I don’t know about vanilla Firefox but I use IronFox and it works great so I suspect you’re wrong.

Wait for what? I’ve done this many times.

They’ve been well-supported for many years.

Yes, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.

Please point out where I said that open source and licensed (i.e., proprietary licensed) software are the same thing?

When you suggested that Android is licensed because the government restricted who could use it, that’s what you said. I don’t understand why this is confusing. Any other open source project is susceptible to the same fate, ergo they’re the same thing. I already explained this.

I’m not saying anything about AOSP

AOSP is Android. This seems to be where you’re getting confused.

I’m not challenging the definition of open source

Yes you are. You are claiming that open source and “licensed” are the same thing, because the government can get involved and take away someone’s right to open source.

The Huawei case illustrated that GPS and GMS are proprietary, are licensed, the licenses can be pulled

GPS and GMS are not components of Android. They are proprietary Google apps.

and Android is pretty useless to a giant corporate OEM without those two proprietary components

1. It doesn’t matter if it’s useless or not, because it’s not part of Android

2. Its obviously not useless because Huawei continued using using Android, minus GPS and GMS, as does Amazon.

The open source thing is largely a myth, though. AOSP is what’s open source.

You say it’s a myth, then say it’s not a myth. Which one is it? Is it open source or not?

I’ve seen no such thing but maybe I’m just not paying close enough attention. They still have the same bullshit where third party stores still need to pay them 27%, and they still require Apple’s approval, which is almost nothing gained.

You might think so but PWAs have been around for a long time and seen very little adoption.

We are not having a communication problem. We have a failure to understand. If you want to challenge the entire definition of open source, that’s not something that I’m going to entertain. You can take that up with OSI. Every other open source project is susceptible to the same legal shitfuckery.

regardless of whether it were open-sourced or licensed

These are not the same. And it’s preposterous to suggest such a thing. It’s like saying licensing movies from Amazon is the same as owning them. The implications are completely different.

and the Huawei case demonstrated that “Android” is licensed

Again, only as much as every other open source project is “licensed”, as in it’s susceptible to legal regulation.

I mean Apple has continued their shitfuckery unabated.

How does it have nothing to do with Google, if Google did it, even if it was by order of the US government?

Because Google has zero control over it. You’re REALLY reaching here…

That has nothing to do with Google, that has to do with the US government.

It’s too bad they were too terrible at writing legislation to be successful.

Brother let me tell you about my friend Janet Reno, who fucked with Microsoft in 2001…

Whatever things made people get into Android some 20 years ago are no longer relevant to the majority of people.

The biggest benefit will remain the apps. People love apps. In that regard, their only competition is Apple. It’s why no one can make a new phone OS.

The other reason is cost. If you want a cheap device, Apple has no such thing. There are hundreds of Android devices you can buy for a couple hundred dollars.

For those who buy Samsung flagships for more than an iPhone, well those people I can’t explain.

Mullvad is not available for Android.

Offering licenses means they could take back their permissions at any time.

OEMs want open source for the same reasons as everyone else.

The best browser for privacy will always be Tor. But obviously that comes with many compromises, and is more than just a browser.

Other than that, there is no best. Many of them have various degrees of blocking and hiding, which will cause problems on some sites and not on others, many of them have various privacy tools that others don’t.

People love to stan for Android because “it’s open source,” but…Google wouldn’t have bought it if they weren’t convinced it would let them scrape more personal data than Gmail.

I mean it can be both? Android has been awesome for many years precisely because it was open source. It’s the reason we have had and continue to have so many custom ROMs. It was open source so it could be run by Samsung, Motorola, LG, etc. while Google collected all the data. It also meant that independent developers could create their own OSs without any of Google’s BS in it. And that was fine, because us nerds are not even 1% of the market. But something seems to have changed because they’re very suddenly clawing back control of the entire OS. Pretty much the beginning of the end for private mobile devices. This trend is likely to continue faster than the community can create workarounds.