RE: androiddev.social/@MishaalRahm…

It’s worth repeating. Android is not a viable base for an independent or even just collaborative operating system. Android is Google and only Google’s project.

If you want to see an actually transparent, international, and collaborative system on phones, support @postmarketOS

#android #opensource


🚨Breaking: Google will now only release Android source code twice a year

Google has announced that it will publish Android source code to AOSP in Q2 and Q4 of each year.

More details👇

🔗androidauthority.com/aosp-sour…

in reply to Thib

I mean, google's projects aren't even safe to google itself :woozy_sob:

I would much love a project like PostmarketOS to take off and become a serious contender to Android.

Right now it's still not there yet (at least in my limited experience), but with how well the developers are making use of the limited budget, and the backing of many great opensource projects, I have no doubt it'll move mountains.

in reply to Thib

Love FOSS and don't trust Google, but I don't really get the criticism @Thib . They are still releasing code and accepting modifications, IIUC, just on a different cadence. Also, if the governance becomes intolerable, couldn't AOSP be forked? I'm sure I'm missing something, but we've got a huge ecosystem at stake, and I don't see good FOSS players like #calyxos or #iode or #eos making plans to switch.

f_underscore reshared this.

in reply to Tony Schmidt

@opensourceit
forking AOSP would be a ridiculously huge effort, since Google has evolved to scale through increasing abstractions you need to have teams of people working maintenance like security fixes across bespoke compilers, apis and code, responsible for having compatible expensive test farms, and establishing governance for changing UI features, updating security APIs, and interacting with vendors.

To support that you would need funding that really can only be obtained by having lots of vendors using your OS, but vendors aren't gonna do that without the governence in place.

basically this is limitied to corporations and states.

in reply to kcxt @ 39c3

@kcxt @ 39c3 Hm, interesting, so you're saying #aosp is so complicated it has effectively become non-free software since it can't practically be modified and shared without a major corporation or state to support it? Do you think that's a #defectivebydesign thing? Or will #postmarketos eventually face the same issues once it grows large enough and has as many features and users?

f_underscore reshared this.

in reply to Tony Schmidt

@opensourceit more or less yeah that's my take.

I believe this is one of the reasons postmarketOS is better. We intentionally work towards decentralisation in a many2many style, so that the number of centralised components that could bottleneck the project are kinimal.

we aim to make it easier to set up your own paclage repositories, CI, and automated testing, and do t force people to pick a side by ensuring that our automated hardware testing allows one device to be tested from multiple gitlab instances.

the binary repo and tooling like pmbootstrap let you easily replace on the fly any part of the OS (same way you would replace a package on your desktop linux pc) since it's literally Linux. The immutable version will also make this possible

in reply to Tony Schmidt

@opensourceit I can't speak about PostmarketOS because I have no idea how this project is structured or how it keeps running. From what I could gather quickly, it seems to be based on pretty standard HUGE projects (linux kernel, GNOME, Waydroid, Alpine packaging). So the "damage" here would be the device-specific customisations they seem to be in charge of. 1/
in reply to Claudius

@opensourceit 2/ Even with this *much* smaller problem to solve, this project is not ready:

> The goal is to make postmarketOS usable for non-technical people too, but we are not there yet. Usability and most importantly stability issues need to be worked out first.

from: postmarketos.org/state/

So, I would say: no, postmarketOS *currently* is not an alternative. And I personally doubt it will be any time soon.

in reply to Claudius

@opensourceit 4/4 Without backing of a steering entity and MASSIVE effort (human labour, infrastructure, money) I don't see this happening. To reach something that can even begin to compete with current Android or iOS, you'd have to be a pretty large company. Not even Samsung does its own operating system.

It would basically take a nation state or the EU to start from scratch and be competitive in 5 years.

in reply to Claudius

reshared this

in reply to kcxt @ 39c3

@claudius @opensourceit
In the long term I think we'll grow to fill a niche and ideally be self-sustaining along with our community of contributors. We are always trying to bring users in and turn them into developers, return to when you could just tinker with your devices! Our next biggest hurdle is probably going to be figuring out how to collaborate with vendors and shipping pmOS out of the box.

