IodéOS Is Open Source • Hacker News Board

Re: IodéOS Is Open Source

#41

Post by vince_at_iode » Thu, Nov 10, 2022, 1:36 PM UTC

Intermernet wrote: post #11

amaurino wrote: post #2

Hey guys, We are happy to announce that we are releasing iodéOS as open source software! From the beginning, we have been strong proponents of open source software and part of our code was open from day one. We are happy to take the next step and completely open source iodéOS. We would like to thank the community as well as all beta testers for your commitment for iodé. As you may know, we also accept donations for i…

Where is the license info in the repository? Can you tell us what license this is released under?

There are dozens of repository, starting from here: https://gitlab.com/iode/os Licenses are at the root of each one. Our policy is the following: - for existing repositories that we fork (the vast majority of them), we just keep the existing license. - for repositories that we create from scratch without reusing existing code, we use the AGPLv3 license.

Re: IodéOS Is Open Source

#42

Post by vince_at_iode » Thu, Nov 10, 2022, 1:39 PM UTC

tokai wrote: post #21

Intermernet wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is the license info in the repository? Can you tell us what license this is released under?

The announcement is totally useless without a license.

As answered in another comment, there is not just one license, there are plenty of licenses, in each repository we published. Most of them are forks of AOSP / lineage repositories, and keep their original licenses, and some of them are fully ours, and are licensed under AGPLv3.

Re: IodéOS Is Open Source

#43

Post by vince_at_iode » Thu, Nov 10, 2022, 2:39 PM UTC

exabrial wrote: post #30

amaurino wrote: post #2

Hey guys, We are happy to announce that we are releasing iodéOS as open source software! From the beginning, we have been strong proponents of open source software and part of our code was open from day one. We are happy to take the next step and completely open source iodéOS. We would like to thank the community as well as all beta testers for your commitment for iodé. As you may know, we also accept donations for i…

Do you guys offer any phones about the iPhone Mini size? Cyclist here, and carrying a small tablet in a jersey pocket isn't very awesome. Thank you!

The smallest phones we support are the samsung A5, sony XA2, fairphone FP3 (although a bit thick). Although they are a bit outdated now, they can be sufficient for certain usages. We would like a lot to support recent small phones, but the tendency goes to bigger and bigger...

Re: IodéOS Is Open Source

#44

Post by vince_at_iode » Thu, Nov 10, 2022, 3:02 PM UTC

phh wrote: post #12

amaurino wrote: post #2

Hey guys, We are happy to announce that we are releasing iodéOS as open source software! From the beginning, we have been strong proponents of open source software and part of our code was open from day one. We are happy to take the next step and completely open source iodéOS. We would like to thank the community as well as all beta testers for your commitment for iodé. As you may know, we also accept donations for i…

It's super weird not to provide a GSI, it's pretty easy to do, and would allow you to reach hundreds of phone models with just one build. Are you pursuing this way but are hitting issues with it?

Yes that's weird ;-) Especially from me: I began working on android by building a GSI, maybe you remember, we've been in touch on a few issues. The problem is: lack of time, always something else to do that we consider of higher priority. Maybe a bad strategy and we should reorder our priorities though, especially because GSIs became a so great stuff, thanks to your incredible work. Distributing a GSI has a nasty counterpart though: the extreme diversity of issues that it immediately generates. Having maintained a GSI for some time and tried to improve it as much as I could to solve at least boot problems etc, I perfectly know how time-consuming it is... An option would be to provide no support for it, but I don't find that satisfactorily. So, maybe we'll build a GSI at some point in time, or we'll provide help and some kind of official support to someone for building and maintaining one, now that we opened our sources.

Re: IodéOS Is Open Source

#45

Post by mdaniel » Thu, Nov 10, 2022, 4:42 PM UTC

vince_at_iode wrote: post #43

exabrial wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you guys offer any phones about the iPhone Mini size? Cyclist here, and carrying a small tablet in a jersey pocket isn't very awesome. Thank you!

