It seems the “radical” organisations like the FSF or the OES were right and more legitimate in the end.

If you are worried about your privacy, yes, you must get rid of Google Play Services. However a majors part of your apps may be broken as too much rely on this services and only in those services.

If you want apps to based on this layer of Google mess, have a look on some open spruce alternatives of your favorite apps. Maybe some of them won’t embed Google Play Services. But keep in mind you may lose some features like notifications from Google devices or fine tunes location.

You can have a look on microG or Open GApps for alternatives. However you may need to hack your device to flash them.

What you can do, for example:

• check if you can flash alternatives (possible to root and before unlock the boot loader)
• maybe check if you can flash another ROM ; projects list the compatible devices. Have a look on LineageOS, GrapheneOS or also /e/OS

Yep, it seems it is, but it can manage KDBX files. Just wanted to share 😄

Edit: sorry, didn’t see this thread is in Android community, my comment is not relevant for this platform.

You can use also for example Strongbox (https://github.com/strongbox-password-safe)

Edit: sorry, didn’t see this thread is in Android community, my comment is not relevant for this platform. For Android I am used to Keepass2Android (https://github.com/PhilippC/keepass2android). Simple, still maintained, under libre licence GPL 3.0.

It is always the same issues in fact. You should consider your threat model before all. Then, consider the Signal app, then your iPhone supposed to be updated, trusted, with ADP enabled, biometric lock with erasure after 10 failures, etc. Then consider your ISP, then your country. Etc, etc. You should also compare the contexts. Is an iPhone “better” than a low or middle ranges Android-powered smartphones? For sure, yes. Is it better than high-range expansive smartphones with Android ? Or Pixel ones? Not that sure. And compared to GrapheneOS or /e/? Pretty sure not that much. You can also compare messaging solutions. Is Signal better than WhatApp? Of course yes. But what about XMPP and Matrix for example?

And what are your use cases? Remember your threat model. If you are an activist, a journalist or a whistleblower your needs may be different than a “commons citizen worried about its privacy.

In few words, the only pain point I see is the fact than iOS is proprietary and runs non libre source code and Apple devices than APN. But Android devices are not so much different. It does not mean the solution is not private or efficient, if we succeed in defining a definition of “private or efficient”.

In a nutshell, it could be considered as good. But not perfect.

Any ideas for E2E encrypted storage alternatives?

Enshitification made third-party apps disappeared. Prefer true open source project instead like Pixelfed for example.

Have a look on Organic Maps (https://organicmaps.app) or OSMAnd for example (https://osmand.net/).

It depends of the project in fact. You should reach the community and maintainers by joining them in their Discord / Slack / Matrix / whatever. They may be able to help you.

You can create first an issue, asking for improvements and create a discussion airy the maintainers so as to know which languages are not managed yet and if they are interested in new support. Explains also why you can bring good translations (e.g. native speaker, teacher, etc). It sill help to bring confidence.

Then create a pull / merge request with the updated files. For example, strings.xml ob Android, .strings in iOS, etc. But beware, localisation is not only a matter of translations. You may have also to support new languages and formats for figures, currencies, or dates for example.

Do not use translations services. Project maintainers are able to use them, and in plenty of cases the translations are not good at all or loose details.

I would have said in fact Matrix or XMPP-based solutions but it seems you already have spotted them. Maybe Mattermost?

It seems yet Bluesky has an Android app according to their GitHub repository (https://github.com/bluesky-social/social-app). However indeed nothing mentioned about F-Droid ; maybe some alternative Mastodon clients can also deal with Bluesky?

GitLab because for CI/CD is it far, far much user friendly and comfortable to use with GitLab CI compared to GitHub Actions and flows.

In addition I can integrate templates for CI/CD pipelines already defined with the To Be Continuous project (which is open source).

https://to-be-continuous.gitlab.io/doc/

Very interesting topic in fact, I am not sure a unique and perfect solution exists.

In fact, it depends to how much you earn, how matter does for you the project, how big it is, etc. It is a question of feelings after all.

For example you may want to donate $20 one time to a useful tool you use, but for an app you enjoy using which match your own values you may want to send each year $50. But for some people it is complicated to give money, they need to satisfy their own needs before and people don’t have all the same incomes.

FMPOV, if the project is “just a tool” it can be a $20 one shot. If I use the software daily, it can be $50 per year. Maybe more if I feel it will help.

About the transaction medium, it depends. Projects can use Liberapay, others PayPal or Open Collective, or also in-app purchases. I don’t use cryptocurrencies because of the transactions fees.

Hope it helps!

That is the reason why some developers are “full stack”. All computers are stacked 🤪

Yes you should definitely check before whether or not the device is supported. You can find it for LineageOS here: https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/

You may also have a look on /e/OS: https://doc.e.foundation/devices

Yeah, reach the FSF like explained in previous comments. Or maybe contact some attorney if it matters because you may face expensive litigations… Big companies are not friendly. Or maybe contact the SFC (https://sfconservancy.org/).

Interesting. Thank you for sharing, didn’t know openhub!

Why did you say Write Freely seems to be dead? According to their GitHub organisation repositories, the backend has a release tagged 4 months ago and the iOS app 3 months ago.

In software ecosystem indeed there is an issue about the word “free” which can mean “free of charge” or “libre”, that is the reason why the term FOSS should be replaced by FLOSS.

In this very software world, the OSI defined “open source” by 10 conditions. The FSF defined also since eons the term “free / libre” by 4 liberties. These two things are the base of trust and understanding for every one.

For several years capitalist companies try to redefine these words because cannot bear to see that communities dislike or hate how they change the licences of their products (e.g. Elastic with BSL, Mongo with SSPL, Terraform with BSL too). They try to get excuse and fake reasons to be allowed to change the definitions but they are not legit at all.

About your example for a “free and anticapitalist” license, it cannot by “free” because one of the four liberties of the “free” definition is not filled.

However this is an interesting point because there is a new family of licences which appeared several years ago: the ethical licenses brought by the Organisation for Ethical Source (https://ethicalsource.dev/) which define the term « ethical source » by 7 principles. You can get more details about the anti-capitalist license here: https://anticapitalist.software/).

In few words, we must keep the OSI, FSF and OES definitions for open source, free and ethical source words because there are meanings, history, facts and fights behind. If they are disturbing for people or if people disagree, they have to create something else. Not change the definition for pure rebranding.

There is one definition of free in FLOSS. The FSF definition.