There is also the growing inevitability of climate and economic collapse and an increasing necessity for longer lasting hardware, if there comes a time when Google/Android is no longer a viable option for the EU, I want postmarketOS to be there when that time comes

kcxt @ 39c3 reshared this.

in reply to kcxt @ 39c3

@cas @opensourceit thank you for the added details. I hope you were not offended by my post. I really like what you are doing. But it is a HUMONGOUS task that you picked. I would love nothing more than this to get funding to a degree where everyone could work on this as much as they wanted.

Basically, I wish the EU had given you the millions of euros it chose to burn up in AI subsidies.

in reply to Claudius

@cas @opensourceit that said, longer lasting hardware will absolutely make your task a little easier. One of the huge problems in this space was "dang they are supporting a two year old phone" used to be a deal breaker. This is no longer the case, a phone today can easily productively work for many years. This really honestly was not the case ten years ago, when even flagship phones were struggling to keep up at three or four years old.
in reply to Claudius

@claudius @opensourceit thanks for the response! I'm definitely with you when it comes to funding heh, and no your description was pretty realistic imo, no offence taken.

the upside is that even if we don't succeed in taking over the world, the journey is absolutely one for a lifetime, it's amazing to be part of this project and work on something that brings joy to peoples lives today and now

in reply to kcxt @ 39c3

thanks all for the excellent points.

One thing I failed to mention in my post is that I support @postmarketOS to help it grow to the point it can seek the public funding it deserves to become a general public solution.

I support financially so the team can

- Go from a prototype to a MVP
- Identify what it’s missing to become mainstream
- Make a case for it to the relevant funders

Individuals alone won’t fund the project, but we can kickstart its next phase.

in reply to Tony Schmidt

@opensourceit That is a very good question. Flashing would mean wiping my only current device. This means you cannot transfer your identity in those "authorization" apps from the old phone to the new one (it's the same phone). You need to reinstall from scratch, meaning going in person at the bank(s), to the post office (social security and tax office website), and online video verification for some other online services. I don't like it, but that's where I give up here.
in reply to Loïc Rouchon

The thing is, some services like Social security, banking, finance, ... websites now require an iOS or an Android app for login or authorizing operations. And those apps often rely on Google Play Services to execute properly and I cannot say ahead of time if microG for /e/OS and SailfishOS would work for those apps or if you could get the real Google Play Services instead of microG (defeating the privacy aspect though).
in reply to Loïc Rouchon

So unless we get EU regulation that websites (of critical services?) should be accessible without proprietary applications and should rely instead on your choice of MFA/TOTP applications, we are pretty much stuck.

So funding is important, but we need more than that. We need regulations to ensure critical services are accessible without requiring proprietary applications which are only available on proprietary systems.

in reply to Claudius

@claudius

In fully agreement with @cas, I think your assessment is fair, even if it can sometimes hurt seeing it written like that. Personally, one of the things that motivates me the most is that we all know that the task is humongous... But honestly, so was the effort needed to get from news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1… to where we are now.

We (postmarketOS but also the whole mainlineLinux Mobile community: Mobian, Phosh, Plasma Mobile, etc.) have already succeeded in something that is a humongous task, that most considered completely impossible, and that very few even dared to dream. Yet, here we are, and we're not stopping any day soon. Personally, this looking back and seeing what once was thought as impossible as accomplished, is one of the things that motivates me the most to keep going.

@opensourceit @thibaultamartin @postmarketOS

in reply to pabloyoyoista

Danct12 reshared this.

in reply to elly

It's the only way we can have computers in our pockets that don't track our every move and that can easily be pwned by 3-letter agencies if your suspected of any (even insignificant) crime.

@elly So I take it you don't think #grapheneos #eos #calyxos or #iode are doing a good job on privacy? Or at least a good enough job since #postmarketos is still barely usable (for most mobile OS users)? I don't hear those communities giving up on AOSP while it lasts, even with their recent changes. Don't get me wrong, I think PostmarketOS is a great project and wish it all the best, but IMO it's not a viable option yet, especially for lesser technical normies who want to degoogle or deapple and/or have access to a FOSS ecosystem that can meet the requirements of most users.

in reply to kcxt @ 39c3

@kcxt @ 39c3 It seems I offended you, but I'm not sure how. I read the post and was addressing the comment about security and how low-tech normie users have viable options for both security and FOSS. I doubt any of them could take on a fork of AOSP right now, but #eos #murena and #iode have a revenue model, at least, which might help in the future if it comes to that.
in reply to elly

@elly @claudius @opensourceit @cas@treehouse.systems @pabloyoyoista @postmarketOS

> contactless payments

There are multiple working options for contactless payments on GrapheneOS. They won't work on PostmarketOS.

