Using the microwatts of power that phone apps consume as some kind of climate change warrior argument is silly and absurd, and will harm the credibility of the /e/ project. Keep the focus on data privacy. Stay on message and don’t get distracted.
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I agree on the microwatts but not on the overall message. I think there is real value in positioning /e/ as the ethical mobile alternative: open-source, privacy focused, and that could also include other things. /e/ is already making a case for using refurbished phones, a very sustainable option. With relatively extra effort it could also opt for, for example, 100% green hosting and other ethical things (eg supporting registered nonprofits).
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This would also attract a completely new/extra user base
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@Rik Who decides which nonprofits to support? There are plenty of them that engage in controversial political activism that many would find offensive. This would only serve to dilute the message of /e/ and dissuade potential users. Personally I would vote for the NRA as the premier human rights and 2nd amendment civil rights nonprofit to support. I assume everyone here would agree, yes?
The fact is, the term “ethical” is so subjective, it is nearly devoid of meaning. It has become more of a self-congratulatory term, used by some to lend credence to their own subjective worldview. I would not like to see /e/ fall into that trap.
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OK, well we disagree on this clearly haha. My view is different: i think there are concrete things you can do to be ‘ethical’ as an organization, e.g. around using green energy, using sustainable packaging, promoting fair pay and labour conditions, etc. I also think it is a responsibility of organizations these days to consider proactively what it means for them to be ethical.
Regarding your specific point on nonprofits: many countries have special tax statuses for registered nonprofits. These registrations are used often by organizations who give discounts to nonprofits. Another way is via recognized platforms such as Techsoup
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@Rik I see the point you’re trying to make, those all sound like good things, at a high level. But I don’t see where these things apply to an open source software project, or specifically to the /e/ foundation project.
Do you have some specific real world examples where the /e/ project is NOT using energy responsibly, or where the /e/ project is NOT using sustainable packaging, or where the /e/ project is NOT paying fair wages or has poor labour conditions? If so, please identify them, and then we have something to talk about. Otherwise, this looks like a solution in search of a problem.
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green energy and green packaging is low hanging fruit to fight climate change. I believe the transformation we need is much deeper.
I think it would be nice to have an “CO2 emission-meter” app showing an estimation of CO2 emission based on energy consumption (tabulated per country). On top of that, we can imagine a good practice advice: limit streaming video resolution, prefer podcast or even better FM radio. (BTW there is no support of FM radio on S7 whereas the HW is present).
Cloud service are very strong CO2 emitter, even powered by green energy, because the majority of the emission is during production/transport/disposal of these devices. I think it is better to go back to “local” (instead of “cloud”) when possible. Side benefit is avoiding mass-surveillance. Eelo can be a strong advocate here.
what do you think about that?
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@e514 Remember that we’re talking about phones here. These are devices that already consume so little electricity, if we turned off every mobile phone worldwide, there would be no measurable difference in electricity consumption or co2 emissions. This idea is pure silliness. The electricity you consume developing such meaningless software will outweigh any potential savings. Although it’s a grain of sand on the beach either way.
@argon3030 Smartphones alone are not going to revert climate change but the real cost associated with these devices comes from the services they provide: the cloud. Cloud computing and all those massive datacenters to store all the ever growing demand for media have a meaningful power consumption.. @e514 does have a point here: downloading videos and watch them offline is a lot less wasteful than streaming them.
I will also argue that the power of all smartphones combined is not that negligible, simply because of the fact that they have to be produced in the first place. Although I doubt /e/ can do much about it. But there’s the matter of software optimization too, a lot of developers today simply don’t worry about because they don’t have to. Hardware keeps getting cheaper and more powerful (which means more electricity) that means that poorly written software makes it into production unnoticed. Have you ever noticed how the palm of your hand gets warm by watching a video, playing a game or simply scrolling through a website?
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Software optimization is great. Local caching of content vs. streaming is great. Getting more use out of an existing device rather than buying a new one is great. But why wrap these up in some abstract climate change silliness that isn’t really relevant?
Market these good ideas in terms of tangible benefits to the user. I.e. Software optimization = longer battery life when using the device. Longer software/device lifespan = less need for expensive hardware upgrades. Locally cached media = better performance.
Messages that are of real tangible benefit to the user appeal to a wider audience. They make the organization look like they care about the user and the user experience and what’s important to the user when evaluating mobile phones.
Talking about things like “climate change” and “injustice” and stuff like that in the context of a mobile phone operating system is trite and sanctimonious and does NOT help make /e/ appeal to a broader audience.
Like I mentioned the main source of power consumption comes not from the device itself but from the cloud services that allow it to be ‘smart’ in the first place. /e/ provides a cloud account with some storage space for example, so that would be one area where it would be interesting to see some efforts made towards a more sustainable infrastructure.
Why do you keep saying phone consumption is irrelevant? I agree it doesn’t have the biggest impact but it does have one: billions of these devices are running 24/7 for over a decade now. More efficiency means less power consumption. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could charge our phones every other day? Whatever electricity savings we get from that I’ll take it. Also phones would last longer due to the heat reduction and I’d be happy to replace my phone every 4 years instead of 2. Not to mention the impact on mining for rare earth minerals.
Small things matter. Things like a car’s aerodynamics are considered to make them more efficient. Boats are cleaned and waxed to reduce frictional resistance and make them more efficient. Even swimming body-suits are banned from professional competition because they make them way too efficient!
And I’m sure you’ve heard about that story about American Airlines saving thousands by removing a single olive out of their in-flight menu.
And don’t you worry we’ll let you come up with a nice marketing strategy 
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It seems to me that you agree with each other. We need an OS that runs on little resources, encourages “local” as @e514 said, which translates into “tangible benefits to the user” as @argon3030 said.
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@ all in this post, see here Gael’s view on this: https://medium.com/@gael_duval/e-os-redefines-the-mobile-operating-system-paradigm-for-a-more-sustainable-world-4e929b1010c . This is really cool I think:
A first comparison between /e/OS and stock Android on a Samsung Galaxy device shows an electricity consumption decrease of 15%.
and this:
3- We are progressively moving to renewable sources of electricity for all our infrastructure. We started two years ago with our backup servers and first build servers using renewable electricity. Last year, we added more build servers that are running in an ultra-low emission datacenter with zero carbon cost, located in Sweden. During summer, we moved all our /e/ cloud infrastructure, including storage and email, to a new datacenter in Finland that uses wind and hydropower exclusively as energy sources. We intend to move the few remaining servers over the next 6 months.
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