Fairphone Open OS roadmap discussion

[tphysm]

Nice discussion going on here!

In general, I think it’s a good idea to suggest apps for different standard needs to the users and give some advice to them. Otherwise, they had to e.g. read to a lot of topics in the forum here, which is very time-consuming and obviously not the way to go for everyone. However, I see multiple possibilities to implement this (and there may be even more):

1. Community based tutorials, though we’d be in desperate need of better wiki “software” in this case, IMHO.
2. Tutorials by Fairphone on the download site of FPOSOS (or linked from there).
3. A software implementation integrated in the OS itself.

From my point of view, 3. might be a bit unnecessary overkill binding resources that could be better used for more important work. In particular, I’d agree with @kuleszdl and @lklaus here:

@kuleszdl

So if Fairphone would just provide the bare minimum of a basic FP-OSOS build, I am sure the community will produce good tutorials etc. which will also taggle aspects of installing microG or whatever as well as getting f-droid or decent apps. This would be just much faster and more efficient than spending the limited time of the FP devs for it - this time could be used much better for fixing the various bugs or moving on towards Android 6.0.

@kuleszdl

@keesj @sjjhI’m not sure if it really makes sense to spend so much effort in customization and providing sensible default apps etc. The first and most important step would be to release a pure AOSP-version with just the default, no 3rd party apps installed (thus no working camera?) and almost no customizations (maybe except the google DNS issue?).

@lklaus

I don’tknow, and maybe am wide off of mainstream, but is it really necessary to go that way and put valuable resources into a piece of software, when it really is not that hard to install an app from an app store? I mean, you will never get consensus anyway…

However, if FP wants to have an own solution to this and serve their customers directly by own software or tutorials rather than community based tutorials, I could in fact understand such an argument and would find it reasonable, as well, also from a customer’s perspective. (Also see the quote of @keesj a few lines downwards).

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One way or the other, I’d agree with @TobiasF that it’d be nice to suggest several apps, explain basically their features and differences etc.:

@TobiasF

Some suggestions from me:

1. Provide a description of the app so the user knows for what is the app.
2. Provide a statement for each app why Fairphone suggest it and prefer it over other apps.
3. When the description is shown, the user should also see a list of other apps with the same functionality.
4. If it’s not only a one-time job or a special “suggested apps” app, provide a way to dismiss a suggested app, to show dismissed apps again and to completely en-/disable “suggested apps”.

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In any of these cases, you’d still have to decide which and how many apps to preinstall. Of course, one could preinstall one app for every “standard need” (whatever these are) and provide alternatives for those who need them as suggested earlier:

@sjjh

Use good defaults and offer alternatives if wanted as an advanced option.

And I agree to @keesj and @kuleszdl that this might be needed for quite an amount of users interested in FPOSOS:

@keesj

user that already use open source/f-droid are not directly the target group for an app like suggested apps. The Fairphone Open Source OS is a few bridges to far for them because it does not have all that is needed to be a complete replacement. Suggested apps or similar can help the conscious user (running GMS) to gain more ownership and we hope for them to take the leap.

@kuleszdl

I rather got the impression, that there are many “not so tech savvy” people who care about open source and they don’t mind following long instructions, but building FP-OSOS themselves is way too much for them. I was also surprised how many people of the “non techie” part of community use the f-droid store!

However, if the tutorial or software implementation is clear and all info is accessible in one place in a user-friendly way (hence avoiding working through the forum), that could also serve the not-so-tech-savvy people. Though there will still be users (no idea how many) who may just want default preinstalled apps instead of working through a tutorial (even a user-friendly one) and who would be “lost” if provided with nearly no preinstalled apps (as e.g. in AOSP). Regarding this, I could understand a decision to include preinstalled apps for standard needs, although it’s definitely not my personal preference and I see a good point in:

@fp1_wo_sw_updates

People should just understand that if they install it, it’s official-unofficial (thanks to the stupid licence) so they have to look for help in the forum and not bug the support any longer, as long as it is not a hardware issue.

And, as @keesj himself already pointed out, It’s a tough decision anyway:

@keesj

The problem here is how to not push apps to the users (e.g. how to offer them as proper alternatives while living without them is also not a great thing to do.).
-[…] as it is very hard as company to say “Firefox” is what you need/want (your input here)…

I highly appreciate these thoughts. Some people (again, don’t know how many) may feel like pushed to use a particular app or classify the preinstalled apps as bloatware.

