[HN Gopher] Mobifree - An open-source mobile ecosystem
___________________________________________________________________
Mobifree - An open-source mobile ecosystem
Author : jrepinc
Score : 212 points
Date : 2024-05-28 14:24 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (f-droid.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (f-droid.org)
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| _project works to give European citizens and organizations more
| choice_
|
| Ok but why the geographical restriction?
| permanent wrote:
| Perhaps because EU just passed a law for third party app
| stores?
| afavour wrote:
| Because European governments are passing/have passed
| regulations forcing big tech companies to open up their
| platforms.
|
| (it's also taking funding from the EU, doesn't necessarily mean
| they're forced to cater only to EU citizens but the combination
| of these two factors means it makes sense to)
| rs999gti wrote:
| > passed regulations forcing big tech companies
|
| More Euro governance, bleh.
| afavour wrote:
| That's a pretty reductive take. Is the European Court of
| Human Rights "More Euro governance, bleh"?
| its_ethan wrote:
| I'm not gonna claim to know much at all about the ECHR,
| but this compliance graph from Wikipedia makes it look
| like a symbolic institution, but one that is largely
| ignored/ not really respected? Especially given that it's
| a declining trend, it seems like they may just be doing
| more and more political theater type stuff instead of
| "real" work. Anyway, it seems like it could somewhat
| reasonably fall under "governance bleh" depending on who
| you ask.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Compliance_with_all_co
| mpl...
| palata wrote:
| Have a look at what the Digital Markets Act is, before you
| judge.
| _heimdall wrote:
| Unless I've missed a very recent change, F-Droid isn't
| geographically restricted.
|
| Much of the blog post focuses on the DMA and its impact on
| Europe. I think the phrase you keyed in on, and really the bulk
| of the post, is just a marketing push for the European market
| and a bit of SEO trying to get keywords and phrases in there.
| wyldfire wrote:
| It's not restricted, it's a reflection of who funded the
| effort.
|
| The world can benefit from EU's investment here.
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| So instead of "project works to give
| European citizens and organizations more choice"
|
| it should more accurately say "project works
| to give *the world* more choice"
| Grimeton wrote:
| They don't explain how they fix even one of the problems they
| mention at the top. Maybe I'm missing something here but this is
| just pure marketing bleh.
| rc_mob wrote:
| yes it had all the hallmarks of an seo campaign
| 6510 wrote:
| I thought the same but eventually I recognized the sound of the
| government wheelworks of bureaucracy. The article simply
| explains a single thing elaborately.
| afavour wrote:
| It is marketing, yes. But it's also announcing a brand new
| ecosystem that doesn't exist yet so I'm not too surprised they
| don't have in depth implementation details right now.
|
| Marketing isn't automatically evil. If you're starting an open
| source project you want people to contribute to you're going to
| want to market it.
| glenstein wrote:
| The first paragraph introduces the idea of a comprehensive
| initiative for an "all of the above" mobile ecosystem, listing
| out the key pieces of that ecosystem.
|
| Then there's a lot of mission statement and vision statement
| type things that appear to be directed at a broad audience, But
| then specifically they say this:
|
| >F-Droid will play a major role in this project, tasked with
| creating a decentralized distribution system for developers to
| deliver apps to Android users.
|
| It feels like that's kind of what F-droid does already (sans
| decentralization, unless we regard the capability of custom
| repos as adequate to the task).
|
| So I get the vision, I get the idea of it being under the
| umbrella of some broader project that's about other aspects of
| the mobile ecosystem such as operating systems, cloud services,
| and so on. I'm not sure what's different but I welcome the
| spirit of the initiative and I suppose that's the important
| thing.
| criddell wrote:
| I believe F-Droid is operating under a series of grants
| totaling EUR4.4 million for the next two years. This release is
| probably directed at the various groups funding them.
|
| I hope they succeed but I wish they were using something other
| than Android. A by-Europeans-for-Europeans project shouldn't be
| based on an American OS IMHO.
|
| https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101135795
| flettcher wrote:
| "This project has been made possible by funding from the European
| Commission's Next Generation Internet (NGI) initiative:
| www.ngi.eu"
| nradov wrote:
| EU funding is the kiss of death for technology initiatives. I
| can confidently predict that this will go nowhere.
| mitchitized wrote:
| Why? Do they mandate process or procedure policies that kill
| productive organizations, or what? I'm genuinely curious.
| nextos wrote:
| I've been part of some large consortia. Generally, there is
| a ton of paperwork. Lots of project partners focus on
| filling in this paperwork to pretend they are doing
| something and pocket grant money. But, usually, nothing
| good is delivered, aside from some expensive DOCX. With
| that said, things are changing a bit and becoming a bit
| more efficient and dynamic.
