Fleeing Google's Apps and iOS, Mandrake Linux Creator Launches 'eelo' Project (hackernoon.com)

Open-source veteran Gaël Duval created Mandrake Linux in 1998. But in a new essay, he writes that "I realized that I had become lazy. Not only wasn't I using Linux anymore as my main operating system, but I was using a proprietary OS on my smartphone. And I was using Google more and more."

Long-time Slashdot reader nuand999 writes: He's creating a non-profit project called eelo.io that's going to release a "privacy-friendly" smartphone OS and associated web-services... eelo is going to be forked fromLineageOS, and will ship with the existing open source bricks put together into a consistent and privacy-enhanced, yet desirable, smartphone OS + web-services. A crowdfunding campaign has just started on Kickstarter to fuel early developments.
"iOS is proprietary and I prefer Open Source Software," Gaël writes on Hacker Noon, while also adding that "like millions of others, I'VE BECOME A PRODUCT OF GOOGLE... I'm not happy because Google has become too big and is tracking us by catching a lot of information about what we do. They want to know us as much as possible to sell advertising..."

"People are free to do what they want. They can choose to be volunteery slaves. But I do not want this situation for me anymore. I want to reconquer my privacy. My data is MY data. And I want to use Open Source software as much as possible."

Comments

a fork for forks sake

[nimbius]

eelo is going to be forked from LineageOS

...and thats where I stopped reading. Lineage is a stable, excellent fork of cyanogen that already supports everything Duval wants. fdroid provides floss apps and adblocking, and even access to Edward Snowdens Guardian repositories for things like secure browsers and newsreaders. As far as web services go, you choose to use them. there are decentralized alternatives to Facebook and Twitter already supported on smartphones tablets and PC. It sounds like this guy is too lazy to look for alternatives.
https://mastodon.social/about for open source twitter
https://joindiaspora.com/ for open source facebook
https://prism-break.org/en/ for secure floss alternatives
https://duckduckgo.com/ for a search that doesnt track

Re:Great, if they can deliver.

[Kjella]

I would gladly pay many times that amount to have a phone free from Android/Google. It doesn't need to be modular, it doesn't need a huge-ass screen or an octo-core processor, facial recognition, or fingerprint reading... better, in fact, that it DOESN'T have those things. I don't need them, they compromise privacy, and increase the cost.

Sounds to me like you don't want a smartphone. More like a dumb phone with a browser. Except no "huge-ass" screen or good CPU, so a tiny and slow browser. That.... doesn't sound like a good product for anyone to me.

It DOES need to work, out of the box. No weird reflashing routines, no kernel/driver issues, none of that janky CyanogenMod stuff.

Unfortunately all those clunky, quirky bits is exactly what you get with low volume hardware. Hell, even Apple with their budget can run into "you're holding it wrong" problems.

It does need to be compatible with Android apps, for most people.

Which basically means it must run Android, give or take a few settings. How's that freeing people from Google when Google decides where it's going and you'd have to keep up to stay compatible?