E.foundation officially supports microG development

/e/OS Foundation & Community
12

Hi @GaelDuval,

This is really great to hear! :+1:

But, is it okay to say “implementation” of another company’s work? To me that suggests copyright infringement! :astonished: MicroG isn’t actually implementing Google’s library but implementing something else which has an API compatible with Google’s library. Those are completely different things aren’t they?

I’m sure you and the MicroG team are happy with the wording, but given how trigger-happy tech companies can be with IP disputes that wording makes me nervous.

Cheers :slightly_smiling_face:

13

I have doubts about MicroG.
I know it is used to somehow bridge those apps that use Google’s services, but without directly use Google (though going through it servers, sure).

My doubt is more about if only apps from/built for Google Store are which use Google’s services. For example, does apps from F-Droid use Google’s services?

And for instance, where and how can those GAFAM-free apps be found?

14

I don’t think so.

Mainly on F-Droid.

And don’t forget that MicroG can be disabled very easily so nobody is forced to use it :slight_smile:

16

Oh! That’s really good news! I’ve been using F-droid apps from a year ago and now, using /e/OS, I only use preinstalled and F-Droid apps, except TWRP official app, downloaded via Aurora Store

I’m nearer from ungooglation than I thought!

17

Indeed if you use only /e/OS and apps from F-Droid (or from the /e/ Apps installer in “Open source only” mode) then you are more than ungoogled, you are completely free :slight_smile: (at least for your smartphone, I don’t know about your laptop).

18

Wow, how good! I didn’t think it would be so good :slight_smile:
(And yes, I use GNU/Linux and as free as I can apps)

Other tiny doubt I have about Maps (Magic Earth): I read ME is proprietary but free of charge… is it?

19

Oh yes indeed you are 99% free since Magic Earth isn’t open source but is without tracker and with a very good privacy policy. Magic Earth might become open source in the future, as far as I know discussions are in progress between the e Foundation and Magic Earth but I can’t be sure.

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GrapheneOS is based on AOSP like any other Android variant out there, and the main work on AOSP is done by Google.
Of course, GrapheneOS seems to make good additions and changes to AOSP.

But I guess people using real non-Android OSes like Ubuntu Touch, PureOS or Sailfish OS on their devices will not be happy with your definition of being “truly Google free” :wink: .

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You seem to deliberately misinterpret what I wrote, or alternatively you don’t seem to fully realise that you are running an Android variant on your phone. Which is it?

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24

Perhaps I’m overly pedantic on this, and perhaps this causes a misunderstanding here, but my point is (hopefully more clear this way):

GrapheneOS is Android-based.
I don’t dispute the efforts that go into additions and changes in GrapheneOS to improve it compared to the Android base. And I don’t dispute that a phone running GrapheneOS may have zero encounters and exchanges with any Google services in practice.

Still, running an Android-based OS means using something based on Google’s work and stewardship, much more than people running e.g. the mentioned non-Android OSes do.
So a claim to be “truly Google free" or “100% Google free” while running an Android-based OS in my opinion is misleading when there are OSes with clearly less Google involvement around.

(I realise this went off-topic, but perhaps the respective posts could be moved to a new topic?)

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25

This is an important point: obviously, even if we don’t send any piece of data to Google, having /e/OS relying on AOSP codebase is still a dependency, because we know that Google is leading the design of AOSP even though it’s 100% open source, even though they use the Linux kernel.

But that remains true for some other open source projects. Even if you take Linux, for decades its development has been sponsored by some big techs (Intel, IBM, Red Hat…), and there is little doubt that there could have been some influence on the development roadmap and features at some point. Just look at the Linux Foundation sponsors…
But that’s the beauty of Open Source software: Freedom. Freedom to fork it if you want to fork. Go big enough and fork.

Until now, our goal was to offer a credible product that is sending no or very few data to Google, because we all know the threat that 1 single company is permanently harvesting personal data of billions users worldwide. So we found a path.

Now, ideally, we would like to break free completely from the Google, with a realistically usable product, and for this we need to go step by step.

Today, I don’t think the OS itself (AOSP) is the most problematic. The biggest concern is probably more about Applications.