| fabrice_d wrote:
| That was the case for big EU funded projects with lots of
| industrial + accademia participants. I worked at a place
| where we had people working full time on setting up
| proposals for these projects. This was a very political
| game (find partners in countries the EU wants to help
| this year!), and very low risk too for big partners. We
| were usually "selling" stuff that had been done already,
| and the new funding was used to work on new stuff. That
| meant we could always show successful projects, which in
| turn helped getting new funding - rinse and repeat.
|
| NGI is different, they seem to focus more on funding
| individuals and open source projects with relatively
| small grants. This has good and bad sides of course - a
| more level playing field, but makes it still difficult
| for projects that require long term work.
| nextos wrote:
| Yeah, public grants in the EU never work very well. However,
| some of the consortia members have already delivered good
| software.
|
| Personally, I think someone should have bought Jolla and
| open-sourced Sailfish and their Android VM. Perhaps turn it
| into a foundation, like Signal.
| Muromec wrote:
| >consortia
|
| Wait, there is more than one?
| rglullis wrote:
| NLNet is an NGO and has been funding a lot of cool stuff.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| At this point the access points and the global data and
| surveillance system is too complicated and interconnected to dis-
| intermediate the access point and the network itself
|
| That is to say you cannot even connect to IP addresses unless
| you're already part of the global whitelist for APs
|
| Try yourself. Get a VPN and then connect from certain regions and
| to won't get very far and you'll be slooooow
|
| You'll say, oh, that's because bad actors and are therefore
| blacklisted - and now you're back to the same problem: their
| resource is being limited by some social structure that is by
| definition constrained
|
| You cannot differentiate the broader system from the access
| point, so long as the system controls which access point access
| then it doesn't matter what you do
|
| The only solution is to build an entirely new Internet from
| scratch, not controlled by the people currently google, amazon,
| cloud flare, respective ISPs, Netflix, etc...
|
| The Internet is 99% controlled by a small set of corporations
| that most people haven't heard of
|
| Just try launching a competitive DNS service and see how far you
| get
| spacebanana7 wrote:
| It all depends what your privacy threat model is.
|
| There are very few organisations capable of identifying the
| human user behind a Mullvad connection with a VM.
|
| If you're worried about local law enforcement or advertisers
| it's probably enough.
| hughesjj wrote:
| I'm more worried about future shakeouts and the end of
| anonymity, one ASN at a time.
|
| We're currently relying on AS' who 'play ball' with anonymous
| users, but that's not a requirement for AS operators by any
| means.
| sanroot99 wrote:
| Isp often sell data, ip can be deanonymized by buying data
| from different data brokers and triangulating the ip.
| sneilan1 wrote:
| > The Internet is 99% controlled by a small set of corporations
| that most people haven't heard of
|
| I would love to know more if you have time to elaborate.
| codexb wrote:
| See this post that talks about how hosting email yourself
| doesn't really work anymore, despite it being an open
| internet standard --
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32715437
|
| Not sure about people never hearing about them, but the
| internet is no longer a network of sparsely distributed
| connected machines hosting and consuming content as it was
| originally designed. The content is all hosted on very small
| set of networks controlled by just a few companies -- Amazon
| AWS, Google, MS Azure, etc. The consumers access the internet
| through clients that are also controlled by these companies,
| and so it's easy for them to exclude other networks and hosts
| even though the network specification is technically "open".
| metalliqaz wrote:
| personal email failed because email is a flawed system that
| was initially designed to work in a trusted environment
| free of bad actors
|
| I'm as worried about massive platforms playing gatekeepers
| as much as the next guy, but it's also fairly clear to see
| that any service that isn't constantly moderated will be
| overcome with a flood of malicious crap. it practically
| guarantees closed platforms will proliferate
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_managed_DNS_providers
|
| I'd venture that even most engineers wouldn't know these by
| name, which is my point. Not that it's secret, it's just that
| obscure and niche engineering that holds the internet
| together is barely understood by anyone not directly touching
| it (like most critical infrastructure)
|
| For example this wasn't even a big story within tech:
| https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/05/dns-glitch-that-
| thr...
| Aurornis wrote:
| > That is to say you cannot even connect to IP addresses unless
| you're already part of the global whitelist for APs
|
| > Try yourself. Get a VPN and then connect from certain regions
| and to won't get very far and you'll be slooooow
|
| Connecting to a far away VPN doesn't prove anything about a
| "global whitelist"
|
| VPN addresses are commonly rate limited and block listed
| because they're sources of abusive traffic and therefore
| trigger all of the common defense mechanisms.