> notifications didn't work

Push notifications work perfectly well on GrapheneOS.

> which prevented me from using my banking applications

That's not solved using something where hardly any open source mobile apps or especially mainstream apps will be available compared to it.

in reply to GrapheneOS

@elly @claudius @opensourceit @pabloyoyoista
> consumed too much time and required a lot of resources to build the bloody thing

Building the OS as a whole from source it not the same as using other people's builds of binary packages.

> AOSP is done

Moving from 1 major release per year to 4 and then to 2 doesn't mean that. People should really stop spinning everything to suit their biases.

> delayed security updates

AOSP isn't the only project with embargoes.

in reply to GrapheneOS

@elly @claudius @opensourceit @pabloyoyoista
> laid off the entire ChromeOS team

> cancelled AMD Chromebooks

> ditching coreboot in the future

> where they could easily lock-down the boot chain

These claims aren't true but it's not really relevant.

> you need a system with ~64GB of RAM and ~480GB of disk space to build those sources

You don't need anywhere close to that much RAM. Building a whole OS does use a lot of space.

in reply to GrapheneOS

@elly @claudius @opensourceit @pabloyoyoista
> It's been a wild ride and I'm extremely proud of everyone who's involved in this project.

Does that include the multiple core PostmarketOS developers who have participated in attacks on the GrapheneOS team with libel, bullying and harassment including linking to Kiwi Farms content repeatedly?

> Slowly but surely it will become a viable replacement for Android.

Doesn't seem to be getting there.

in reply to Claudius

@Claudius I'm sorry, maybe that's my fault. I had tagged #grapheneos (in addition to #eos #iode and #calyxos) as a viable option if the issue was having a pocket computer/phone with reasonable privacy and security in response to a comment by @elly. I agree there always seems to be this strange friction around #grapheneos and other projects for some reason, which is unfortunate - but I don't have a horse in this race, and TBH I'm glad that at least there was _someone_ from the AOSP projects who responded to add some detail to the other side of this conversion. I'll admit the responses are pretty strongly defensive - but when I raised some honest questions about #postmarketos, I was responded to in a pretty defensive manner by a member of that community, as well. 😕
in reply to Tony Schmidt

@opensourceit @claudius @elly The person who originally this thread made inaccurate claims about GrapheneOS and other projects based on misinterpreting news stories. Many people in the thread attacked it and claimed it's non-viable, useless, misguided and downplayed the work we do.

Multiple postmarketOS developers are directly involved in harassment towards our team. Several people friends with them including the person who posted the thread are active here.

Why wouldn't we be defensive here?

in reply to elly

@elly You claim the entire ChromeOS team is laid off and yet we know people working there and it's still having active development/releases. How is that supposed to be true?

How are AMD Chromebooks cancelled when they're still getting new models and receiving the expected updates? It sounds more like a specific project or generation was cancelled or skipped over.

Where's your source for them ditching coreboot and doing what you claim they will by locking out other operating systems?

@elly
in reply to GrapheneOS

in reply to elly

@elly You said they laid off the entire ChromeOS team rather than one specific team of underpaid contract workers likely working for a company there rather than directly from them. What you said is that they laid off the entire ChromeOS team which they clearly haven't. They're doing lots of cost cutting in general which is why Android moved from 1 to 4 releases due to prior plans but then cut back to 2 major releases instead of 4. It's not becoming less open but rather fewer major releases...
@elly
in reply to GrapheneOS

@elly It's only Android 14 QPR2 which started with trunk-based quarterly releases. Android 16 QPR2 is the first one other OEMs are expected to ship which means it's getting security patch backports. All prior monthly and quarterly releases were for Pixels with the code released to AOSP but not expected to be shipped by others. They decided to move from 4 to 2 because neither Google or OEMs wants to deal with 4 release branches per year which each need to receive security backports for ages.
@elly
in reply to GrapheneOS

@GrapheneOS If you're referring to alleged attacks, then all I would have to say would be that I will not believe for a second that someone from postmarketOS's team attacked other project or person working on it.

I intentionally skipped this part because I'm sure you will try to convince me otherwise, but that's something we won't reach an agreement on.

