In France they for some reason like to be free and in control. So the French culture is much supportive towards any free and open approaches to life. This obviously also includes software and technology so in France there exist a large crowd trying to push and promote the use of open source and free software. Like fx. April (Association pour la Promotion et la Recherche en Informatique Libre = Association for the Promotion and Study of Free Computing, see also april.org) and Framasoft (framasoft.org). And companies have found niches to operate in this technology field, like Bootlin, /e/ (Murena), Linagora and also different events regarding free software are held. One such is the Capitol du Libre held in Toulouse 16.-17. November (also hosting a MiniDebConf) at which the CEO of Bootlin are going to give a talk about Android mobile applications. He asked on Linkedin for input on applications people use, below is my answer (links and license added here for convenience, text limitations on LinkedIn prevented that in original post);
Noticed your talk earlier today, good topic for a general public event.I use free software mobile applications (mostly from F-Droid) whenever I can. License is the prime criteria when I choose an application. My daily drivers are: Aegis – MFA/TOTP (GPL-3.0-only) AntennaPod – audcast/podcast (GPL-3.0-only) Etar – calendar (GPL-3.0-only) Fennec – firefoxy browser (MPL-2.0) K-9 Mail – mail client (to become Thunderbird) (Apache-2.0) KISS Launcher – no fuzz find-what-you-need launcher (no widgets!) (GPL-3.0-only) OpenTracks – fitness tracker (Apache-2.0) OsmAnd – navigation and OSM inspection (GPL-3.0-only) QKSMS (replaced by QUIK SMS, GPL-3.0-only) – no frills texting Vespucci – contribute to OSM (Apache-2.0) yetCalc – math! (BSD-3-clause) Worth mentioning: Binary Eye – QR-code++ scanner Cache Cleaner – reclaim space wasted Commons – contribute to WikiMedia Jami – GNU messaging (that we want to use, but no one is there…) Muzei – wallpaper swapper MyHackerSpace – finding fellow nerds NewPipe – 3rd party video client NextCloud – access the files (want this to be a daily driver) Open Food Facts – know your meal OSMTracker – track for OSM SimpleSSHD – fetch pixs using rsync Sky Map – locate celestial objects Termux – terminal and friends URLCheck – intercept and modify link intents VLC – just video WLED/WLED Native – control those blinkenlights
Noticed your talk earlier today, good topic for a general public event.I use free software mobile applications (mostly from F-Droid) whenever I can. License is the prime criteria when I choose an application.
My daily drivers are:
Worth mentioning:
Update: Jeg mødte Richard i Odense, fik lov at sponsorere FSF og fik en GNU med hjem!
Mikkel & RMS (og GNU)SDU, Odense
Rygterne har lydt noget tid, men nu er det officielt at formand for og stifter af Free Software Foundation, den ideologiske ophavsmand til GNU-projektet og højlydt fortaler for softwarebrugeres frihed og privatliv i den digitale verden, Richard Stallman besøger Danmark med en række åbne og gratis foredrag dette forår.
Det er Stallmans dedikerede arbejde med fri software og GNU-projektet fra starten af 1980’erne, herunder udformning af softwarelicenser som GNU GPL og udviklingsværktøjer som GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) og GNU Emacs, der er grundlaget for en stor del af det der i offentligheden i dag bedst kendes som “open source”. I Stallmans og GNUs terminologi benævnes det dog retteligt “fri software” (på engelsk: “free software”) for at fremhæve at etablering og bevarelse af softwarens, og slutbrugeren af dens, frihed er det egentlige rationale for at give kildekoden fri.
Kernen Linux er frigivet under GNU GPL og er både inspireret af og anvender GNU-projektets arbejde direkte, og er en vigtig del af et komplet GNU-system (også kendt som GNU/Linux eller en “Linux-distribution”).
Stallman kommer på en veritabel Danmarksturne med start i Aalborg mandag d. 6. maj 2019 og ender i København fredag d. 10. maj 2019. Foredragsrækken er arrangeret af innovationsnetværket for IT, InfiniIT, som inkluderer de store IT-universiteter i Danmark.
Den samlede foredragsrække er som følger:
16:00-19:00
16:00-18:00
(ændrede lokationsoplysninger ikke opdaterede her)
Kilder: FSF: Where in the world is Richard Stallman?, InfinIT-arrangementer, IDA-søgning, PROSA-arrangementer
Begivenhederne er også tilføjet den åbne kalender GriCal: grical.org/s/?query=%40DK.
De primære kilder er hovedsageligt på engelsk:
The support request replicated below was posted as ticket #20427 on Micro:bit support on 2019-01-31 22:19 CET spawned by discussion in F-Droid RFP #662 about inclusion of the official Micro:bit Android Companion application in the free software application store F-Droid.