|
| Anyone who has run a forum or other service long enough knows
| that the spammers and the people trying to evade bans love
| their VPNs.
|
| VPN services are also oversubscribed, leading to poor
| performance. Connecting to far away locations also causes
| throughput problems, especially if the country has poor
| internet infrastructure. Your connection has to round trip into
| and back out of that country to get to many services, meaning
| performance can be very poor.
|
| > Just try launching a competitive DNS service and see how far
| you get
|
| You'll probably get as far as realizing that it's an
| extraordinarily expensive venture to operate with no
| possibility of income, at which point you'd shut it down unless
| your hobby is lighting money on fire. There isn't a conspiracy
| in this.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| I'm glad we agree so throughly though I'm not sure what
| you're referencing with a conspiracy
| c-fe wrote:
| I wish them success ... but with a website that looks like this I
| doubt their engineering efforts. https://mobifree.org
| (screenshot: https://imgur.com/a/TITC9bN )
| veqq wrote:
| I agree. It's a far cry from the greats' HTML 2 comparability.
| ssivark wrote:
| What about this website indicates low quality engineering?
| bogwog wrote:
| HN is mostly web developers I think, so they tend to look at
| everything through one particular lens
| glenstein wrote:
| I fully support the values being expressed put the ratio of
| talk to action on the website is not great.
|
| It looks like a website from 2007 for a custom fork of a Ubuntu
| distribution.
|
| Again, I think the initiative, the funding, the rollout of
| technologies is the important thing and I'm perfectly fine with
| there being an aspect of public communication that gives it the
| kind of visibility that bureaucrats need so that it matches
| their own personal mental model of what a project is. So I at
| the end of the day those things, rather than the website, are
| what's important, but I could have hoped for a better first
| impression for sure.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| There's something about the font that looks awful but having
| a 2007 look and feel is fine, in my opinion. There's
| something charmingly retro about the gradients and AJAX era
| of Web 2.0 before apps ate everything.
| izacus wrote:
| I can't figure out what "it" actually is. This blog post reads
| like something AI generated - what exactly are they talking
| about?
| glenstein wrote:
| Decentralized mobile app distribution for Android.
|
| For my part I feel perfectly clear on what the "it" is but I'm
| a little unclear on how it's in a different from what F-Droid
| already does.
| izacus wrote:
| But if you open the linked page, it has bunch of projects
| that aren't app distribution - /e/OS, some 5G edge VPN thing,
| etc.
| glenstein wrote:
| Those are mentioned in the first paragraph. Those are under
| the umbrella of Mobifree.
|
| The part about app distribution is specific to F-Droid.
| nh2 wrote:
| F-Droid still has some big tasks in order to be useable for the
| general public, when comparing it with e.g. Google Play Store.
|
| For example, if you search it for "browser", Firefox will not
| show up because
|
| A) It's called Fennec
|
| B) The F-Droid search seems to be exact infix search, and
| Fennec's title is "Fennec F-Droid -- Browse the web", in which
| "Browser" does not appear, only "browse". So it doesn't find it.
|
| In general, the search has no clue what a "browser" is, and
| cannot use it for ranking, so in practice you need to scroll a
| lot in F-Droid until you find what you seek.
| izacus wrote:
| That sounds like they don't even deploy something as basic as
| Solr to drive the search :/
| sanroot99 wrote:
| Use droidify a alternative fork of fdroid
| rjzzleep wrote:
| Droidify is so vastly superior it's not even close. Fdroid
| still has the privileged extension whereas droidify and
| Neodroid can use Shizuku and other options.
|
| I do think that droidify is an unfortunate naming choice
| though.
| smusamashah wrote:
| This still doesn't bring up Fennec if searched for
| 'browser'. Neo Store does.
| genpfault wrote:
| > Neo Store
|
| https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.machiav3lli.fdroid/
|
| https://github.com/NeoApplications/Neo-Store
| nani8ot wrote:
| F-Droid Basic, a cut down version of the official F-Droid
| client, supports the Android 12+ unattended app updates
| [1]. This allows for a store to update apps without user
| confirmation (if it was the store which installed (or
| updated?) the app originally) [2].
|
| [1] https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroidclient/-/merge_requests
| /1216
|
| [2] https://www.xda-developers.com/android-12-alternative-
| app-st...
| LukeShu wrote:
| > Fdroid still has the privileged extension
|
| Not on modern versions of Android.
