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Mobifree – An open-source mobile ecosystem

f-droid.org

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Re: Mobifree – An open-source mobile ecosystem

#131

Post by hedora »

Dalewyn wrote: post #130
mid-kid wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 avoi…

[flagged]

I’ve never been able to discover decent apps on the Google Play Store. I’m continually surprised how bad its search functionality is.

Usually, I start with f-droid (to avoid spy/adware), then go straight to ddg or kagi.

Re: Mobifree – An open-source mobile ecosystem

#132

Post by hedora »

burningChrome wrote: post #123
janosdebugs wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.or…

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 wha…

Windows Phone 8.0 was great, partially because of the OS, and partially because MS paid for ports of the top-N apps to it.

GrapheneOS didn’t work as a daily driver for me because I couldn’t reliably use it for uber, lyft, parking or ev charging. The camera support was missing some features.

Most of that is fixable by adding back the google services, but then you lose most of the privacy advantages of having a de-googled phone.

Re: Mobifree – An open-source mobile ecosystem

#133

Post by hedora »

nh2 wrote: post #128
janosdebugs wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I have accounts at 1 Swiss bank, 2 German banks, and 2 UK banks. None of them require an app for any functionality. You can get a little hardware thing to generate their OTP codes, as an alternative to apps.

The hardware dongle sounds like it might be TOTP. There are plenty of clients for that for laptops and phones, assuming you can enroll your own secret.

Re: Mobifree – An open-source mobile ecosystem

#134

Post by hedora »

afavour wrote: post #10
Grimeton wrote: post #3

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.

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.

I don’t think this ecosystem is new. Most of the projects they mention have been around 5+ years.

I think this is a new funding initiative though, and I wish them luck.

Re: Mobifree – An open-source mobile ecosystem

#135

Post by jillesvangurp »

ssivark wrote: post #28
c-fe wrote: post #15

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 )

What about this website indicates low quality engineering?

I asked chat gpt to criticize a screenshot of this website. I wont paste the full response here, people can do this themselves. But very briefly, it had a lot to say about inconsistent spacing, typography, use of colors, images, etc.

In short, this is not a great website, to put it mildly. I'm not even close to being a good designer but I've seen good designers make a difference. And nobody that I would qualify as such was involved with this website. Tiny serif fonts, yellow on white CTA, etc. It all makes a bit of an amateurish impression. And that suggests the rest of the thing also might need a bit of work.

I glanced through both the article and the website and it seems all a bit waffly and aspirational at this point and raises more questions than it answers. A lot of good intentions, preaching the virtues of OSS, etc. But not a lot of actionable information for someone that might want to take the logical next step of getting this on their phone. The CTA just leads to a "free your phone" section without links or useful information. It suggest twelve organizations are involved (who?) and lists some shared values. That's it.

Not very encouraging.

Re: Mobifree – An open-source mobile ecosystem

#136

Post by beretguy »

1. Is it only available for EU citizens?

2. They/somebody needs to make a good quality android/iOS alternative that is NOT based on android and is stupid simple to install on any android and/or develop good quality affordable (I tried kaios devices, I’ve got pine phone, i cannot afford anymore things like fair phone and the likes. If banks/parking meters/washing machines expect us to use smartphones somebody needs to provide us with a small, simple device that can do those things without spying on us, tracking us, selling our data, etc.

Re: Mobifree – An open-source mobile ecosystem

#137

Post by CJefferson »

beretguy wrote: post #136

1. Is it only available for EU citizens? 2. They/somebody needs to make a good quality android/iOS alternative that is NOT based on android and is stupid simple to install on any android and/or develop good quality affordable ( I tried kaios devices, I’ve got pine phone, i cannot afford anymore things like fair phone and the likes. If banks/parking meters/washing machines expect us to use smartphones somebody needs t…

Why not based on android, out of interest? Basing on android gives you lots of driver support which would be very hard to recreate, and lots of open source apps immediately available.

Re: Mobifree – An open-source mobile ecosystem

#138

Post by jraph »

yencabulator wrote: post #127
jraph wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 an…

> 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.

Which free software does this without asking / telling the user? Especially free software that tells you no tracking?

But yes, free software is not a guarantee against tracking. It only allows auditing and be modified.

Re: Mobifree – An open-source mobile ecosystem

#139

Post by codexb »

metalliqaz wrote: post #124
codexb wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ne…

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

I generally agree with you, but there’s a difference between a closed platform, and a platform that prevents you from using any other platforms.

Re: Mobifree – An open-source mobile ecosystem

#140

Post by janosdebugs »

rakoo wrote: post #129
janosdebugs wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I might be lucky enough to have online banking work with sms and a pre-shared secret. My bank (also in the EU) didn't tell me I could do it automatically, they only mentioned it when I told them I lost my phone (it was true) and that I didn't know when I could buy a new one. Maybe it'll work with yours ?

No, ever since PSD2 came into effect, banks here refuse to do SMS-based verification and have switched to apps. They also don't support hardware authenticators for consumers. I asked.
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