Sideloading?

[DiapDealer]

This happens all the time. Why get so bent about this one? Nobody is ever going to get everybody to use reasonable terms where technology is concerned by griping about unreasonable/unnecessary usage.

Originally Posted by Quoth

Don't be defeatist. Call it what it is: Copying, not sideloading.

If I'm going to call this "what it is," then it sounds a lot like "You kids get off my lawn" griping.

[Quoth]

It's about the fact that Google wants to be like Apple.

Do we own our ereaders, phones and tablets or do brands own them?

It's about countering corporate control.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by rkomar

You and me both! It bugs me like when sports fans now use "turf" to mean the artificial stuff instead of sod. Totally illogical, but impossible to fight.

I just saw this usage for the first time recently, in a newspaper story about the battle over what to put in for a schoolyard playground. It was very confusing and it took me a while to catch on.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Quoth

It's about the fact that Google wants to be like Apple.

Everybody wants to be like Apple. Not just Google.

Originally Posted by Quoth

Do we own our ereaders, phones and tablets or do brands own them?

Who's "we"?

Originally Posted by Quoth

It's about countering corporate control.

For some maybe. Not All. I suspect not even that many when it boils right down to it.

[Quoth]

Turf is a lazy shortening of "astroturf". Stupid.

[Graham44]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Turf is a lazy shortening of "astroturf". Stupid.

I don't know about that; throughout my horticultural training turf meant a very specific thing, it was a section of grass, it's root system and a small amount of soil that has been removed from a larger area of grass. When talking about an area of grass you would use terms that either describe what the area of grass is; pitch, lawn, meadow etc or if it was just a general description you could use the term sward; 'the area was covered in a lovely green sward of grass'

You even have tools named for the very specific job of removing a turf, turfing irons https://www.faithfulltools.com/p/FAI...n-Turfing-Iron

Astroturf is just green plastic and has no place in horticulture (acceptable for sports pitches)

[Quoth]

https://f-droid.org/en/2025/10/28/sideloading.html

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Graham44

I don't know about that; throughout my horticultural training turf meant a very specific thing, it was a section of grass, it's root system and a small amount of soil that has been removed from a larger area of grass.

Astroturf is just green plastic and has no place in horticulture (acceptable for sports pitches)

Exactly, I agree, which is why I wrote that shortening Astroturf to turf is stupid.

It's crazy.

Turf here also means "logs" of dried bog peat that is burnt in a stove or hearth. Or was. The commercial compressed peat briquettes are gone, now illegal.

I have a small bag of turf (the kind used for fires) about 20 years old for ornanmental purposes in an unused stove or hearth.

[xor_]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

This happens all the time. Why get so bent about this one? Nobody is ever going to get everybody to use reasonable terms where technology is concerned by griping about unreasonable/unnecessary usage.

It does matter. This kind of language usage is not neutral. I'm not sure if pejorative is the best word, but the term sideload is being used to delegitimize the traditional way of installing software, marking it as somehow deviant and non-standard.

It is part of a project to restrict the user's right to tinker with their own hardware and software as they see fit. Pushing it to the fringe while establishing a walled garden of "approved" software as the default.

Of course a lot of people don't care, or fail to see the implications, and you are free to side with them. But there is something at stake, and people who care about the freedom of computing have every right to voice their discontent about this development.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by xor_

It does matter. This kind of language usage is not neutral. I'm not sure if pejorative is the best word, but the term sideload is being used to delegitimize the traditional way of installing software, marking it as somehow deviant and non-standard.

Sorry. No one has proven this to my satisfaction yet. I have used the term in a completely non-deviant way--as have countless other tech-oriented folk up until now. Just because a few activists suddenly want to believe it's being used to "delegitimize" something does not actually make it so. Until I see (or hear) differently myself, this is nothing more than the usual dogmatic heel-kicking that people who wish tech lingo made perfect sense have done over the years. It's a tempest in the tiniest of teacups.

Originally Posted by xor_

It is part of a project to restrict the user's right to tinker with their own hardware and software as they see fit. Pushing it to the fringe while establishing a walled garden of "approved" software as the default.

No. The walled garden is a completely different issue which has less then nothing to do with use of the perfectly acceptable (if not exactly descriptively accurate) term of "sideloading." Don't conflate the two.

Originally Posted by xor_

Of course a lot of people don't care, or fail to see the implications, and you are free to side with them. But there is something at stake, and people who care about the freedom of computing have every right to voice their discontent about this development.

"Freedom of Computing" is a bit of stretch, don't you think? Besides not being any sort of official right bestowed on upon citizens by any governing body of any country, your imaginary freedom is not actually being threatened by the use of the word "sideloading." People are free to build any kind of computing hardware they like and bestow it with any homegrown OS they wish. But you feel free to voice your discontent about rights you never had being taken away. Just don't blame the word "sideloading" in the process. It doesn't help your cause to resort to hyperbole.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by rkomar

You and me both! It bugs me like when sports fans now use "turf" to mean the artificial stuff instead of sod. Totally illogical, but impossible to fight.

Turf can also be used to mean home stadium. For example, The Celtics' turf is the TD Bank Garden.

[xor_]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Sorry. No one has proven this to my satisfaction yet. I have used the term in a completely non-deviant way

If it were the word in isolation, I might agree with you. I can think of non-pejorative ways of using it. But there's a "material" development on the level of OS software (as material as software can be ) that goes in the same direction. Which actually makes it harder to use "non-approved" software.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by xor_

If it were the word in isolation, I might agree with you. I can think of non-pejorative ways of using it. But there's a "material" development on the level of OS software (as material as software can be ) that goes in the same direction. Which actually makes it harder to use "non-approved" software.

The word "in isolation" is the main thing I'm addressing. People are misleadingly defaming the term "sideloading" to advance their unrelated underlying cause. I admit that their cause is not one I share, but I'm trying to remain focused on the "stop using the (mis)use of a silly term to support something it has nothing to do with" aspect of this.

[Quoth]

See
https://keepandroidopen.org/

Which matters?

Supporting the lies of massive corporations or the rights of ordinary people to use the gadgets they bought?

[DiapDealer]

Know what doesn't matter in any of that??

Use of the term "sideload."

Have your open Android rant. I don't care. I only care that people are falsely claiming that use of the term "sideload" plays some part in closing down Android. If changing the sideload paradigm is paramount to saving Android, you've already lost.