| genpfault wrote:
| > droidify
|
| https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.looker.droidify/
|
| https://github.com/Droid-ify/client
| xnx wrote:
| Fennec is missing out if it didn't write its store description
| to include these keywords.
| janosdebugs wrote:
| I think policies[1] are blocking F-Droid more than anything
| from being a viable alternative. A bank will likely never
| release their app as open source, nor will any of the big
| authentication vendors. This means that you cannot completely
| replace the Google Play Store with F-Droid if you have to use
| any of these, you can only use it as an additional store, at
| which point many won't be bothered.
|
| [1]: https://f-droid.org/en/docs/Inclusion_Policy/
| jraph wrote:
| It's also its strength and raison d'etre. What use is F-droid
| if it starts including proprietary software?
| ericjmorey wrote:
| An alternative for app distribution outside of Google Play
| Store.
| janosdebugs wrote:
| No tracking? Providing an alternative? Not strengthening
| the Google-Apple duopoly on the mobile phone market? I was
| looking at it as a platform to publish an app on, which the
| open source requirement stopped dead in its tracks. I
| didn't have a viable open source business model for it at
| this time because it was a straight "customer pays money,
| gets software" deal with no tracking or other nonsense.
|
| As-is, F-Droid will not be an _alternative_, it can, at
| most, be an extension to the Play Store.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| That's what this article is about. Building a federated
| platform for distributing any type of mobile app, open
| source or not.
| mid-kid wrote:
| I mean, f-droid allows adding custom repositories that
| don't follow the main one's rules. There's a decent
| amount of apps that do this for one reason or another.
| Other apps, like for example OSMAnd, have a special
| f-droid build with google services removed, leading to
| the lack of some features like android auto support.
|
| The client doesn't support any form of purchases and I
| don't think it ever will. I think you'd be best served
| using any of the other stores that support this or
| hosting it on your own website.
| jraph wrote:
| I don't see why fdroid would never provide a payment
| feature. At least for ethical reasons. Fdroid focuses on
| free software (and is also concerned with privacy and
| other features). Free software does not need to be
| gratis. As long as the payment code is open source. At
| worst it would be a NonFreeNet anti feature. Could be
| mitigated by supporting several payment platform.
|
| Of course it could be hard to set up in practice.
| jraph wrote:
| I won't trust no tracking if it's non free.
|
| I know I will sound extreme (although I think it
| shouldn't be the case in among developers) and no
| offense, but this sounds like a happy outcome to me. I
| believe proprietary software to be unethical. I'm not
| interested in being proposed non free software. The
| software industry should figure it out and start
| respecting its users.
|
| However software funding is a real concern and I do
| believe there's room for some set of builtin solutions
| allowing free software funding beyond a donate link.
|
| There are many ways to fund free software. I'm not saying
| it's easy but there are many open source businesses now
| and as a developer I decided to join one of them.
|
| Support, consulting and paid (but still open source) paid
| features are some options. I don't think anybody would
| remove a license check in an app sent to f-droid if it's
| free software.
|
| Now, I genuinely thank you for having considered an
| alternative to Google for distributing your software.
|
| I know it's hard to build stuff and bootstrap it. I'm
| with you on this.
|
| In f-droid, you can still add third party repositories
| and I heard it's getting easier for users. Not sure it is
| easy enough.
|
| Now I'm totally aware only free software doesn't cut it
| for most people yet, and fdroid will not suffice. Most
| people will do with the play store, but some will use
| fdroid as a store of "trusty" apps and resort to the play
| store if really needed. I know people doing this.
| janosdebugs wrote:
| In this case the software in question was a game. I have
| not seen any visble business models for truly open source
| games under the acceptable licenses for F-Droid. There
| are source-available games, but that would not be enough
| in this case.
|
| I think the main issue may be how much up-front
| investment games need that would never be recouped with
| an open source license, but I'd love to be shown an
| example to the contrary.
| jraph wrote:
| Game is its own thing indeed and I'll admit that first, I
| don't play much, and second, never even started thinking
| about business models for open source games.
|
| Maybe you could license the data for a fee and have the
| code as open source?
|
| Of course this is low effort and you know way better than
| me.
| janosdebugs wrote:
| I've done a fair bit of open source work, but the best I
| could come up with for games is "source available" where
| you can get the code to recompile for yourself or mod it.
| (My wife and I put up the source code of our first game
| as a DLC on Steam as an experiment.)
|
| Re only code: Game engines often tie code and data
| together and the code without the data won't even compile
| in many cases, or you won't be able to produce a new
| dataset because documenting the required settings is a
| monumental task.
