>Linux Mint is hardly the first, nor the most prominent Linux distro to do this. Debian, Ubuntu, Arch, etc... all do this.
Oh I know, I wasn't suggesting it is - I even spoke of the long history of this in another comment. I was merely using it as an example based on my day to day experience.
>The big difference is, Linux distros usually (almost always) do it for stability/security reasons,
Something google has been lax about, I hope that will improve with this.
> as a compromise distros also will host and maintain unofficial repos, AUR on Arch, testing/unstable on Debian, etc...
I mentioned that in my other comment as well - not all of them do, but even if they don't nothing stops you from using third-party repos or even compiling from source or even installing binaries yourself.
>Google has a well known, highly publicized history of pulling apps for terribly sketchy reasons
True, though it's better than apple's (by a long margin) but again - the fact is, they may control their appstore but they don't prevent sideloading or other marketplaces from operating. It would take a massive redesign to try to do so - including removing the ability to root phones by any means (which even apple couldn't manage) and to install custom android builds - many of the phone companies have tried to make that hard (but with limited success) and google has, so far at least, actively encouraged it. The licensing of the large amount of non-google code in android would make such a change very difficult and there is almost no profit potential there - it's rarely wise to remove the major thing differentiating your product from competitors. I'm not saying it never happens or can't happen - I was a happy Playstation customer before the combined rootkit scandal and removing the linux support feature from the PS3s which shipped with it - it drove me to become an xbox customer instead. Sometimes companies do evil and stupid things, but I am saying we have no evidence that, that is what's happening HERE.
> One well known example is Adblock.
Which proves my point - I am running the latest adblock on my cyanogenmod phone right now. Removing it from the playstore had zero impact on my ability to do so.
>You can't compare OSS projects -- which go out of their way to make sure unapproved software is easily accessible -- with Google who is leveraging its position as the pre-bundled app market.
I think I can. Being the preloaded default isn't a limitation, adding limitations would upset me - making it hard to do so would upset me. There was a lot MORE than merely preloading IE wrong with microsoft during the antitrust case. It was preloading IE AND corrupting java AND making IE capable of features that other companies were blocked from adding to their browsers and..and..and..
Now does this have potential to be abused ? Sure, but we haven't got any evidence it's BEING abused - at least not yet. This has apparently been in place for months and I've seen no difference in my playstore line up. Like most people these days, I also only run a very small selection of apps in practice. The days when we loaded lots of them are over, these days people install things they use and only things they use.