The bottom line is, I guess, that it’s just not possible to serve the needs of the wide spectrum of users (well, not a new insight ).This being said, I like the idea of providing different “versions”:

@fp1_wo_sw_updates

Profiles
a) “Leave me alone, I know what I do.”,
b) “I come from a Google/Apple phone and I know I can’t have it all right now, but I want to try this”
c) “I want Facebook now! Where is the !@!@%$! apps store? I want my money back”.

Give them
a) Nothing. Just root and a working recovery and some patches for the services.
b) The same as above but with the best open apps people come up here (+F-droid with all sources)
c) Just give the the choice between going back to the stock image or installing "Open"GAPPS.

Though this may produce to much work and one really needs to make sure that this splitting doesn’t screw up maintainability. Hence, I fear that this is not really an option.

[tphysm]

@emmy

@keesj

We made a list (also based on the content of the forum) with needed apps and their “good” alternatives. Sometimes we considered that there was no app nice/good enough as a replacement.

Is that list available somewhere for us to comment on?

Yeah, that’d be nice. @keesj?

@Lidwien

I would like if possible use opensource on my phone, but I still needs some apps like ‘NS reisplanner’ provided by the Google Play store.

You may know about the other possibilities of downloading apps only available from the Play Store while not using the Play Store itself (as documented in the Alternative Apps(tores) topic mentioned by @paulakreuzer). But apart from the less trustworthy options mentioned there (Evozi, 1Mobile Market etc.) I want to emphasize the open-source program Raccoon, which I’d put more trust in. It can be installed as a client program on a desktop PC and just extracts .apk files from the Google Play Store (you still need a Google Play account, but it could be a dummy account and it doesn’t need to be linked to your phone). In particular, it’s also available for Linux (for German speaking people see this German blog post and the Droidwiki entry for more info).

@kuleszdl

Talking about features, one thing I would like to have changed by default is the DNS, so all requests sent from the FP2 would not go through Google’s DNS servers. Another feature I would like (also for the regular release) is a prompt for split passphrases for protecting the encryption key and the lockscreen without the need for additional apps here.

Nice feature requests. Is it possible to easily configure the DNS stuff such that the Google DNS servers can be replaced by other servers?

@sjjh

And especially these people could compile it themselves anyway…

I don’t know yet how the update process will be organised, especially concerning self-compiled versions. And recompiling the image every time a new update is published, wouldn’t be really practical to me.

[kuleszdl]

@tphysm

I don’t know yet how the update process will be organised, especially concerning self-compiled versions. And recompiling the image every time a new update is published, wouldn’t be really practical to me.

I guess notifications about critical updates (security and showstopper issues) would be sufficient - every time something like this gets fixed, it would be fine to recompile. You certainly don’t need to recompile to get some minor updates or the latest improvements in the source code documentation.

Anyways, I still think the most important target group for FP-OSOS are people who DO care about privacy and stuff, are willing to take some additional efforts and read through wikis etc. but for whom compiling themselves or installing linux (virtual machines) is way too much. Official and “trustworthy”, pre-rooted FP-OSOS images are the best solution => and basically what many FP1 owners like(d) most about this device.

[JacobVR]

Can you explain, what exactly is sustainable about selling a device that will not be updated anymore in the future? So I have to buy a new fairphone every few years? Don’t think that’s fair. I would like to keep my fairphone 1, but I can’t install some apps already. Somehow this does not seem to me as a good way to deal with resources. Maybe you could think of an upgrade on a new android-version as a paid service or something like that. If you wave mit some money, there might be support of the manufactures for an update. Would be a better solution than throwing away the old full functional phone, because the software is outdated.

[jom]

@n3ckxt

Having security fixes as soon as available on AOSP

It’s a shame which big software fails (including security) are in the current Android Version and how slowly at fixing the Fairphone-Team is.

[keesj]

Hi jom:

We will improve upon this and as suggested plan on Monthly updates

[jftr]

@JacobVR, you are right and many people agree with you.

Even Fairphone agrees with you. That is why they have invested resources in updating Fairphone 1. We don’t know yet whether anything will come out of it.

Meanwhile, you can try the unofficial update which is compiled by a community member. There is even a nice and easy tutorial how to install the unofficial update.

However this thread is about the future of “Fairphone Open Source OS” which is only for Fairphone 2.

[kuleszdl]

@jom

It’s a shame which big software fails (including security) are in the current Android Version and how slowly at fixing the Fairphone-Team is.

Are you referring to FP2? Are the fixes not included in the official image or does FP-OSOS (self-compiled) lack them?

[tphysm]

@kuleszdl

I guess notifications about critical updates (security and showstopper issues) would be sufficient - every time something like this gets fixed, it would be fine to recompile. You certainly don’t need to recompile to get some minor updates or the latest improvements in the source code documentation.