Android apps rely on the Android SDK, which is fully controlled by Google, and on the Google Play Services, with two sub-problems:

  • push notifications (GCM/FCM)
  • the in-app purchase feature which is mandatory for many app publishers

So what can we do? We can offer alternatives to the app developers and publishers. We need good, excellent, alternatives actually. We need alternatives that offer them some benefits that go beyond the satisfaction to break free from Google because we have to face it: the majority just follow the trend and think that everything is normal.

One option that we have started to push is the support for PWAs. There is a trend for progressive web apps. They can potentially unify app development for all platforms, and it would be a good way to escape the Android SDK and any other proprietary dev SDK.

However, we would also need to have an independent push notification infrastructure. The reason is that if you take the web apps today, there is a common spec for the push API (https://www.w3.org/TR/push-api/) but you have an implementation for Chrome that is using Google FCM, one for Safari by Apple which is using APN, and one for Firefox which is using Mozilla Push Service. Not counting on Huawei which is introducing the HMS for push notifications.

So there is a road and some light, but it’s going to take some time, and meanwhile we will have to live in an hybrid world.

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I think a differentiation has to be made:
Apps installed from F-Droid apparently don’t use Google’s Play Services, I agree to @Anonyme.
But some of these apps surely use Google’s worldwide “server farm”/cloud, e.g. SatStat relies on them for loading AGPS-data.

When your device is rooted, you can install AFWall+, create your own ASN-script locking out the whole Google IP-range and using this output as a custom script for AFWall+. I did this over a year ago (for F***book too) and only observed the above mentioned “flaw” with the few apps I use on my smartphone. But I’m sure there will be more apps from F-Droid relying (partly) on Google’s cloud services.

Edit: IMHO even if only the Pareto principle can be achieved by /e/ regarding Google’s domination that will definitely be an effort worth to be made. As far as I can evaluate /e/OS with my simple tools and brain 1.0 it is over 80/20.

28

There is no honest truthful outcome.
You are of the opinion your phone is truly Google free while running an Android-based OS. I think that’s a totally illogical stance. But that’s subjective setting of terms from us both. Neither of us will convince the other.

Perhaps ask yourself what you are trying to achieve with citing random enthusiast hacks which have nothing to do with https://ubports.com/de/devices/promoted-devices.

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Do Pure OS and Sailfish OS also have ties of any kind to Android?

31

Ok, it was obvious already you were denying any source given to you which doesn’t fit your narrative.
Now you start denying what you have posted yourself to somehow keep going.
I was hoping I’m not feeding troll attempts here, but I guess I was wrong. Sorry to everyone else.

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34

Why do you doubt that? /e/ is “only” supporting microG development. Details of this support are found in the announcement itself.

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/e/ is pretty reliant on microG to tout App compatibility. I think with this sponsoring they are more making sure this important component of /e/ doesn’t get discontinued any time soon and if possible doesn’t run into trouble again like with the upgrade to Android 10 (still visible here) than thinking about somehow making it an /e/ exclusive feature … I wonder whether that would be even possible in that sense.

They could possibly fork it for /e/ and employ Marvin fully to only work on the fork, forcing the microG continuation for other projects onto other developers out there … if Marvin would even agree to something like that … but I don’t think /e/ would want to build the bad reputation that would come with such a move.

But this is just speculation, of course, a clarification could indeed be helpful just to be sure.

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38

Well, probably nothing.
What they said is exactly what you’ve already quoted (and btw.: they sponsor Marvin as you did, so would you expect that only you as “sponsor” get the result of the work in the future?)
What they didn’t say is something like
We bought the exclusive rights to use the SW or
We hired Marvin and he’s now working (exclusively) for us

This is why I’m not afraid that microG may no longer be available for other ROMs. I furthermore assume the improved resources speed up microG development and so even other ROMs and people will participate from that.

But well, if you still are afraid, then I understand your question…

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39

The newsletter says Marvin will assist as an advisor on MicroG… to quote

..Marvin Wißfeld will be able to spend more time on microG’s development, while being an advisor for driving internal microG related development work at /e/, and its integration in /e/ OS....

This does not stop others from sponsoring his efforts nor does it mean /e/ has exclusive rights to his work - MicroG.

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