|
| Finally, there is no real benefit to open sourcing a game
| if you want to make money. There is no complementary
| product or service you can sell with it. Reviewing and
| incorporating community fixes requires work and
| potentially legal review as not everyone in the modding
| community is also necessarily well versed in IP law. All
| these things need funding which is not a given if the
| game is open source in any meaningful way. If a game is
| truly open source, a less than ethical company with a
| bunch of cheap labor can go and undercut you, so there is
| an incentive to make creating an alternative build as
| hard as possible, defeating the entire idea of open
| source.
|
| I would like to be able to release on an alternative
| storefront so people who want to degoogle their phones,
| but F-Droid's policies (most known alternative) make that
| impossible. (To be clear, it's a perfectly legit choice,
| I just wish there was a meaningful alternative to
| Google.)
| jraph wrote:
| (Not commenting most of your comment, I assumed a clear
| data and code separation because that's typically what
| doom does, but that's very old and I'm utterly
| incompetent in this domain)
|
| > Finally, there is no real benefit to open sourcing a
| game if you want to make money.
|
| the same thing can be said for pretty much all software
| (although it's not always actually true, sometimes open
| source is a selling point and/or have specific strengths
| beyond ethics)
|
| > a less than ethical company with a bunch of cheap labor
| can go and undercut you
|
| Isn't the data which is the most costly part in
| developing a game? Of course I realize you stated that
| separating the data is not practical.
|
| > I would like to be able to release on an alternative
| storefront so people who want to degoogle their phones
|
| Still 100% with you on this. Also degoogled with some
| proprietary software is still a step in the right
| direction
| janosdebugs wrote:
| I wish that transparency and security were a selling
| point in gaming, but to me it doesn't seem like it.
| People will install all kinds of stuff and give them
| administrator permissions without a second thought. Anti-
| cheat eating itself into the kernel seems to be perfectly
| normal for most people. It's an entertainment product and
| people don't want to be inconvenienced for the most part.
|
| Regarding the development costs, I'm not exactly an
| expert and I have never worked in a game studio (apart
| from the company my wife and I are running), but let's
| take StarCraft 2 for example. If you were to have the
| engine, but not the art, you could likely easily develop
| a very capable multiplayer RTS game. Heroes of the Storm
| was developed out of a StarCraft 2 mod[1]. As another
| example, Stormgate[2], made by ex Blizzard devs, is
| getting a whole lot of press coverage for their netcode.
| It stands to reason that a good engine and netcode are
| very real competitive advantages in the RTS space. Other
| game types, such as a walking sim or an adventure game
| will have a lot less "secret sauce" in the code and more
| in the art, voice acting, etc. (The Invincible[3] is
| great in this area) so the code/data split would likely
| heavily depend on the type of game. (Games can also
| become very messy between art, visual scripting, engine
| settings and code, which is what makes releasing the code
| separately tricky.)
|
| My wife and I are (slowly, next to the day job) working
| on a Python programming/learning game and hopefully we'll
| manage to make a clean split between the engine and the
| art because it would be important for modding. However, I
| wouldn't feel comfortable releasing it under an open
| source license because it would cut off a potential
| source of revenue to license it to educators wanting to
| make their own challenges and courses. Maybe later we'll
| figure out that the base game makes enough money and it
| doesn't matter anymore, but it's really hard to predict
| success. As a game dev I would really like to make it
| possible, for example, for game archivists to do their
| work legally, for people to legally backup and rebuild
| their games for newer operating systems, or for their
| kids to be able to inherit their games[4], but carving
| out specific exceptions, especially for unknown future
| use cases 10-20 years down the line is exceptionally hard
| and I'm also not a lawyer, so for desktop the Steam
| Subscriber Agreement is governing our PC releases for
| now.
|
| [1]:
| https://starcraft.fandom.com/wiki/Heroes_of_the_Storm
|
| [2]: https://www.pcgamer.com/an-upcoming-rts-will-
| incorporate-the...
|
| [3]:
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/731040/The_Invincible/
|
| [4]: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2024/05/after-you-
| die-your-st...
| jraph wrote:
| I appreciate the thoughts you put into this, and thanks
| for sharing.
| xigoi wrote:
| Why would a game need to be a business?
| jraph wrote:
| Because it takes time and quite some work to build one
| and there's nothing wrong wanting to live from it.
| xigoi wrote:
| Sure, but nobody is forcing you to publish on F-Droid.
| jraph wrote:
| I'm not sure what you are arguing for or against. I think
| janosdebugs made it quite clear what they are trying to
| do.