Hi at Micro:bit Educational Foundation. We are wondering a bit in the F-Droid free software community (https://gitlab.com/fdroid/rfp/issues/662) whether it is worthwhile for us to try to loosen the official Android companion application (https://microbit.org/guide/mobile/#og-app) from its non-free dependencies to make it available in the free software application store F-Droid (https://f-droid.org/). This leads to a couple of questions you can hopefully help answering; 1) Do you regard the application as alive and supported? The latest release of the application was v2.0 2017-01-17 (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.samsung.microbit) and the publicly available code base (https://github.com/Samsung/microbit/) seems to have been completely abandoned. Only two commits were ever made by Samsung and no involvement with the community has been seen at all. 2) How come the big difference in maturity between the iOS and Android mobile applications? It seems like the iOS application has received some more attention seeing regular updates through to v3.0.2 released 2018-11-01 (https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/micro-bit/id1092687276?mt=8). Also it appears to have a much wider fetaureset (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.samsung.microbit&reviewId=gp%3AAOqpTOGpgo4CF2qrry4qWqLXyj0TZaEEJcrTB-yZ61o4nJbqhq-2mBojlYQJP7BzdkAzseGaLD1sVO9fBv1R3sY) developed along the way by Insight Resources (http://www.insightresources.co.uk/microbit/index.html). The Android application appears to have been more of a one-off project from Samsung having all sorts of issues especially with Bluetooth that has never been attended to (http://www.suppertime.co.uk/blogmywiki/2016/04/mobile-microbit/, https://support.microbit.org/support/solutions/articles/19000041104-diagnosing-bluetooth-problems-android). 3) Is there a plan to bring the application in better shape? Some activity can be seen in repository forks and branches from the original Samsung committer ailrohit (https://github.com/Samsung/microbit/compare/master…ailrohit:school_project) and microbit-sam (https://github.com/Samsung/microbit/compare/master…microbit-sam:partial-flash) identifying as being from the foundation but none of this work seem to be included in releases yet. 4) If a freed fork is made for inclusion in F-Droid would you be willing and able to integrate the changes into the official sources? F-Droid prefers an upstream source which can be directly built without non-free dependencies using an appropriate set of build options. This greatly simplifies maintenance and build efforts. A forked repository is already in place at the foundation’s Github organization (https://github.com/microbit-foundation/microbit-android) but is at the moment even with the stale Samsung repository. Thanks for any clarifications you can provide. Regards, Mikkel
Hi at Micro:bit Educational Foundation.
We are wondering a bit in the F-Droid free software community (https://gitlab.com/fdroid/rfp/issues/662) whether it is worthwhile for us to try to loosen the official Android companion application (https://microbit.org/guide/mobile/#og-app) from its non-free dependencies to make it available in the free software application store F-Droid (https://f-droid.org/).
This leads to a couple of questions you can hopefully help answering;
1) Do you regard the application as alive and supported?
The latest release of the application was v2.0 2017-01-17 (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.samsung.microbit) and the publicly available code base (https://github.com/Samsung/microbit/) seems to have been completely abandoned. Only two commits were ever made by Samsung and no involvement with the community has been seen at all.
2) How come the big difference in maturity between the iOS and Android mobile applications?
It seems like the iOS application has received some more attention seeing regular updates through to v3.0.2 released 2018-11-01 (https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/micro-bit/id1092687276?mt=8). Also it appears to have a much wider fetaureset (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.samsung.microbit&reviewId=gp%3AAOqpTOGpgo4CF2qrry4qWqLXyj0TZaEEJcrTB-yZ61o4nJbqhq-2mBojlYQJP7BzdkAzseGaLD1sVO9fBv1R3sY) developed along the way by Insight Resources (http://www.insightresources.co.uk/microbit/index.html).
The Android application appears to have been more of a one-off project from Samsung having all sorts of issues especially with Bluetooth that has never been attended to (http://www.suppertime.co.uk/blogmywiki/2016/04/mobile-microbit/, https://support.microbit.org/support/solutions/articles/19000041104-diagnosing-bluetooth-problems-android).
3) Is there a plan to bring the application in better shape?
Some activity can be seen in repository forks and branches from the original Samsung committer ailrohit (https://github.com/Samsung/microbit/compare/master…ailrohit:school_project) and microbit-sam (https://github.com/Samsung/microbit/compare/master…microbit-sam:partial-flash) identifying as being from the foundation but none of this work seem to be included in releases yet.
4) If a freed fork is made for inclusion in F-Droid would you be willing and able to integrate the changes into the official sources?
F-Droid prefers an upstream source which can be directly built without non-free dependencies using an appropriate set of build options. This greatly simplifies maintenance and build efforts. A forked repository is already in place at the foundation’s Github organization (https://github.com/microbit-foundation/microbit-android) but is at the moment even with the stale Samsung repository.
Thanks for any clarifications you can provide.
Regards, Mikkel
Eric S. Raymond, “The Cathedral and the Bazaar” (@Goodreads)
The above quotes the first lesson from Eric S. Raymond‘s (ESR) essay/book “The Cathedral and the Bazaar“ (link to full book, summary at Wikipedia), which has become a kind of bible within the FOSS ecosystem (also nicknamed CatB). In his text Eric investigates motivations and social organisation of free and open source software projects. Itches are known initiators of many both large projects and minor changes to FOSS software. Itches, and the scratching of those by developers in the FOSS community, highlights a FOSS software user’s right to access, modify and redistribute the source codes behind FOSS software. With access to the underlying source code of FOSS software, a developer is able to scratch an itch, and is usually very motivated by this, because it often is a very personal itch.
You can listen to an audio recording of Eric elaborating about the central topics of CatB in a recording from a talk at Linux Kongress all the way back to May 22th 1997 17:15 CEST (48k MP3, 96k MP3):
http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/linux1_d50_48kbs.mp3
I’ve long been trying to keep a list of itches I want to scratch in free software projects/products. Realizing that most of these were lost in transit in the chaotic neuron mess of my brain, my intention now is to, also, keep track of them textually using the mechanisms of this site.
This effort will be an ongoing, and probably ever expanding, mix of my private personal itches and itches related to and spun-off from my software development work done as a professional embedded developer, but still personal itches.
You can head over to the static page at mikini.dk/what/itches and take a look at my past and present itches.
EDIT 2021-08-24: add prominent quote source, add GR quote link, add CatB main page link, add para. with audio recording, minor copyediting
