>do something insane like a giant bundle of everything, or static linking
But isn't this exactly what shipping on Windows looks like? I've just checked my Windows partition and there are 43 instances of sqlite dll and 16 instances of Qt5Core.dll because every program that uses those libs needs to include them in their "giant bundle of everything".
It kind of is their fault because of Google Play Integrity APIs. They are effectively developing tools that are designed to make their product mandatory. There wouldn't be a backlash that big if we could just unlock our bootloaders and run a patched version of Android.
What do you mean? The webchat client is linked right there in the second paragraph, doesn't require you to install anything and let's you connect and list channels as a guest without registering. It took me like 30 seconds to find out that there is indeed an astronomy channel.
But isn't this exactly what shipping on Windows looks like? I've just checked my Windows partition and there are 43 instances of sqlite dll and 16 instances of Qt5Core.dll because every program that uses those libs needs to include them in their "giant bundle of everything".