IodéOS Is Open Source | Hacker News Reader

IodéOS Is Open Source

iode.tech

99 pointsamaurino47 comments

Hey guys,

We are happy to announce that we are releasing iodéOS as open source software! From the beginning, we have been strong proponents of open source software and part of our code was open from day one. We are happy to take the next step and completely open source iodéOS.

We would like to thank the community as well as all beta testers for your commitment for iodé. As you may know, we also accept donations for iodéOS which is installable for free.

https://gitlab.com/iode/os/devices is a pretty short list; why would someone choose this over CalyxOS, GrapheneOS, or even Lineage?

You choose them because you have a google-free android phone, with all the apps working, without having to do it on your own.

Their business model is to *sell* phones with that iodeOS, a fork of Lineage, even if everything is on gitlab and you're welcome to install it on your own. I'm an IT engineer who likes free code, but I'm not really into Android, and I only have so much time. I wouldn't have installed Lineage on my own.

So I wouldn't have had a free version of Android without iode.

The phone I had from them was also refurbished by a local company, which was nice. It's still more eco friendly and responsible than getting a new phone from a big SW company.

I'm just annoyed the company replied to none of my support requests, that I submitted on the website (I wanted comments on the IMS that wasn't working, I wanted a duplicate of the sale receipt, and I wanted the IMEI to be able to report my phone stolen. I had to get my support from nerds on Discord, for the former.

> You choose them because you have a google-free android phone, with all the apps working, without having to do it on your own.

Now it starts getting interesting. Will it also run my banking app? Or is there some crypto mechanism keeping that from happening?

I did run my bank app

There were F-Droid, Aurora Store, MicroG, Déjà Vu and the Mozilla Location services among others, so it was able to run about any app.

> Their business model is to sell phones with that iodeOS, a fork of Lineage, even if everything is on gitlab and you're welcome to install it on your own. I'm an IT engineer who likes free code, but I'm not really into Android, and I only have so much time. I wouldn't have installed Lineage on my own.

/e/OS does that too.

oh no, they replied, but my mail provider has obviously put the messages in the infamous spam folder.

On that terrible disappointment, back to the shop to get a new phone

And let's whitelist their email, so that iode.tech gets a better score.

sorry for you :-)

I'm not into Android at all (iPhone user), but I had no problems installing LineageOS on a Pocophone F1 I bought specifically as a second travel phone for its LineageOS compatibility, beyond Xiaomi's obnoxious process for unlocking the bootloader.

The limited hardware support, specially for reasonably priced models with 5G, is a serious concern, and the limitations with mobile banks coopted by Google into refusing to work on alternative ROMs a big issue as well.

https://iode.tech/en/iodeos-installation/#1611168530685-c5ff... Here's a more fleshed out list.

As for using Iode over others, it's mostly up to preference. I use it as a daily driver and it does what it says it does. The browser is pretty solid and the request blocker has some neat functions (Although I can't seem to find a way to see/update the blacklist).

If you're looking for a new OS give it a shot, otherwise it's not worth switching.

This is a big list in our point of vue. We began with one device, then added a second one, then a third... We go step by step, for the devices and in our software developments, and are not in a hurry to satisfy all the wishes of everyone. People just choose what suits them best, that's not a matter of number of supported devices.

Where is the license info in the repository? Can you tell us what license this is released under?

The announcement is totally useless without a license.

As answered in another comment, there is not just one license, there are plenty of licenses, in each repository we published. Most of them are forks of AOSP / lineage repositories, and keep their original licenses, and some of them are fully ours, and are licensed under AGPLv3.

I appreciate the source code release, but there needs to be a software license in the repo to allow users to discern whether the code is free and open source, or just source-available. Without a license, the code is only source-available because no exemptions to automatic copyright protections have been granted.

Also, the graphic in the announcement uses the Open Source Initiative's trademarked logo, which is reserved for software released under OSI-approved licenses:

> The OSI logo is a trademark of Open Source Initiative. In order to protect and grow the OSI brand, we have a distinguishable logo that can be used to mark software licensed under an OSI Approved License. When displaying the OSI logo, please follow our standard Trademark Guidelines.

https://opensource.org/logo-usage-guidelines#The_OSI_Logo:_U...

There are dozens of repository, starting from here: https://gitlab.com/iode/os Licenses are at the root of each one. Our policy is the following: - for existing repositories that we fork (the vast majority of them), we just keep the existing license. - for repositories that we create from scratch without reusing existing code, we use the AGPLv3 license.

It's super weird not to provide a GSI, it's pretty easy to do, and would allow you to reach hundreds of phone models with just one build.

Are you pursuing this way but are hitting issues with it?

Yes that's weird ;-) Especially from me: I began working on android by building a GSI, maybe you remember, we've been in touch on a few issues. The problem is: lack of time, always something else to do that we consider of higher priority. Maybe a bad strategy and we should reorder our priorities though, especially because GSIs became a so great stuff, thanks to your incredible work. Distributing a GSI has a nasty counterpart though: the extreme diversity of issues that it immediately generates. Having maintained a GSI for some time and tried to improve it as much as I could to solve at least boot problems etc, I perfectly know how time-consuming it is... An option would be to provide no support for it, but I don't find that satisfactorily. So, maybe we'll build a GSI at some point in time, or we'll provide help and some kind of official support to someone for building and maintaining one, now that we opened our sources.

Thanks for this !

Just to better understand some of your technical choices : are you using microG ? Do your phones pass SafetyNet ? (there are many apps that do not work out-of-the-box with custom roms, e.g. bank/payment applications, etc). !

