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.
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...)
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.
Now it starts getting interesting. Will it also run my banking app? Or is there some crypto mechanism keeping that from happening?
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.
/e/OS does that too.
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.
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.
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.
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...
Are you pursuing this way but are hitting issues with it?
Thank you!
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?
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"...
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.
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 ;-)