Why do you need to pay $25 in order to share code with your friends?
Why can't someone wipe the phone's storage clean and install their own version of Android, or some other OS?
Think back to the days before "smartphones", when your smallest computer was your laptop. Imagine if you had to pay Microsoft to be able to share a program you wrote with anyone else. Or if MS made it infeasible to remove Windows without making the laptop unusable.
You don't. It's $25 to publish on Google Play; you can share a *.apk with whomever you wish.
On iOS, on the other hand, it's $99/yr if you even want to run your own code on your own device. And you have to 'provision' your friends' devices if you want to share with them. It's extortion, it's stupid, it's immoral.
Why can't someone wipe the phone's storage clean and install their own version of Android, or some other OS?
Think back to the days before "smartphones", when your smallest computer was your laptop. Imagine if you had to pay Microsoft to be able to share a program you wrote with anyone else. Or if MS made it infeasible to remove Windows without making the laptop unusable.