May I also ask : why did you create your own rom rather than contributing to existing projects with a similar target ? (e.g. /e/, calyxos, grapheneos, which start from LineageOS and add some extra work to mimic or sandbox Google Service Framework and precisely care about privacy...)

I'm interested on this as well, in a few months I might be in the market for a new phone and I'm looking at the FairPhone 4which is available out of the box with IodéOS as well.

Just a quick note. SafetyNet works in CalyxOS with MicroG, they are using some sort hack, and it can break sometimes.

Yes we use microG and all our supported phones actually pass SafetyNet. It seems that some banking apps still don't work, but most of them yes. We wanted to follow our own road. Isn't diversity a good thing for people? Which does not mean that there cannot be cross-fertilization, that's why we're happy to fully join the open-source scene now.

I assume that implies you are not proponents of software freedom? The distinction may be important for some people, if only for placing trust in your long-term vision.

Maybe I'm missing something obvious, but how does open sourcing something imply they are not proponents of software freedom? For me, it would imply (or be rather explicit) that they are proponents of software freedom.

Free software is all about user freedoms. Open source is about the source being open. It is two positions on access to software and code with different ideological foundations.

If the source was just published without any open source license, I'd call that "public code" or "code released", not specifically "open source" which comes with a different understanding than just the code being released under any specific open source license.

So if the goal is user freedom, how would open source limit that? You have the right to modify the software and you have the right to re-distribute it, together or without your own changes. What "user freedom" is missing from this?

Why don't you look it up? Open Source was a reaction to the political implications of Free Software, that didn't float well with the private sector. The fault lines between the two are quite clear.

Why don't you reply with your opinion instead?

How fun would the HN comments be if we just refer people to other places, without actually referring to any specific things?

You're not actually refuting anything I say, just give some vague "go look it up"...

Open-sourcing something does not imply that¹ at all, since open-sourcing almost always equals to releasing as free software. It's the choice to talk about the source now being open, as opposed to the users now being free, that reflects a different points of focus in the wider community, and tends to reflect one's motivations and point of view as well.

If you hold the firm belief that software users ought to be free, and that is your main motivation for releasing something as free software, you are likely to talk about it. If you give users freedom 'on accident' while opening up your source, whether it's because that's convenient for you, you think that's mutually beneficial, or you just choose whatever term seems the most popular since you don't have a belief of your own to base the choice on, it goes to show that users' freedom is not your primary concern. Now you might not necessarily think that's a bad thing, but if you do, it might be a good idea not to put your faith in an entity that doesn't share your concerns, and is only aligned with them on accident, for the moment.

1. EDIT: 'that' meaning 'not being proponents of software freedom'. I did not realise your comment mentioned two different implications at first; sorry if that has caused any confusion.

I don't see well the point in this remark. Releasing free software has many consequences, and among them, one is to give freedom to people.

Giving freedom to people is however the starting point of our story: we wanted to give the freedom to use a smartphone without, as much as possible, being spied on by tech giants. We accomplished (probably imperfectly, but honestly) that even with closed source software, for the people who put their trust in us. So no, our primary goal has never been to create a free software, just for the beauty of creating a free software: we're more interested in people freedom.

Releasing the sources is just one step beyond, to increase trust in our work, and attract more people to a new way of considering their smartphone, whether it is directly with our rom or other roms that can now use our work. We even chose to license the heart of our developments with the AGPL, to guarantee that improvements made by others will be beneficial to everyone.

That being said, as a developer who likes the code for itself, I like the idea to create a free software ;-)

it's very nice to see more options in this space. as a user of /e/OS i am interested how iodéOS compares to /e/.

Do you guys offer any phones about the iPhone Mini size? Cyclist here, and carrying a small tablet in a jersey pocket isn't very awesome.

Thank you!

The Samsung s10e is sometimes claimed to be compact, but it's not quite as small as the iPhone Mini.

The smallest phones we support are the samsung A5, sony XA2, fairphone FP3 (although a bit thick). Although they are a bit outdated now, they can be sufficient for certain usages. We would like a lot to support recent small phones, but the tendency goes to bigger and bigger...

You may want to email hn@ycombinator.com to find out why your comments are all dead; I've vouched for a couple of them because they didn't seem to violate any rules, but I would bet asking them for formal guidance would go a long way

What does it look like and why isn't this on the opening page?

It's just another custom Android build. Like LineageOS, Mokee, GrapheneOS etc. Isn't it?

GrapheneOS has significant low-level custom work put into it: https://grapheneos.org/features

Here's some screenshots of their blocking app (which seems to be their main value-add): https://iode.tech/en/iodeos-installation/#1611509607771-c139...

Wait, it wasn't before?!? What the hell?

That's pretty much the bare minimum for a privacy focused Android distribution, is it not?

I never even checked because I thought that of course it would be.

No, it wasn't! We explained the reasons in many places (forums etc), and people were free to trust us or not. We also promised to open the sources when we thought it was the good timing, and that's what we did.

And I completely agree with you that a privacy focused rom must be open source, of course...

LineageOS requires an unlocked bootloader last time I checked. This is not acceptable for my threat model.

I installed iode onto my FP3, and I could relock the bootloader.

Why?

This depends on the devices. Some of them like pixel and fairphone ones allow bootloader relocking, lineage supports this, and iodé too.

I think that when people make the transition to a custom rom, they often don't care about that because they primarily want to give a second life to a slightly outdated phone. Then, some of them become more conscious of the possible danger of having an unlock bootloader, and choose next a smartphone with relockable bootloader.

it is remarkable that by virtue of the Apache License and GPL a group of custom rom developers gather to take device ownership in all their incarnations. Product direction of Aosp is all with Google though, no doubt - but it's quite something

Wow great news! This was awaited

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