Re: [Fsuk-manchester] Software Freedom Day 2016 in Manchester (17th September)

[J. R. Haigh]

Hi all,
.	I'm thinking of offering a Free Your Android workshop where people install F-Droid on their Android smartphones along with some useful libre applications such as OsmAnd and Kiwix, try to reduce dependence on nonlibre applications on their devices, and try to reduce dependence on a constant Internet connection. I'll promote offline OpenStreetMap, offline wikis such as Wiktionary and Wikipedia, and try to find a way of transferring these huge files from Android device to Android device now that Google seems to have made external storage readonly.
.	To accelerate this promotion, I also plan to sell 256GB MicroSD cards preloaded with loads of these great content files and give out some FSFE FYA leaflets that I took from the FSFE stand at FOSDEM this year.
.	This is my current recommended Android application list which I could make into a poster or fliers:
----------------
---- J. R. Haigh's recommendations for Android ----
• F-Droid (https://f-droid.org/ ) – libre software repository (GPLv3+) (To install, you need to enable ‘unknown sources’ because it is separate from Google.);
• OsmAnd – offline OpenStreetMap (GPLv3);
• Kiwix – offline Wiktionary, Wikipedia, etc. (GPLv3);
• NewPipe – YouTube downloader for later offline playing (GPLv3+);
• Open Camera – advanced still and video camera (GPLv3+);
• Mitzuli – offline translator (GPLv2+);
• MuPDF – view portable documents (PDFs) often attached to emails or downloaded (AGPLv3+);
• VLC – media player (GPLv3);
• LeafPic – media gallery (GPLv3);
• Hashr – verify files (GPLv3+);
• Amaze – file manager (GPLv3);
• Ghost Commander – advanced file manager (GPLv3);
• Turbo Editor – text editor (GPLv3+);
• FAST App Search Tool – quick application launcher from double-clicking or up-swiping the home button (GPLv3);
• Hanger – recent application launcher widget for notification bar (GPLv3);
• Lock Screen – in combination with unchecking the ‘Power button instantly locks’ security setting, this is a partial workaround for Android not distinguishing between locking the screen and locking for security (GPLv3+);
• SatStat – sensor status with ability to manually or automatically update AGPS data for quicker positioning fix (GPLv3+);
• Suntimes – show, and set alarms for, sunset, twilight times, sunrise, and noon (GPLv3+);
• RPN – step-by-step calculator with no need for parentheses (e.g. compare 1, Enter, 2, Enter, 3, ×, + with 1, Enter, 2, +, 3, ×) (GPLv3+);
• Barcode Scanner (search ‘zxing’) – scan barcodes and share via QR codes (Apache2);
• K-9 Mail – email client (Apache2);
• LibreOffice Viewer – view office documents (MPL2);
• IceCat Mobile – Web browser (MPL2);
• Activity Launcher – create homescreen shortcuts directly to specific activities within applications, such as the ‘Tethering & portable hotspot’ activity within Settings (ISC).
All of these applications are libre software (you are free to use, study, modify, and share them) and the offline content files for OpenStreetMap and Wikimedia's wikis are also libre.
address@hidden
----------------
The files that I want to put on the MicroSD cards are at least:
/README(.html) (with a link to https://f-droid.org/ )
/Kiwix Zim data/ (~145GiB)
/Kiwix Zim data/en/ (~97GiB)
/Kiwix Zim data/en/wikipedia_en_all_2016-05.zim (54GiB)
/Kiwix Zim data/en/wiktionary_en_all_2016-08.zim (1.3GiB)
/Kiwix Zim data/en/wikibooks_en_all_2016-08.zim (1.2GiB)
/Kiwix Zim data/en/wikivoyage_en_all_2016-08.zim (580MiB)
/Kiwix Zim data/en/gutenberg_en_all_10_2014.zim (40GiB)
/Kiwix Zim data/fr/ (~22GiB)
/Kiwix Zim data/fr/wikipedia_fr_all_2016-06.zim (20GiB)
/Kiwix Zim data/fr/wiktionary_fr_all_2016-05.zim (795MiB)
/Kiwix Zim data/fr/wikibooks_fr_all_2016-08.zim (478MiB)
/Kiwix Zim data/fr/wikivoyage_fr_all_2016-08.zim (129MiB)
/Kiwix Zim data/es/ (~13GiB)
/Kiwix Zim data/es/wikipedia_es_all_2016-05.zim (12GiB)
/Kiwix Zim data/es/wiktionary_es_all_2016-08.zim (190MiB)
/Kiwix Zim data/es/wikibooks_es_all_2016-08.zim (235MiB)
/Kiwix Zim data/es/wikivoyage_es_all_2016-08.zim (148MiB)
/Kiwix Zim data/nl/ (~13GiB)
/Kiwix Zim data/nl/wikipedia_nl_all_2016-08.zim (12GiB)
/Kiwix Zim data/nl/wiktionary_nl_all_2016-05.zim (141MiB)
/Kiwix Zim data/nl/wikibooks_nl_all_2016-08.zim (160MiB)
/Kiwix Zim data/nl/wikivoyage_nl_all_2016-08.zim (170MiB)
/Kiwix Zim data/cy/ (~630MiB)
/Kiwix Zim data/cy/wikipedia_cy_all_2016-08.zim (619MiB)
/Kiwix Zim data/cy/wiktionary_cy_all_2016-08.zim (10MiB)
/Kiwix Zim data/cy/wikibooks_cy_all_2016-08.zim (1.4MiB)
/Kiwix Zim data/jbo/ (~13MiB)
/Kiwix Zim data/jbo/wikipedia_jbo_all_2016-08.zim (13MiB)
/Kiwix Zim data/jbo/wiktionary_jbo_all_2016-05.zim (214KiB)
/osmand/ (~80GiB)
/osmand/World_basemap.obf (261MiB)
/osmand/… [all of Europe] (~20GiB)
/osmand/… [all other continents] (~10GiB)
/osmand/srtm/… [all contour data] (~50GiB)
/F-Droid/ [Any way to provide APKs files in a way that F-Droid can verify them against the repository package list? For security reasons, this part is not intended to be entirely offline – F-Droid and its package list should be downloaded directly over HTTPS.]
