I don’t think I was expressing any hate and I am sorry if that was what you felt. I was just posting information here about what was talked in other threads and trying to raise awareness of the situation.
I think in this thread, it was was for the first time said that you are not breaking the play store TOS, although we still don’t know how you can know it if you have no relation or knowledge of the cleanapk.org managers, like you said you didn’t.
Otherwise, you trust the system, and if you don’t trust, please use something else.
On my end, what I understand is that I have to trust your word in the matter that cleanapk.org is secure and that it is legal, but you also say you don’t know anything more about it than anyone else about this service.
I apreciate a lot the effort that you and the rest of the /e/ foundations is putting into this. However I won’t trust your word more than google’s word, specially in a core functionality like the source of the applications that I install.
Your persistent lack of transparency in this regard shows me that sadly /e/ is not the open platform that I thought it was, so I guess I will follow your advice.
There is a question that this topic reveals, and it’s about the ability of an alternative android ecosystem to be fully open source while having the idea to make it accessible to anybody, in the current android googled-locked world.
I can trust @GaelDuval and the /e/ team to do their best regarding building a fully functional android alternative ROM made for everybody and not just geeks.
Though, I’ve difficulties to see it fully open/FOSS on short/middle term.
Now if you guys are able to manage your ROM on a daily basis only with fully transparent apps and code, you have my respect.
Because I don’t have the skills to do so, and my wife, my mother and my friends neither…
What I’m pretty sure is that I might wait for /e/ to be perfect my whole life.
But to me, it doesn’t matter.
I’m not a hater, but I’ve been interested in where this is heading for a while. I am a cautious skeptic. I’d be more of a fan if apps were installed peer-to-peer over Tor network, and I’m surprised cleanapk isn’t hosted off-shore on an island somewhere. Anybody remember Kim Dotcom? Gotta log off now. I hear sirens and helicopters!
However I will answer you: are you transparent? Who are you?
You are behind your screen, you are not transparent.
On my side, I’m not hiding myself, I’m putting all my life into this project. WE are taking the legal risks, if any, not you. And you are accusing me of a lack of transparency? Funny!
But I’m going to please you with another argument against /e/: I never said anytime that
we would be 100% transparent. Never. Actually I’m not for 100% transparency, not at all. For me 100% transparency is a form of totalitarianism.
We do open source, APKs can be compared with the ones from Play store or F-Droid. If there is an issue, people with raise it.
Then nobody is forced to use /e/. People who like it and trust us, they use it, others who don’t like it, they use something else. Very simple.
@GaelDuval I do not want to further discuss anything with you, seeing how you take any kind of criticism or question that you don’t like. It is kind of ironic that you call me a hater…
However, the fact that now https://api.cleanapk.org/ says "Welcome to the cleanapk.org API” instead of "Welcome to the /e/ app store API” is the proof that you have been lying to your users. You said repeatedly that you didn’t know who managed cleanapk but now it is pretty clear that you are managing or have some control over it and for whatever reason you don’t want users to know that you do or to know more about it.
I’ve already made my mind and I will stop using /e/. Because of this and because your vision of /e/ (“trust me or leave”), but I think your users have the right to know that you are lying about cleanapk, and this is the only reason I replied again in this thread.
From the exchanges on this page it seems the intention is just to find fault with /e/ . If we answer the question of Apps in AppStore then it is a problem if we do not answer that is a conspiracy to hide things.
All that I can say is users are asking for apps like Facebook and Whatsapp. We are providing the apps to them through an indirect channel. We are working on ways to make to the whole process better and that will take time.
If you do not trust the app you get from Apps Store do not download it. Use other means of download you trust. We are not forcing any one to use Apps on the /e/ ROM or even /e/ ROM.
Instead of going round and round asking the same question and still not being satisfied with the answer it would be better to educate users on this forum, your friends and family members not to use Facebook and twitter and so on.
There was a question asked on the forum if we should have unsafe apps on /e/ . Though personally i would not want anyone to dictate what apps I can have on my phone, I was expecting a total support for removing all unsafe apps from the users as a response to that discussion.
Instead In that discussion a lot of users still show support for the continuation of ‘unsafe’ apps in /e/. Also a good number of our users who got installed phones need a easy way to install these very unsafe apps so that they can be in touch with their friend and family members.
As mentioned above we will be continuing to use Apps as an installer for external applications on /e/ . Users can decide what store they want to use to install more apps.
Thanks for the link. I’d missed that poll and discussion.
users who got installed phones need a easy way to install these very unsafe apps so that they can be in touch with their friend and family members.
How about simply dialing their number and talking on the phone?
I never said anytime that we would be 100% transparent. Never. Actually I’m not for 100% transparency, not at all. For me 100% transparency is a form of totalitarianism.
This and the ad hominem attack on @eon has been very revealing, and frankly, shocking.
@GaelDuval sorry to say but you are going to be attacked on a regular basis for going up against big tech. Please ignore these nitpickers and moaning minnies. I don’t care one iota what the bloody welcome message is on cleanapk.org, who runs it, where the apps come from or anything else. I suspect that 99.95% of /e/ users will feel the same way and those that have a problem - may well have an ulterior motive. I appreciate everything you are doing to make /e/ a success. Long may it continue.
Thank you @damianham
I’ve been used to this for a while. There have always been those kind of discussions since I started some projects in the open source field. I don’t think this comes from the big techs, we are not that visible yet. Probably they are from a minority of ultra-dogmatic users who don’t accept or lack to understand the complexity of the world, who think we can build a brand new, perfect and pure world in a day. Those people don’t understand that bringing a non-perfect solution at a given day can be a step for something different and better tomorrow.
But I’ve always said, for twenty years, that I don’t believe in revolution. I believe in evolution. My mission is to bring something better (or at least to try), and to bring more and more people to more ethical IT, to open source etc., I’m not here to please the fanatics.
Those people will never hear any of the explainations you give actually. At some time they decide that you are wrong and whatever you say, whatever you do, they will try to prove that you are wrong, forever, mostly relying on dogmatics or personal attacks. That’s ultimate bad faith.
Sometimes those discussions are tiring, but they can also be inspiring. Also, having a lot of criticism is a sign that we are doing something important. Otherwise, these guys would just ignore us and put their negative energy somewhere else. And, in the end, they always give me a bunch of extra energy that fuels my passion to succeed with the projects. That’s a positive paradox
On 09.11.2019 we celebrate in Germany the 30th anniversary of a peaceful revolution: The fall of the wall - and the end of the separation of two German states.
New ideas and inventions are based on progress that others have made before. The wheel does not have to be reinvented. Optimizations early to technical evolutions, as it will show /e/.
Naggers and pessimists can be found in all industries, in all forums. This is nothing new. Sometimes they actually offer food for thought - sometimes. They are part of the business.
As long as the sky does not fall on the head of the project (Majestix & Asterix send their greetings), I will support it and make it public. I am looking forward to the time after the Mobile World Congress in February 2020 in Barcelona.
No, I didn’t see that change in the text at api.cleanapk.org. web.archive.org doesn’t have that page archived, and if @eon had had their wits about them they would have archived it for later reference.