Well, Android security patches are being released on a monthly basis. And Fairphone seems to have the goal to keep up with that, as @keesj pointed out - and I highly appreciate that! In view of this, I wouldn’t like to recompile every month, in particular facing my weak hardware (need to free 70GB space every time; and syncing sources and compilation takes more than 12h).

[kuleszdl]

If it’s just the patches, recompilation and resync should be pretty quick if you use the compiler cache. But yes, you will need to reserve quite a bunch of disk space to do that.

My point was targeted mainly at people who want to compile their system themselves anyways. Of course, for the majority getting compiled binaries is more preferable.

[tphysm]

@kuleszdl

My point was targeted mainly at people who want to compile their system themselves anyways.

Fair enough.

[fp1_wo_sw_updates]

Nobody wants to compile anything

It’s boring and steals time. The pain is that all new features have to be adapted a little for each device and it’s OEM/SoC/bin blob bound source code. And not everything that is useful also ends up automatically in the Android-Code and it takes a while to end up in the OEM code. Also, most paid developers want a more “Apple-like” ecosystem, not so much a “Linux-on-a-phone” Android for security, user-friendliness, and marketing reasons.

[matthiss]

Is there any information on the release date of the OSOS binary? I don’t want to compile it on my own, but would like to start customizing it, without the thought of doing it all over again a week later.
Could someone who compiled an OSOS without GMS upload there files somewhere?

[fp1_wo_sw_updates]

@matthiss

Could someone who compiled an OSOS without GMS upload there files somewhere?

Not allowed. But maybe someone will ignore the strange licence and send you a private message with a link. The problem is the licence is pretty hard to understand. I’m not even sure if it is forbidden. But there is a discussion about that elsewhere if you search for it.

Update, Links:

[HOWTO] Compiling Fairphone Open OS / Rooting

The official answer has to be No, this is not allowed because your ROM contains the non open source blobs and that those restrict you from doing so. That said we are investigating how to help the community. One option would be to let the end user download and install the blobs. We can investigate more solutions provided those are … provided.

FP2: License for binary blobs

Hi all, Internally, we were gathering information and I think I can answer most of your questions. Note: I am not a tech or legal expert, so if you have more specific questions, please write our support team. Users can only use the blobs for software that goes on their Fairphone 2. The personal use (no commercial use) means that users cannot be remunerated for economic activities with this software or derivatives - e.g. selling the software. The terms do not require users to compile th…

I guess these lines are important: “Fairphone grants you (…) non-transferable, limited copyright license to download, install and use the Software for non commercial purposes only on a Fairphone 2 device in machine-readable (i.e., object code) environment”, “You must not take any actions that may result in the fragmentation of Android.” and “You are also not allowed to remove portions of the Software, alter or otherwise modify it, or translate, reproduce, copy, reverse engineer, reverse compile, disassemble or transfer the Software.” But I don’t see a lot about sharing here and the non-transferable is pretty vague. If everyone can download it you are practically sharing it anyway, it just makes things difficult.

But I’m not a lawyer and I guess the same is true for @keesj. There is no lawyer-like official statement yet, I think.

[Eagle5]

Q1 2016 is almost over. My FP2 is lying stupidly in its delivery box most of the time. What are the release plans/circumstances for the fposos?

[keesj]

@Eagle5 you have all the rights to be angry/loose patience. I am sure you won’t believe me but we are building the final build for release as we speak.

[anon72544029]

@keesj Great News! Can you give us more Information? And when do you plan to release it?

[Singulus]

Great to hear :), but what about the open pull requests here https://code.fairphone.com/gerrit/#/q/status:open, it feels like Android community support is kept small in favor of alternate OSes? I’m missing some focus and better information flow :-/. Guess you and all team members are really working hard, so I don’t want to sound angry or such ;).

[Azby]

So, I am little bit lost, it will be FOSOS or not? I just agree with the idea of having a more secure in the way that I could restrict any application to have internet access. say that, i have previously owned a Xiaomi Mi3, which have very nice secure features (at least from my point of view).
One of them is that the rom came rooted, so I could install a firewall and block all traffic I wanted
Other nice feature is that it allowed the owner to grant or deny access to contacts, sms, camera, etc, for each application.
That is what I call own a phone.

Maybe those features can be implemented without rooting? Using a preinstalled iptables firewall and the option to do allow and deny access for application?

I am not a geek of informatics but it is an idea.

bests

[kuleszdl]

@Azby

Maybe those features can be implemented without rooting? Using a preinstalled iptables firewall and the option to do allow and deny access for application?

Nope, I think you need root for applying iptable-rules.