|
| You do realize that many apps on F-Droid are developed by
| businesses? OSMAnd, Fennec, Jitsi Meet, Element, Telegram
| being big examples. We also had the Simple family of apps
| for a while.
| yencabulator wrote:
| > I won't trust no tracking if it's non free.
|
| Meanwhile, lots of non-mobile free software includes
| tracking (telemetry) these days. The cynic in me has had
| to switch to
|
| I won't trust no tracking if it's not enforced by a
| security boundary.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| Yeah personally that's what I love most about F-Droid.
| There's not a very wide selection of applications there,
| but if you _can_ find an app that does what you want you
| 're almost guaranteed that it'll be open source and free of
| ads, tracking, and other annoyances.
| mid-kid wrote:
| I'm not entirely sure why this is a problem. Nothing's
| stopping you from using f-droid as an app source as well as
| some other store - it doesn't need to cover every use case.
| It's already a viable alternative for apps which can't go on
| the Play Store due to Google's policies, like AdAway, NewPipe
| and Termux.
|
| The fact there's no freedom respecting bank applications is a
| problem on its own, though. I will continue avoiding them
| until there is...
| repelsteeltje wrote:
| > A bank will likely never release their app as open source,
| nor will any of the big authentication vendors.
|
| I suppose you're right and I think it's worrying that
| precisely these kinds of organizations still seem to rely on
| security through obscurity (to some extent, not solely).
| t0bia_s wrote:
| I'm not using Google play or any other services on android
| over 6 years now. You don't need banking apps for making
| transactions.
| janosdebugs wrote:
| I live in an EU country and I, in fact, cannot use online
| banking without a Google-enabled Android or an iPhone.
| There is exactly one bank that offers a desktop
| authenticator, but we had a really bad experience with them
| when we tried them for a year.
| t0bia_s wrote:
| MicroG could work, but I never used banking app, so I
| cannot verify it. Adopt paying by other, more secure and
| private friendly ways.
| janosdebugs wrote:
| What payment method would you recommend for paying
| mortgages, utility bills, and company expenses?
| rakoo wrote:
| You said you're in the EU right ? SEPA works. The only
| moment I need to confirm identity with my bank is when I
| buy frivolities, not for my bills.
| janosdebugs wrote:
| Here's the problem: I can do a SEPA transaction using
| online banking (with a Google-enabled phone) or by
| walking to my bank personally.
| burningChrome wrote:
| I used Graphene OS on a Pixel 4 for a few years and loved it.
| I feel like I'm a total minority user who doesn't attach
| themselves to specific apps so not having Firefox available
| wasn't really a huge thing for me. There were several apps I
| did have to have, but they were all available through the
| F-Droid store.
|
| Graphene was easy for me but like you pointed out, many will
| not use it because it doesn't have _exactly_ what they use
| /need. To some degree this inflexibility reminds me of people
| not switching to the Windows Phone platform for the same
| reason - which is sad considering we only have two choices
| now because people wouldn't take the chance and Microsoft
| abandoned the OS before really giving it a good opportunity
| to thrive.
|
| Kind of a sad state of affairs when people are totally
| comfortable handing over all their personal information to
| the likes of Apple, Samsung and Google.
|
| Full disclosure: Yes, I'm a totally disgruntled former
| Windows phone user. Yes, there were a lot of factors that led
| to its demise, but I felt at the time we finally had an
| alternative to what we were being spoon fed in Apple and
| Google.
| squarefoot wrote:
| The search for "browser" should have returned Mull, which is a
| privacy oriented deblobbed fork of Fennec.
| SushiHippie wrote:
| It's called Fennec because it is not from Mozilla and includes
| patches to removs propietary bits (which are not allowed on
| F-Droid).
|
| https://gitlab.com/relan/fennecbuild
|
| And fennec was the 'internal' name for firefox on android from
| mozilla.
| rakoo wrote:
| EDIT: I replied to the wrong message, sorry
| handity wrote:
| It's been brought up for some time, and kind of looks like one
| of those open-source situations where any progress that falls
| short of perfection is deemed not worth implementing. Just my
| interpretation though.
|
| https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroidclient/-/issues/336
| wicket wrote:
| It seems that Mobifree largely depends on the Android/AOSP
| ecosystem, which is controlled by Big Tech.
| palata wrote:
| But being open source means that one could fork AOSP. Also the
| Google proprietary stuff comes with the Play Services, not
| AOSP.
|
| So AOSP is a lot better than the alternatives, I would say.
|
| I have a different feeling about Chromium: it is open source,
| but through it Google gets to control the future of the Web.
