippled version of the phone.

Huawei recently stopped allowing bootloader unlocks.

Unlocking the bootloader is becoming increasingly rare.

To be honest, ignoring the back and forth between the discussions here, am the only one that doesn't get WHY the firebase library isn't open source? It could just be GPL right? Most of the interesting stuff happens in the backend anyway, so what's the issue.

Am I also the only one that thinks this gives google the chance to lock out/cripple third parties like huawei or other non certified android vendors from distributing Android apps that were built for the play store.

I don't know the ins and outs of this, but wouldn't that still mean that the app would have to rely on google infrastructure to do push notifications? That might be a fix for the licensing problem, but it wouldn't address the problem that that would move virtually all remaining google-free (-ish) messengers into googles direction, with the potential for centrally siphoning of (meta-) data

No, the app can continue to use third party push notifications if the OS allows it to.

> Unlocking the bootloader is becoming increasingly rare.

This is a bit of "you get what you buy" territory. Google's devices have official bootloader unlock capability and always have, with instructions here: https://source.android.com/setup/build/running - already updated for the Pixel 3a & 3a XL even. You take your risks when you buy something that doesn't advertise that.

> Most of the interesting stuff happens in the backend anyway, so what's the issue.

I think most of the interesting stuff on the device is even in Google Play Services and not in the firebase library. I have no idea why the client SDK can't be open source, but how much does that even matter?

I just bought a new Pixel 3a only to find out that my cell provider locks the bootloader until I've paid for 3-4 months service with the phone, despite previously having an account with them.

This was not mentioned at any time during the purchase and they would not take my phone back.

Unfortunately that's the problem with getting any phone via a cell provider. You are typically beholden to them in some fashion for a few months.

Buying unlocked phones from the start can be an expensive downside, but being free from contracts and carrier bullshit can be a huge upside.

For completeness' sake: even power users cannot really do with their devices as they please, if they don't happen to be kernel hackers with a few months' worth of time to spare.

If google was trying to hit some sweet spot (I'm not willing to give them the benefit of the doubt here any longer) then they would not spout such obviously wrong BS to scare users into submission. Conversations and telegram both put the work into doing push notifications The Right Way (TM) so scaring users about this is stupid at best.

> even power users cannot really do with their devices as they please, if they don't happen to be kernel hackers with a few months' worth of time to spare.

You don't have to be a kernel hacker to build & flash AOSP. Google has a guide on it: https://source.android.com/setup/build/running

But whether or not you consider this a "power user" or not is obviously less clear cut. How you define "power user" does of course change things. The point is just that there is the ultimate escape hatch of flashing a custom ROM, and it's not THAT hard to do, especially with all the tools out there to flash things like LineageOS super easily. You may not understand what it's doing, but it is at least sitting on officially supported things for the devices Google sells.

Not sure why you are bringing this up. The point of this thread is the misleading warning or other OS level changes that are forced upon you if you don't use FCM. Changing that behaviour needs changing AOSP.

Then it's a real shame they haven't paid attention to the documentation for NotificationBuilder, because there's a straightforward solution to the problem they're complaining about.

> Power users can unlock their bootloader and do whatever they want. This is still officially supported, with vendor blobs officially provided.

A bit of a tangent but I'm a "power user" and still can't get rid of the stupid warning in the beginning. Definitely not a happy medium.

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