https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/19/...icensing-terms

Thanks to the EU forcibly unbundling Google services, now said services will be 40 dollars per phone. If Sailfish were truly free as in price and freedom then it might be possible to compete with Android.

This coud be good news to anyone who wants to get rid of google apps even having an android phone, right?
Something like the buyer can opt to choose use AOSP?
Or just the same as usual plus us$40 to the phone price?

It will also now be possible to sell phones with google play services or sell phones that do have them. Ie you can have forked Android versions.

So... where are the competitor offerings?

Because so far, the options have not been compelling.

This!

It's all nice and I well to have an option with or without this or that.
But people do not care about such things. People do not understand such things. People do not want to be bothered with such things.

People want to use Gmail, Facebook and Whatsit. They want to play Pokemon Go. They want to watch YouTube. If any of those things do not work without Google Services then this initiative is absolutely pointless.

I predict the only realistic outcome: new phones will cost just as much as they always have but then customers will have to pay $40 on top. And curse they EU for that. This time, justifiably.

Most ppl will pay the $40 fee and will install the services as well!

In all honesty, if I get a *working* OS for 39.99, which is *not* cluttered, offers basic functionality, and can keep things safe, I'd jump ship from android

The thing I don't get is, why does google offer this option?
Pay for getting spied on? Sounds counter-productive. Then again, pay for access to play store. Welcome Walled Garden(tm)!

Tizen actually does have a good amount of mainstream apps.

I eagerly await the day we abandon the "app" ideology. These apps are nothing more than gateways to popular services like Facebook, Gmail, so forth. Apps are more convenient, but we often trade convenience for lack of privacy.

Earlier I stated "where are the options". Things like ProtonMail instead of Gmail, VK instead of Facebook, Mastodon instead of Twitter, so forth already exist. But they're still not in a place where I can tell my mother that she can easily join, use and trust those things.

And having my mother enter in a ton of commands into a browser or worse, a terminal is not where I want to be on a Tuesday night trying to help her out over the phone doing parental PC support.

Things need to change. But it at least needs to be approachable by the layman.