| But Android is not a standard, it's "just" one OS, so changes
| made by Google in AOSP don't really impact, say, iOS.
| wicket wrote:
| Let me know when the efforts of Mobifree lead to something
| that will allow me to install mainline Linux.
| j4hdufd8 wrote:
| There are already phones like that. Go for it.
| palata wrote:
| Try PostmarketOS?
| realusername wrote:
| > But Android is not a standard, it's "just" one OS, so
| changes made by Google in AOSP don't really impact, say, iOS.
|
| That's interesting because I personally do believe that
| Android is kind of the mobile standard, it has everything to
| be one, from the wide variety of devices to the
| certifications of conformity.
| palata wrote:
| Much less than Chromium, right? Almost all users run
| Chromium, whereas you can run iOS and it has nothing to do
| with the AOSP codebase.
| dhosek wrote:
| I'm just thinking that the name is an invitation for Big
| Entertainment (in particular, LucasFilm, owned by Disney) to sue
| for trademark infringement since they have a trademark on "droid"
| (I remember seeing billboards for Android phones sold under the
| name "droid" back around 2010ish that had footnotes acknowledging
| the trademark and the licensed use of the term).
| ravenstine wrote:
| Don't jynx it! ;)
|
| It would not surprise me if Disney lawyers simply have never
| heard of F-Droid. Given that they were willing to go after the
| image of Spider-man on some deceased boy's grave stone, it
| would not surprise me if they at least demanded some
| disambiguating language from F-Droid, that is if they don't
| outright ask them to cease and desist. Hopefully they realize
| it isn't worth their time.
| porcoda wrote:
| Basing something around a Google OS isn't really an alternative
| to big tech. Given the reaction I'd expect if a Microsoft Open
| Source project was the basis of an "alternative to big tech", I
| don't see why something with a Google pedigree should be treated
| differently.
| fisian wrote:
| And listing microG as an opensource alternative to Google
| services is disingenuous. It still uses the same Google servers
| to make requests, just the client is open.
| zaik wrote:
| It seems like the user has a choice to configure microG to
| use different providers other than Google though.
| nani8ot wrote:
| It's not possible to do push notifications for proprietary
| apps without making some requests to Google. The location
| services of microG support other providers and don't use
| Google. microG even replaces the Google map some apps
| integrate with another provider, at least it did a few years
| ago.
| meiraleal wrote:
| Expecting Microsoft to create an alternative to big tech. Did I
| miss the /s ?
| alabhyajindal wrote:
| The Mobifree link in the article: https://mobifree.org
|
| Looks sketchy to me.
|
| > Our values are different
|
| Why?
|
| > Big Tech: bad for people and the environment
|
| Bad for the environment how? Do they think if they operate at the
| same scale as big tech, they'll be able to do a better job of
| managing infrastructure?
| prmoustache wrote:
| > Bad for the environment how?
|
| I guess this relate to smartphones being out of support way too
| early.
| fsflover wrote:
| I prefer these mobile operating systems not dependent on the big
| tech:
| https://pine64.org/documentation/PinePhone/Software/Releases...
| talldayo wrote:
| People in hell want ice water.
| butz wrote:
| It would be great to have some basic, no nonsense Android
| applications, with least possible permissions possible and no
| internet connectivity. Some examples: SMS app, tasks, calculator,
| authenticator (2FA), weather, audio recorder, image/photo viewer,
| barcode/qr code scanner, calendar, file manager, music player,
| etc. Small app sizes, no Kotlin or support libraries. With very
| limited feature set, to keep maintenance efforts low.
| lawgimenez wrote:
| What's wrong with Kotlin?
| jwells89 wrote:
| One issue I've read that devs of good, no-nonsense, telemetry-
| free offline-only/first apps face on the Play Store is that
| they get review-bombed and reported by their less scrupulous
| counterparts to drive more users to their ad-filled, IAP-heavy,
| or borderline malicious apps.
|
| This could be fixed pretty easily if Google took fraudulent
| reviews more seriously and their handling of reports were less
| automated and opaque, but they haven't shown much interest in
| either.
| dvngnt_ wrote:
| i feel like everything listed can be found on f-droid
| nani8ot wrote:
| I just noticed your requirement for no Kotlin and libraries.
| I'm still posting this because they are otherwise pretty simple
| and solid apps.
|
| Some examples available on F-Droid I've been using for a long
| time:
|
| - Fossify Gallery
|
| - Fossify Calendar
|
| - Fossify File Manager
|
| - Binary Eye supports reading/creating QR/bar codes and other
| formats
|
| - Aegis Authenticator
|
| - Fossify Audio Recorder
|
| - Material Files supports SMB, FTP, WebDAV
|
| Fossify is the continuation of Simple Mobile Tools, which sold
| out out [1]. They also have Phone, SMS, Clock, Audio Recorder
| apps, and more but I prefer the default GrapheneOS apps.