They are genuinely some of nicest people I've ever met, we've been meeting semi-regularly at events in Europe for the past 3(?) years, during which I've never heard GrapheneOS mentioned in a bad manner.
If anything, I'm the one who tends to get too fired up about things I care about and people need to calm me down from time to time (which is something I'm actively working on).

One single contributor that ever made me uncomfortable (mansplaining UFS bringup while I was holding a phone in my hand running mainline Linux kernel and booted into userspace from internal UFS storage) was (as far as I'm aware) banned for transphobia towards other contributors and few other things. That's literally it.

in reply to elly

@elly The problem for you is that we can prove multiple members of postmarketOS have repeatedly participated in Kiwi Farms libel and harassment towards our team, especially craftyguy. We have archives of it and can prove it. You can lie through your teeth as much as you want. They're a group of people which has been over again. There are dozens of cases on Mastodon alone of people involved posting libelous claims including baseless claims our founder is crazy and linking harassment content.
@elly
in reply to GrapheneOS

@elly If people are going to lie about what has been done to us then we have no problem making a top level thread about postmarketOS linking to a dozen examples of harassment and beginning to take more actions in response beyond that. Every time you make inaccurate claims about GrapheneOS, you get closer to us beginning a massive response including organizing our community against the project as has been done by the postmarketOS community towards GrapheneOS with endless attacks on our team.
@elly
in reply to GrapheneOS

@elly Spreading links to harassment content clearly based around making fabricated claims about someone to bully them and participating in that directly is something which has been ongoing from multiple members of the project. There's no point in pretended it hasn't happened. Repeatedly calling our founder insane, delusional, schizophrenic, etc. with no basis and pushing fabricated stories about them clearly aimed at creating harassment has been ongoing from multiple people involved.
@elly
in reply to GrapheneOS

@elly Casey Connolly and craftyguy have both very directed engaged in libel, bullying and harassment towards our founder on numerous occasions. We have it archived. We have no problem filing at least one libel lawsuit and actively organizing our community against it. postmarketOS has serial harassers and fabricators as core members of the team who are targeting us with harassment. They've spread Kiwi Farms harassment content and participated in it alongside those people with the same attacks.
@elly
in reply to dmi 💽

@domi @elly Casey Connolly has repeatedly spread harassment content from Kiwi Farmers towards our founder. The main content is a video from a very well known person who actively uses Kiwi Farms and is the one who involved them in the attacks on us. It consistes of an hour of blatant bullying based around clear fabrications and spin trying to paint our founder as insane with the clear purpose of causing more harassment. The video was posted after multiple swatting attacks to make things worse.
in reply to GrapheneOS

@domi @elly craftyguy and multiple other postmarketOS project members have also participated in this harassment. We have no issue making a post on our forum with a collection of proof and linking to that across social media platforms if that's what we have to do in order to get some kind of action taken. It's not something that's in the past but rather an ongoing issue. It would be simple for the people who have participated in it to remove it, retract it and stop doing it but they don't.
in reply to dmi 💽

@domi @elly It is true, and we can prove it, but we're going to link it in direct messages. Around a million people have watched that video thanks to people like Casey Connoly helping to spread it in different communities. Their work on spreading it in open source communities caused a lot of harassment from those projects and communities. We have a major issue with the projects which have done nothing about this including GNOME where we reported clear harassment and there wasn't even a response.
in reply to dmi 💽

@domi @elly We didn't mix anything up. GNOME has project members involved in this, The person who posted this thread is a GNOME project member and aren't one of the people directly involved in harassment but are supporting people who very openly are. A couple GNOME project members are involved though. It's a very prominent harassment campaign and while a lot more people aware of it support us than are involved in it, there are quite a lot of open source people who support the harassment/libel.
in reply to dmi 💽

@domi @elly You keep downplaying how well known GrapheneOS is along with the size of the userbase and importance of the work we do. You wrongly think it's a tiny niche thing and yet it's a widely known project with a lot of users that's partnered with one of the largest Android OEMs. How do you think we have millions of dollars in funding to pay a team of full time developers if it's a tiny niche project as you seem to believe?

We never said GNOME or postmarketOS themselves is attacking us.

in reply to dmi 💽

@domi @elly We've done no such thing and it would be ridiculous to deny that this wasn't harassment content or that Casey Connolly was not directing participating in it and using DARVO tactics pretending someone defending themselves from being called insane and harassed is somehow bullying itself. They directly engaged in blatant bullying and harassment. A major part of the false narratives is referencing other harassment content and pretending someone being harassed makes them the problem.
in reply to Thib

The last time I checked postmarketOS, it was a hacky hobby project not being able to use it on daily base, because almost nothing worked.

