At least there has been announced a blog post about software development: Questions about Fairphone OS / software development
Maybe the amount of gifted developers is rather insignificantly small? I, for one, can’t contribute, because I don’t know anything about Android development - but I do have an account over at XDA.
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Gratipay looks like a nice way to support chrmhoffman!
I would very probably give him/her some money, if he/she would dedicate some time specifically to develop CM for FP.
Does anybody know whether FP is in contact with chrmhoffmann? I’d be happy to support as well, but it would be interesting to know what chrmhoffmann needs in order to put more effort into this and if FP supports him, too?
Hi cukabeka,
You are very welcome. We have had contact with chrmhoffmann but don’t let thhat you stop from helping out! The best thing to do would be ask him what he needs and I think that the best place to do that is to hop over to xda and join the discussion there.
Greetings
I have installed with succes CM11 under the FP1U 
I follow the process described on the first post but I had a small problem which I solved with this french tips
The bugs I have found in my use :
- the video record/play is not possible
- when the device rotate (orientation change), some parasites appears few seconds on the screen
But very happy to migrate to CM
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Sorry for my probably dumb question, what’s the difference between FP version of Android and CyanogenMod?
As far as i know, FP comes with the open source version of Android,
rooted and with no google apps pre-installed; so what is the difference
between this version and CyanogenMod?
I’m especially concerned about privacy, does CyanogenMod provide any more privacy then FP installed OS?
I’m not an expert so i’m really curious about your answers!
(i just opened a topic on the same subject, but maybe this one is more appropriated…)
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Cyanogenmod offers the latest Android version for your device and expands usability and features. There are also further privacy settings with privacy guard and a TextSecure Protocol based message service included which you would have to activate in the settings. Other than that, I would recommend to check their website or Wikipedia.
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I consider myself technically inclined, but since this is my first Android device, and I don’t have a deeper understanding of Linux, I did not try to flash CyanogenMod to my FP. I rather wait until there are more people here on the forum who are happy with it, and could probably help out if I run into trouble.
That said, I really like the idea!
Just concerning privacy issues, you could also try out XPrivacy, a module for the XPosed framework. It’s available via F-Droid, for example. Takes time as well, you can cripple your device with it as well, but I rather like the concept. Reminds me of a usual firewall, but the other way round. “Stop FP phone home”, in a way.
There is the simple and almost elegant “AFwall+” doing this (on F-Droid).
No need to be really geek, once launched it shows all apps and three columns: allow outwards connection when on wifi, when on 3G, when on roaming, and if you uncheck all no comms at all for the specified app.
What is cool is, once set, it will simply wake up every time you add an app to ask the same simple question, check or uncheck the 3 possibilities.
Using it a crooked way one can even eliminate ads from ad-promoting apps… (I only use it this way for a single app, which proposes a paying version without ads… on the iphone only…)
I don’t intend to derail this thread completely, but I think I have to clarify. I should not have used the firewall analogy.
XPrivacy is more that a firewall, it’s a rights management system. You can allow or disallow apps to access certain parts and information of your Android system, like e.g. GPS or cell tower location, your Android ID, your advertisement ID and so on. And you can feed (randomised or manually entered) false data to any app. You could e.g. make GoogleMaps believe that you are on the Easter Islands, if it suits you.
It takes time to do the settings for every app, sometimes the results are a little annoying (e.g., don’t forget about the Easter Islands, for example, if you want to find the address of the local pizza service…), and you can cripple your device (e.g. disallowing the Google PlayStore access to your Android ID does crash not only the PlayStore, but has some possibly unexpected side-effects). But it’s actually not really difficult to set up.
Just BTW, my FP is currently ad-free thanks to BigTinCan’s AdFree, which works really fine. Another advantage of a rooted device. 
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indeed that one seems more flexible than my current AdAway, that starts with an external blacklist file which seems difficult to control… Thank you!
H.
Thank you for your infos, but it still doesn’t answer to my real question; let’s try to say it the other way round.
I’ve not a FP yet and i haven’t because i don’t like google especially because of its priviacy issues. I’m sure installing CyanogenMod would solve this problem, but i’ve not the right skills to do it, so it’s not a real option.
So, considering that FP comes with a clean Android version and i can choose not to install google apps, is FP google safe (speacking about privacy) or is it only with CyanogenMod?
Sorry if my question was unclear.
I would say that Fairphone OS without Google Apps is more Google-free than CyanogenMod.
See here:
Also note this FSFE blog post.
That is actually incorrect. Google actually forced the cm Team to exclude Google playstore etc in all New CM versions. So it’s even the other way round.
You have to install Google Apps separately if you wish to have them as stated in the instructions above.
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They still use Google Analytics and some other proprietary software bits. These can be removed using the freecyngn shell script.
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Didn’t knew that. Thanks for the heads up!
Yes, it is with the preinstalled FP OS. I have lived and worked with a Google Free Fairphone for some months and many still do. I advise you to install Fdroid for a safe and open source app resource. You will probably also want to install K9-Mail and Davdroid als well as a mapping app like Osmand+ to make the most of your Google Free Android device.
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That’s almost exactly my setup too. The only two annoyances in my case are
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the GPS converges much slower without Google assistance (using knowledge of wifi and GSM tower names to get a first rough estimate of the location). There are alternatives (Mozstumbler etc.) but they presently are building an open database rather that actually allowing one to use it. So… get ready to not find your way straight on in the street, even though Openstreetmap (Osmand app) is perfect and on F-Droid…
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some paying apps are really useful, and they are often available only via GApps. There are some alternative vendors though (like Mobogenie, Aptoide, Slideme) but not all paying apps, and by far, can be found there. On the other hand some developers like the very efficint Softmaker do allow one to buy directly on their site, so to some extent this depend on whether you are optimistic or not
I just scanned my FP screen to check which paying apps I rrreally needed to the extent of paying via Google: indeed I found only one: Printhand, by far the most efficient way to find and use printers…
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