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Comment by lordofgibbons | Hacker News Reader

Can we as a hacker community say enough is enough and put our collective efforts into making something like PureOS a viable option for daily use?

PureOS currently suffers from a tragedy of the commons. I, like many others am afraid of investing a lot of my time into developing for it for fear that not many others will adopt it and my efforts will be wasted.

How can we build/market PureOS as a credible alternative for other app developers to start building on top of it?

*Edit It doesn't have to be PureOS - that was just an example. It could be Sailfish OS, or Plasma Mobile. We just have to pick one to create a self-sustaining ecosystem around.

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Does PureOS solve this accessibility vs. malware tradeoff?

This question feels like asking whether DRM-free platforms like GOG solve the freedom vs. piracy tradeoff.

By attracting only geek users that know better than saying yes to allowing a random shady flashlight app to take full control over their device.

It's only at the beginning of the development. It will, if the community makes it.

One major hurdle is getting the existing app developers to stop intentionally hindering efforts to make their apps work through compatibility layers.

Can you expand more on this? Are they deliberately trying to detect compatibility layers?

Modern phones have chips that can do hardware attestation that they're running an OS that's been blessed by Google. A lot of apps, e.g., McDonald's and most banks, will refuse to run if this attestation fails.

Is this some kind of hardware based DRM?

It's called SafetyNet I think.

https://developer.android.com/training/safetynet/attestation

A lot of surprising apps use it because rooted devices are very commonly associated with fraud of various kinds e.g. credit card fraud.

Or so they say.

Integrating SafetyNet and maintaining that integration represents real work and therefore money. It's not like one line of code, it's a pretty complicated protocol and set of flows that require support in both client and server. If there was no actual problem to solve, why would organizations that are famously much more concerned with money than tech politics spend their money in that way? I really doubt McDonalds cares about the freedom to modify phones one way or the other.

Or we don't slave away to maintain another community project and instead impose regulations on these companies to work for us.

If you are a teenage hacker with nothing better to do, sure, spend your time hacking a new OS to run on closed ecosystems. If you are an adult with work and responsibilities, take political action.

You can't. Microsoft, Samsung, Huawei- they all tried.

Understandably because nobody wants more work.

> How can we build/market PureOS as a credible alternative for other app developers to start building on top of it?

Start by convincing paying customers that cyber security and/or their privacy are important.

GrapheneOS.org

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