/Mitzuli/ [Any way to provide content files to Mitzuli?]
.	These are the main problems that I have related to this:
• I don't know the best supplier to obtain 256GiB MicroSD cards at good value without being unethical;
• my laptop is currently broken so my ability to prepare for this workshop is hindered;
• trying to download these files with my phone will require GigaGet to not keep corrupting the downloads, or to find some other means to download directly to external storage.
.	Notable bugs in the software that I recommend:
• F-Droid doesn't have built-in changelogs;
• F-Droid doesn't seem to have the ability to verify files from local sources to reduce Internet usage;
• F-Droid doesn't have a way to sort by licence (AGPLv3+, AGPLv3, GPLv3+, and GPLv3 before the rest) or to grey-out applications with licences that don't protect against patents;
• OsmAnd doesn't have an easy way to share maps across a LAN with another device that has OsmAnd;
• OsmAnd crashes frequently, often without any crash report message;
• Kiwix relies on scanning for files rather than a direct location;
• Kiwix doesn't open files on my Fairphone 2, yet works fine on my Dad's Fairphone 2;
• Kiwix doesn't have an easy way to share maps across a LAN with another device that has Kiwix;
• NewPipe doesn't save the YouTube ID in the filename or elsewhere;
• Mitzuli lacks many useful language pairs (I could do with bidirectional en–fr, en–nl, and en–jbo.);
• Mitzuli language pairs are unidirectional and have no back-translation for checking translation accuracy;
• Mitzuli can't save or load offline files on local storage;
• Mitzuli doesn't have an easy way to share maps across a LAN with another device that has Mitzuli;
• LeafPic is incompatible with Android older than 4.4;
• Amaze doesn't have SFTP support;
• Ghost Commander SFTP plugin seems to be unusable (it used to work but the latest version doesn't);
• SatStat doesn't have compass calibration (so doesn't entirely replace GPS Status);
• K-9 Mail corrupts whitespace and hardwraps lines in sent mail;
• K-9 Mail can't set a different notification sound per folder;
• LibreOffice Viewer is licensed under the MPL2 which doesn't protect against patents and is very poor copyleft;
• IceCat Mobile has a hard-coded download directory fixed to internal storage (which means it is impossible to download a file larger than internal storage no matter how large the external storage is!);
• IceCat Mobile can not verify DNSSEC/DANE;
• IceCat Mobile is licensed under the MPL2 which doesn't protect against patents and is very poor copyleft;
• Activity Launcher is licensed under ISC which doesn't protect against patents and is not GPL-compatible copyleft.
I'd like to also recommend the following but they are currently unusable:
• Transportr – using TLEM and searching for station code ‘SHR’ or ‘Shrewsbury Railway Station’ yields dozens of results, not including the correct one, even when only ‘Regional Train’ is selected (GPLv3+);
• GigaGet – can download to a specified directory but all large files that I tried downloading for Kiwix were corrupt with wrong hashes (GPLv3+);
• Ensichat – messages get lost and are not automatically resent when signal is regained, greatly reducing the range at which this can be reliably used (GPLv3+);
• Debian Kit – not everyone has root access and it has been demonstrated that root isn't necessary for the basic install, so root access should be optional (GPLv3);
• GNURoot (https://wiki.debian.org/ChrootOnAndroid#Other ) – graft Debian to your Android without requiring root access, but not packaged on F-Droid and I haven't tested it (GPLv3);
• QuickLyric – search can not be refined (quotes are ignored; no way to distinguish title, author, album, segments of the lyrics, release date range, etc.) yet results are truncated, thus some entries consisting of common words can never be found, and no way to bulk-download multiple hits, e.g. all lyrics in an album (GPLv3);
• Show Me Hills – the data files seem to be built-into the APK which means that they cannot be updated separately, and it relies on the compass which is unreliable on most devices or near many objects including cases with magnetic fasteners (GPLv3);
• Primative ftpd – cannot limit to a specific directory, thus is an insecure means to share files to others (Apache2).
.	If you can help solve some of the above software problems, especially with F-Droid, OsmAnd, Kiwix, K-9 Mail, GigaGet, or chroot'ing Debian, then that would be greatly appreciated.

Best regards,
James R. Haigh.

On 8 August 2016 18:35:43 BST, Michael Dorrington <address@hidden> wrote:

This an update on Software Freedom Day 2016 in Manchester.  The event
will be held in Terrace.

We're still looking for more people to do items for the day.  So far we
have:

* John Rooke doing a talk on legal threats to software freedom such as TTIP.

* Bob Mottram on mesh networking (and the Beaglebone Black).

Please consider offering an item for the day.

Thanks,
Mike.

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