Loomio

For a Free Software and community controlled Mobile Operating System

PP Pirate Praveen Public Seen by 477

Firefox OS is Free Software with Bazar development model as opposed to
Cathedral model of Android. Both are Free Software for end users but
different for contributors. Google does not involve community in new
versions but realease source code after a new binary version is released.
Mozilla keep all development in a public git repo and bug tracker.

Moreover google pushes its services through Android and it makes their
already monopolistic position stronger. They are becoming more and more
centralized, they broke federation of their chat/instant messaging service
with the rest of XMPP providers. Google is big threat to privacy by tracking
everything we do.

One approach could be CyanogenMod/Replicant, where they remove google
dependency in android. Second approach is Firefox OS. Third is Jolla with
a Free Software UI like Glacier. Fourth is Ubuntu Phone.

With a larger community and device options worldwide, Firefox OS is my
choice (I I had not bought a Firefox OS already, I'd probably go with
CyanogenMod/Replicant now).

Now we need to solve messaging.

0 It should be Free Software, both server and client

WhatsApp and Telegram ruled out. TextSecure, Kontalk and XMPP remains.

  1. It has to cheaper, should work on unreliable 2G networks

We should have push messages or single packet roaming (like mosh) ie,
asynchromous should be the norm.

We should extend XMPP and implement this feature in Loqui IM

message versioning, offline support essential.

  1. It should be end-to-end encrypted.

add axlotr support to xmpp, make otr reliable

  1. It should be decentralized

XMPP should be improved. TextSecure and Kontalk should be brought in.

See also,

Open Letter to Mozilla on Firefox OS and Privacy https://poddery.com/posts/1687531
Call to crowd funding campaign https://poddery.com/posts/1784934

We should organize a camp do discuss solutions and find interested students/freelancers to work on these. We should plan a crowd funding campaign once we find people willing and capable of implementing these.

PP

Pirate Praveen Sat 16 May 2015 8:04AM

@jacksonisaac would you check if Amrita can host such a camp?

@kevinmartin @435 , can you check possibility in CET?

@durgaprasadr can you check in NITC (this is in addition to the other camps we were discussing)

Others see if we can find a venue.

NE

Nandakumar Edamana Sat 16 May 2015 8:56AM

I had done some experiments on creating an end-to-end encrypted chat system. i didn't try to host it since it would be costly.

PP

Pirate Praveen Sat 16 May 2015 10:01AM

@nandakumaredamana TextSecure, Kontalk and OTR are well tested and supported end-to-end messaging systems. What we need to do is to bring it to firefox os and solve issues related to bad connectivity.

AM

Aboobacker MK Mon 18 May 2015 11:09AM

BTW Ubuntu touch also follow community involved development model

BC

Balasankar C Mon 25 May 2015 4:31PM

We should also discuss and ideate on what can be done about group messages. AFAIK, OTR doesn't support group messaging anywhere.

@nandakumaredamana Cool. You uploaded the code anywhere, like some Git hosting?. In this context, I beleive for a larger audience, it would be better to hack existing and well tested apps and port them rather than starting from scratch. Just my opinion.

DU

Mon 15 Jun 2015 11:46AM

Is it possible to install Firefox OS on any existing Android Hardware like Nexus (In my case Galaxy Nexus)?

PP

Pirate Praveen Tue 16 Jun 2015 5:03AM

@anoop , yes you can. You can also install fennec on android and install firefox os apps through it. I just installed loqui im on my cyanogen and it works perfectly.

DU

Tue 16 Jun 2015 6:32AM

@praveenarimbrathod That's really cool. For a past few days I've been investigating to set up a mobile env without gapps. And yes, we definitely need a concrete infrastructure.

NE

Nandakumar Edamana Thu 19 Apr 2018 2:56AM

Firefox OS has been discontinued. What's our hope with Replicant? Is there a phone available in India that fully supports installing Replicant on it?

PP

Pirate Praveen Thu 19 Apr 2018 9:00AM

I'm looking forward to Purism Librem 5. it will run mainline linux kernel, gnome or kde and will share the apps with GNU/Linux desktop. It can have apps via debian .deb or flatpak. See https://developer.puri.sm/ for more details. I have ordered one for me, it is expected in Jan 2019.

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