Anything that reaches a certain threshold of value to society and requires enormous effort to build and maintain has to fall back to a capitalist, for-profit, closed-source structure. That's all that's happening here.
Of course, small stuff like a software library that doesn't require much effort to build and doesn't provide much value can remain open-source. I personally think this obsession with open-source software is simply an obsession with communism and getting things for free, and not wanting getting rewarded for the value of the stuff you build, etc.
Except that both platforms (iOS as well as Android) were either born out of OSS or are still reliant on active development in such projects. They created nothing, they took something from the commons, polished it and are now rent-seeking. It was tolerated till they threatened to choke all competition and trap and rent-seek the entire world with their duopoly.
They did so legally and didn't break any rules. This is the game of capitalism, and the fact is, IOS and Android are extremely well built and developed, and no open-source project would ever come close to the hundreds of thousands of paid engineers that built IOS and Android.
You can either have capitalism and IOS and Android, or you can have communism and a society that is 10+ years behind in development. Do you really want to give up IOS 26 for a blackberry?
Android on the other hand is developed by thousands of engineers and is a much larger project in terms of monetary investment than Linux. Linux was essentially built by a single guy. Android could never have been built by a single person or even a open-source project. It's too massive.
However complex you think Linux is, its just a kernel and doesn't require a conglomerate to build and maintain for billions of users. Android does, and those developers need to get paid for the massive value they provide.
Linux doesn't need a for profit company gate keeping it to ensure it is safe and secure. And even Windows doesn't prevent you from running any executable you choose from the internet. Why are phones treated differently?
The developers need to get paid. And the developers only get paid if the system is closed-source such that the revenue can only flow back to Google which is where the developers are hired at. In other words, yes it needs to be centralized, and the reason is the money required to build Android is just too much and therefore needs to be developed under a for-profit capitalist organization like Google.
This platform has the EXACT same problem as Reddit. People can just silence you before you had a chance of discussion. What a waste of fucking time. Instead of improving our world models of reality by having discussions, you can just silence others because you disagree. Remove the fucking downvote button! Just remove it, jesus fucking christ. Who thought this button was a good fucking idea?
I'm nearly out of this garbage. The same way I left Reddit long ago. X is the only platform that allows free speech.
>will not pass integrity checks
Those apps can add support for other integrity APIs. Operating system owners can fund this work to help their operating system gain marketshare.