The smallest phones we support are the samsung A5, sony XA2, fairphone FP3 (although a bit thick). Although they are a bit outdated now, they can be sufficient for certain usages. We would like a lot to support recent small phones, but the tendency goes to bigger and bigger...

You may want to email hn@ycombinator.com to find out why your comments are all dead; I've vouched for a couple of them because they didn't seem to violate any rules, but I would bet asking them for formal guidance would go a long way

Re: IodéOS Is Open Source

#46

Post by vince_at_iode » Thu, Nov 10, 2022, 11:10 PM UTC

solarkraft wrote: post #37

Wait, it wasn't before?!? What the hell? That's pretty much the bare minimum for a privacy focused Android distribution, is it not? I never even checked because I thought that of course it would be.

No, it wasn't! We explained the reasons in many places (forums etc), and people were free to trust us or not. We also promised to open the sources when we thought it was the good timing, and that's what we did.

And I completely agree with you that a privacy focused rom must be open source, of course...

Re: IodéOS Is Open Source

#47

Post by vince_at_iode » Thu, Nov 10, 2022, 11:36 PM UTC

F3nd0 wrote: post #16

amaurino wrote: post #2

Hey guys, We are happy to announce that we are releasing iodéOS as open source software! From the beginning, we have been strong proponents of open source software and part of our code was open from day one. We are happy to take the next step and completely open source iodéOS. We would like to thank the community as well as all beta testers for your commitment for iodé. As you may know, we also accept donations for i…

I assume that implies you are not proponents of software freedom? The distinction may be important for some people, if only for placing trust in your long-term vision.

I don't see well the point in this remark. Releasing free software has many consequences, and among them, one is to give freedom to people.

Giving freedom to people is however the starting point of our story: we wanted to give the freedom to use a smartphone without, as much as possible, being spied on by tech giants. We accomplished (probably imperfectly, but honestly) that even with closed source software, for the people who put their trust in us. So no, our primary goal has never been to create a free software, just for the beauty of creating a free software: we're more interested in people freedom.

Releasing the sources is just one step beyond, to increase trust in our work, and attract more people to a new way of considering their smartphone, whether it is directly with our rom or other roms that can now use our work. We even chose to license the heart of our developments with the AGPL, to guarantee that improvements made by others will be beneficial to everyone.

That being said, as a developer who likes the code for itself, I like the idea to create a free software ;-)

Re: IodéOS Is Open Source

#48

Post by vince_at_iode » Thu, Nov 10, 2022, 11:43 PM UTC

ranger_danger wrote: post #25

LineageOS requires an unlocked bootloader last time I checked. This is not acceptable for my threat model.

This depends on the devices. Some of them like pixel and fairphone ones allow bootloader relocking, lineage supports this, and iodé too.

I think that when people make the transition to a custom rom, they often don't care about that because they primarily want to give a second life to a slightly outdated phone. Then, some of them become more conscious of the possible danger of having an unlock bootloader, and choose next a smartphone with relockable bootloader.

Re: IodéOS Is Open Source

#49

Post by fmajid » Tue, Nov 15, 2022, 1:25 PM UTC

hinata08 wrote: post #6

mdaniel wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://gitlab.com/iode/os/devices is a pretty short list; why would someone choose this over CalyxOS, GrapheneOS, or even Lineage?

You choose them because you have a google-free android phone, with all the apps working, without having to do it on your own. Their business model is to *sell* phones with that iodeOS, a fork of Lineage, even if everything is on gitlab and you're welcome to install it on your own. I'm an IT engineer who likes free code, but I'm not really into Android, and I only have so much time. I wouldn't have installed Lineage o…

I'm not into Android at all (iPhone user), but I had no problems installing LineageOS on a Pocophone F1 I bought specifically as a second travel phone for its LineageOS compatibility, beyond Xiaomi's obnoxious process for unlocking the bootloader.

The limited hardware support, specially for reasonably priced models with 5G, is a serious concern, and the limitations with mobile banks coopted by Google into refusing to work on alternative ROMs a big issue as well.