|
| [1] https://github.com/SimpleMobileTools/General-
| Discussion/issu...
| udev4096 wrote:
| I wouldn't trust anything coming from /e/ because of their
| horrible track record. For instance, a few years back, their
| cloud storage had a bug which leaked private files to other
| storage accounts[0]
|
| [0] https://community.e.foundation/t/service-
| announcement-26-may...
| bogwog wrote:
| That's terrifying
| reify wrote:
| I fully support this work.
|
| I actually use both Lineage and E/OS.
|
| In my experience of installing E/OS on non tech savvy users
| phones, it takes just a short while for them to get the hang of
| it.
|
| They of course still want some of the non private data collectors
| on their phones and thats OK.
|
| I for one am convinvced that the more users we can encourage to
| move over to alternative android OS's the quicker the word will
| spread.
|
| We must not forget that these poor people have been brainwashed
| into thinking there is only one way to access what they like to
| use and engage with online.
|
| I usually set the E/OS app store to not use open source apps and
| install droidify to manage those.
|
| It is of course very easy for us who have the knowledge,
| experience and the confidence to install new OS's on android, but
| we were once beginners, everyone is.
|
| Its easy for us to know the difference between Fennec and
| Firefox.
|
| However, Its like me asking you to tell me the difference between
| the Freudian psychoanalysis and Lacanian psychoanalysis. Its easy
| for me but not for you.
|
| Even the most tech savvy are difficult to convince:
|
| One of my friends, who used to work for IBM as an engineer back
| in the day wants to get a new laptop with windows 11. I said
| "what are you doing you muppet install linux"
|
| He is under the impression that linux has changed very little
| over 25 years and its all terminal, no GUI or support for things
| like 3D printers even though I tell him otherwise.
|
| I personally dont use F-droid anymore
|
| I use Droidify which is simpler to use especially adding
| repositories.
|
| It is a pain adding repo's to F-droid.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Nice! I see MicroG is part of this initiative too:
| https://mobifree.org/
|
| I hope it becomes a bit more mainstream now. Some custom roms
| like lineage are very hostile to it because they're afraid Google
| will do more against them if they include it. You can't even
| mention it in their community or you will get kicked. It's
| nothing nasty though, it's just a bare minimum implementation of
| google play services remade in open source, withholding as much
| information as possible and giving you the ability to fake things
| like device model and attestation "safetynet". Luckily there's a
| fork from the microg team https://lineage.microg.org/ . So this
| is what I normally use.
|
| But it's a great middle-ground, you can still use google push and
| you replace all the other parts like the location DB with
| privacy-conscious alternatives (though with the abolition of
| mozilla's wifi location database this has become harder).
|
| I'm not a fan of /e/ though, especially because of the name that
| makes it impossible to google anything. And they are often years
| behind in android versions.
| bogwog wrote:
| Three chat apps.
|
| Why can't Quicksy's contact finding feature be added to
| Conversations instead of being a whole fork?
|
| Delta chat I kind of get why it's a separate thing since it works
| differently, but it still seems counter productive to have so
| many chat apps.
| zaik wrote:
| > Why can't Quicksy's contact finding feature be added to
| Conversations instead of being a whole fork?
|
| Quickly is designed to have easy phone number registration and
| contact discovery like the currently popular walled garden chat
| apps. Conversations works with any XMPP address and you need to
| ask people for their chat address (like email).
| joh6nn wrote:
| Those aren't meant to be apps representative of the Mobifree
| "platform", those are existing projects that have agreed to
| partner with Mobifree towards a common goal. They're
| bulletpoints in thd same list as Murena the E Foundation.
|
| As far as answering your actual question, you'd probably need
| to ask the project devs for Quicksy and Conversations?
| kkfx wrote:
| Few small notes:
|
| - we can't have privacy on mobile PERIOD. Mobile platforms are
| not "open" like PCs (witch are less and less open, more and more
| stuffed of proprietary fw, but still far less closed than mobile
| SoC);
|
| - we can't win Big Tech at it's game BUT we can win, and
| relatively easy, at OUR game, witch means self-hosted services,
| decentralized protocols, the hard issue it's not on sw per se but
| on humans who do not know nor understand that, fortunately a scam
| at a time people start to understand that the commercial model
| turned to subscription is not a good idea for them, so there is a
| bit of hope anyway.
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