And the only usable messenger – if you want to connect with normies – is Signal and because it's the desktop version, it will look weird and UE is bad using desktop versions on mobile devices.

Do you use postmarketOS on a daily base?

in reply to Thib

I'm always amazed by how bad the Android ecosystem is considering how good the Linux ecosystem is.

I really don't understand how it happened that there has never been a basic set of tools like file managers, text editors, etc. etc. that are all (of course) free, open-source, and (obviously) ad free.

I mean there's *no* paid/spamware stuff in any distro repositories, but it's *all* there is on Android.

This entry was edited (2 days ago)
in reply to Steve Leach

Like how is it even possible that the "Play" store is so bad that there's no way to filter out applications with paid/pro features or with ads.

I gave up on using my phone for much other than as a phone shortly after I got my first "smart" phone.

There's no point in trying to install software on it - it's a phone... the screen is too small, there's no keyboard, and it's impossible to find software that isn't terrible because of the "Play" store.

in reply to Thib

What does the release schedule for major releases being 2 times per year instead of the previous 1 time per year or then 4 times per year matter?

PostmarketOS has poor privacy, atrocious security, weak functionality and isn't compatible with most open source mobile apps or mainstream apps. The core development team behind PostmarketOS has extensively participated in harassment of the GrapheneOS team. How is participating in Kiwi Farms harassment collaborative?

in reply to GrapheneOS

explicitly say they are not consumer-ready.

postmarketos.org/state/

I am not advocating for people to install postmarketOS now as a daily driver, I'm advocating for people to support a project that doesn't depend on Android because it is not a viable route for Europeans.

I am happy that @GrapheneOS exists and that it can serve an overlapping audience today.

I'm asking you to please be respectful of other projects, and I will not engage further.

in reply to Thib

> I'm asking you to please be respectful of other projects, and I will not engage further.

You're making highly inaccurate claims about GrapheneOS and disparaging our work. You're claiming it's not viable and dead end. At the same time, you're supporting a project which has numerous core developers and contributors engaging in attacks on GrapheneOS and our team with fabricated stories, bullying and harassment. That includes spreading Kiwi Farms content.

in reply to GrapheneOS

It makes sense since you're a member of another project (GNOME) which has been heavily involved in that and chose to ignore the harassment by not enforcing their own Code of Conduct. Matrix has similarly chosen not to do anything about their platform being heavily used for harassment and even openly collaborated with people doing it. Do you think it's not relevant when you try to present these as ethical, collaborative and good vs. projects like ours you deride?
in reply to GrapheneOS

if anyone on our team or in our community has been engaging in the behavior you describe we would very much like to know about it so we can take appropriate action.

You can contact coc@postmarketos.org or a subset of CoC team members listed here: docs.postmarketos.org/policies…

CoC reports are kept highly confidential, if a report is made to an individual it won't be shared even with other members of the CoC team without explicit consent.

in reply to ocdtrekkie

@ocdtrekkie What does the release schedule for major releases being 2 times per year instead of the previous 1 time per year or then 4 times per year matter?

PostmarketOS has poor privacy, atrocious security, weak functionality and isn't compatible with most open source mobile apps or mainstream apps. The core development team behind PostmarketOS has extensively participated in harassment of the GrapheneOS team. How is participating in Kiwi Farms harassment collaborative?

in reply to Jeff McNeill

@jeffmcneill @fabrice probably caused by it being developed by people volunteering their time and giving the result of their work for free. It is not unusable for many people, altough definetly not "daily driver" ready. It's progressing though, and would do so faster with economic support and more hands working on it. So if you can help with any of that, maybe in 5 years from now it can be supporting your prefered device ;)
in reply to Pablo Martínez

@pablo_martan @jeffmcneill What does Android's release schedule for major releases being 2 times per year instead of the previous 1 time per year or then 4 times per year matter?

PostmarketOS has poor privacy, atrocious security, weak functionality and isn't compatible with most open source mobile apps or mainstream apps. The core development team behind PostmarketOS has extensively participated in harassment of the GrapheneOS team. How is participating in Kiwi Farms harassment collaborative?