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Comment by eropple | Hacker News Reader

I'm curious how Android's choice of default applications implies less "freedom". Don't like SMS being folded into Hangouts? Use Handcent--it's better anyway. Will the Gallery app disappear? Use QuickPic--it's better anyway. Don't like the new launcher? There's Nova and Apex and Smart and a dozen other really good choices. (They're better anyway, too!)

And if that's not enough for you, sure, go try something else, but the dramatics don't really help make your case.

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I know there alternatives but my problem is with the direction Google are taking Android and the fact they are abandoning existing open apps and replacing them with closed-source ones. More and more apps will not function either because they rely on Google Play Services, so trying to go around the issue by using OSS apps (such as through F-Droid) will only be feasible for so long, eventually Google will have so much of the API tied into Google Play Services it just is pointless to make an app without it. Google made a decision that its openness on Android is a strategic weakness, damaging potential revenues and user data acquisition. That's fine, I'm not crying over it, I am just going to leave the platform as soon as I can and go to something which is more open, such as Firefox OS (or possibly Jolla OS).

That is a mighty slippery slope you're positing, sir, but good luck with your alternatives.

You have a different idea of "freedom" than we do

The problem is not bundling in closed-source applications... the problem is removing (and thus stopping development) of the previously-default open source applications

Are Nova, Apex and Smart OSS? I looked at their web pages, but I don't see any link to the sources

basically: you still have freedom 0 (and possibly freedom 2, if you're willing to go against the EULA)... but, concerning freedom 1 and freedom 3, Android (as in AOSP) is stuck to something like version "4.*"

It sounds like you should move to CyanogenMod.

Yes, I do have a very different definition than you do, which is what makes your almost-begging-the-question rhetorical adoption of the implicit redefinition of freedom as Those Enumerated By Richard Stallman...well, kind of funny. On the other hand, I will enjoy my freedom to use software without concerns of ideological purity because I have alternatives if I don't like them.

Nothing stops you from writing your own to-your-specifications launcher or SMS client or email client atop the openly-licensed Android stack (and leverage having an actually useful, widely-supported phone). People might even use your GNU-gold-starred alternative if it's more than barely functional, though the track record of said gold-starred software with regards to UX doesn't fill me with optimism. But I do wish you luck.

Actually, I'm nowhere "ideologically pure" as you think I am.

I'm still using my google-sanctioned stock android, and I routinely use some sort of closed source software...

My point was more like: I'm using google-android now, out of convenience, but I stopped strictly seeing Android releases[1] as improvements (and thus I _might_ refrain to use KitKat... if I'll move to a google-less cyanogenmod or to Ubuntu or Jolla I still don't know)

Also, My intention was not to be rhetoric: I just found Stallman definitions of freedom useful in this context to understand what some people are complaining about

[1] as in "Android used on Nexus", compared to AOSP

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