100% openess of /e/?

I would like to hear comments from the community and /e/ staff about the following website : ewwlo.xyz/evil

tnks,
diego

You can read FAQ here.

Thanks @DiegoM for bringing this website again.
We have responded to this multiple times. You can read about /e/ and what it stands for on our website , here on our forum and on the various telegram channels we have.
Our code base is Open source in case anyone is interested in going through it.
We had a review of our code and apps done by a group called Infosec Handbook. We took the review comments individually and addressed them on gitlab. You can check the closed as well as open issue.
We even put out an immediate response to the comments.
Now about this site. The fact that someone has devoted a single page to it and kept it for more than a year speaks volumes about the intense feelings he / she has against /e/ and all that it stands for. Since the person’s name is not known all that I can say it is personal animosity and that has nothing to do with /e/ being good or bad. We do also have folks trolling our team members on social media as well.
All I can say is if a person has something better to offer in terms of development or technical skills they should put that to more constructive use and maybe build a better OS or application and share it with the world. Maybe that would be more helpful instead of such wild accusations and slandering.

7 Likes

Thanks Manoj for your prompt answer. I go some deeper about some more points:

a) in FAQ you write “…better respect of user’s data privacy compared to mobile operating systems offered by the worldwide duopoly in place.” We all would prefer to read “… total respect of …”. What makes so difficult to go from “better” to “total”?

b) the linked website originally linked by me critiques backup DNS in /e/ beeing that of google; is this true? may it be configure differently or is it hard-coded? Personally I use 1.1.1.1 as a [more] secure choice.

c) the above site points to to credits beeing removed from source-code; i.e.: https://gitlab.e.foundation/e/os/android_packages_apps_Jelly/commit/e56dfae8bafd30f5ff0be8965cfdae1d3281ce6a
I did not find an answer from your side; may you please explain your point-of-view about this?

To make it clear: I like a lot Gael job, and tha passion that all of you are posing in build-up an echo-system which may compete with the giants and still live by its own; for, is very important that any gray-zone will be cleared out asap.

tnks,
diego

3 Likes

Let me answer then one by one

Why was the word ‘better’ used and why not ‘total’… If the question is 'Do we respect user privacy ? ’ - Then the answer is YES, absolutely. It is just a word that was used in a sentence - which may have been written better with more strong words.
What I would say is do not go by the words written on wiki’s and websites run by face-less crackpots. Test the OS and apps yourself and find out if it is leaking data and report that in. We have de-googled the OS but the Google’s of the world will come out with sneakier ways to steal your data. So the de-googling and optimizing will be a continuous and on going process.

There is a setting in the /e/ OS which allows you to configure your own DNS or VPN if you so require.

Changes and edits made to the source code by developers will have the name of the developer. This is a requirement for code development. The same happens if there is a new file added to the code base. This is standard development practice to maintain traceability. Credits of the original authors are not stolen.

If only it was so simple. The problem is people who see a conspiracy behind every bush will never be satisfied. As I mentioned above it would be great if instead of complaining the person had come out with something innovative and better than /e/ .

4 Likes

Manoj, thanks again for your time in answering. For shure /e/ is/will be better than G+companions; it’s openess is the key to make it evolve, having the skill to do it.
My moving away from simple Nokia TA-1017 (which battery last 1 week+ …) may happen.
Sincerelly,
diego

1 Like

I don’t know the exact reason for this, but it is also no secret where the source is forked from, so everyone who want’s to know who the “others” are can find them.

Do not agree: credits should always be kept in full, not relaying on fork process which, after many years, may not be anymore clear.

Please just take a look at https://github.com/gitGNU/gnu_bash/blob/master/AUTHORS, a quite old code that we are using every day: all the credits are still there.

Credit whoever donate his time and brain to the people is a fundamental value of FOSS; we may not by-pass it.

diego

2 Likes

I fully agree with this. Have passed on the feedback to the development team.

I’m not sure, this is always a good idea. When you fork a project, you could do bad stuff with it, and then the “others” would be named in that file also. It’s not a line-by-line who-did-what credit style. (not saying /e/ does bad stuff with the code, in general speaking)

@andrelam : your consideration about fork+credit is also a good one; suggestions may be:

a) look in the long survived code (for example the huge fork OpenOffice => LibreOffice) how this was handled;

b) instead of “and others” insert in AUTHORS or whatever the fork coordinates, some like “forked from [project URL] at [date]”;

You can read about what /e/ is here and here.
We are not trying to be better than anyone. We just want to un-google our OS and make it more secure for the user. The efforts continue.

3 Likes