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diff --git a/markdown/2020_07_late-report-from-fosdem-2020.md b/markdown/2020_07_late-report-from-fosdem-2020.md index 6e43634..cf93c2b 100644 --- a/markdown/2020_07_late-report-from-fosdem-2020.md +++ b/markdown/2020_07_late-report-from-fosdem-2020.md @@ -7,7 +7,7 @@ authors: dllud On the 1st and 2nd of February 2020, 4 Replicant contributors (FilBerg, GNUtoo, GrimKriegor and dllud) attended [FOSDEM 2020][1] in Brussels. -FOSDEM (Free and Open source Software Developers’ European Meeting) is an +FOSDEM (Free and Open source Software Developers' European Meeting) is an annual conference organized by volunteers, to enable users and contributors to meet and promote the widespread use of free and open source software. This helps communities take decisions and also enables various communities and @@ -16,13 +16,13 @@ people to collaborate together. Part of this comes from FOSDEM allowing projects to book rooms in order to have meetings and presentations (dubbed as a BoF, Birds of a Feather). Replicant contributors held such a BoF, and also gave a talk at another room -and wandered around the exhibition’s rooms talking to people at the stands of +and wandered around the exhibition's rooms talking to people at the stands of relevant projects. As it is a conference, the FOSDEM also features talks by various members and contributors of the free software and open source communities which range across many different projects and areas. Listening to the talks (which are -often recorded as well) is a way to get the latest news of what’s happening in +often recorded as well) is a way to get the latest news of what's happening in the free software world. This is a (late, sorry for that) report with the relevant information that @@ -37,11 +37,11 @@ both mediums. Technoethical is a store that sells devices pre-installed withofficial versions of Replicant and also Replicant merchandise. It is [featured at -Replicant’s website][3] and donates a percentage of its sales to Replicant. +Replicant's website][3] and donates a percentage of its sales to Replicant. We went to the Technoethical stand to discuss the idea of only requiring a -percentage of the sales for bigger companies, which wouldn’t include -Technoethical. According to Tiberiu from Technoethical, Technoethical didn’t +percentage of the sales for bigger companies, which wouldn't include +Technoethical. According to Tiberiu from Technoethical, Technoethical didn't agree toformally give any percentages of the sales to Replicant, but they instead do it voluntarily. @@ -59,7 +59,7 @@ Unfortunately, this property by itself cannot tell precisely which version of Replicant is compatible with say the Galaxy Nexus (GT-I9250). We were told to look into the qualifier to see if we can find a way to express that. -After looking at it we found that it’s possible to add a platform qualifier +After looking at it we found that it's possible to add a platform qualifier for a given version, for instance to tell that Replicant 6.0 is compatible with the Galaxy SII (GT-I9100). However, after this, it is not possible to add an extra layer of qualifiers to tell for instance that the Galaxy SIII 4G @@ -86,7 +86,7 @@ This year we improved the organization of the Replicant BoF: * While things were more organized than last year we still need to improve on it. For instance we lacked a precise schedule for the BoF in order to properly cover all the topics we needed to. The consequence is that we - usually try to rush at the end in order to cover some topics we didn’t + usually try to rush at the end in order to cover some topics we didn't have covered yet. * We also had the ability to remotely listen to the BoF through Mumble and @@ -110,7 +110,7 @@ This year we improved the organization of the Replicant BoF: During the BoF, we did a quick presentation of the issues we were having with the Android build system. More details on the issues are available on the -[“Android’s build system is messier than your distro’s” talk][8] that was +[“Android's build system is messier than your distro's” talk][8] that was presented at 36C3. ### GeckoView @@ -178,7 +178,7 @@ reusing the Replicant 9 code. This means that we would need to work with other upstreams to find the best ways to deal with it and share the maintenance of the code. Unfortunately -there weren’t any contributors from other Android distribution in the room. +there weren't any contributors from other Android distribution in the room. ### Galaxy SIII (GT-I9300), Replicant 9 and LineageOS @@ -187,7 +187,7 @@ we collaborated together when it was possible, as we were both trying different approaches. On Replicant 9 we were focusing more on the 2D graphics, and on the modem, -which doesn’t work yet with LineageOS. +which doesn't work yet with LineageOS. Once we have something usable on Replicant 9, it would also be very interesting to find time to work on upstreaming the modem driver as well: @@ -195,7 +195,7 @@ interesting to find time to work on upstreaming the modem driver as well: * In several cases the kernel maintainers refused patches for drivers lacking free software userspace for using them. -* As Replicant has a free software implementation, it shouldn’t be a +* As Replicant has a free software implementation, it shouldn't be a problem. * Similar modems are already supported by the Linux kernel, like the N900 @@ -219,12 +219,12 @@ would need to review by themselves each application they are considering to install. So we created the [F-DroidAndApplications wiki page][12] to share the work on -reviewing F-Droid applications that meet or don’t meet the Free System +reviewing F-Droid applications that meet or don't meet the Free System Distributions Guidelines. We started reviewing some applications. Unfortunately, even when the source code should be fully free, we are not sure if the resulting builds meet the -guidelines, as we would need to make sure that it’s possible to compile the +guidelines, as we would need to make sure that it's possible to compile the same application with a distribution that meets the FSDG guidelines. We need to look more into it and/or to write to the licensing team at the FSF. @@ -251,7 +251,7 @@ enables to get access to the serial port. It is therefore relevant to know about that chip in many different contexts. MediaWiki has ways to avoid the duplication of some information through -templates, and it’s also possible to interface it with Wikidata in various +templates, and it's also possible to interface it with Wikidata in various ways. Someone mentioned that Sphinx handles such requirements. However, as not @@ -266,7 +266,7 @@ tools like Sphinx. Someone pointed out that upstream Android continuously gets security updates. To keep up with that, we would need to do Replicant 9 releases very often. -While some people pointed issues with rebasing our work, it’s probably still +While some people pointed issues with rebasing our work, it's probably still achievable to do that, as porting our work forward from Android 9 to the next Android versions is supposed to be easier. @@ -274,14 +274,14 @@ Someone also pointed out that, for a given Android version, LineageOS was backporting security fixes longer than the Android Open Source Project (AOSP). This information made us reconsider some design choices in Replicant: once -Replicant 9 has been released, the fact that LineageOS doesn’t have stable +Replicant 9 has been released, the fact that LineageOS doesn't have stable tags for releases becomes less relevant as we will need to find ways to rebase and release often, in order to have the latest security fixes. ### Vulkan Someone mentioned that the Vulkan graphics API will become mandatory after -Android 10. This would mean that the graphics stack we’re developing for +Android 10. This would mean that the graphics stack we're developing for Replicant 9 would no longer suffice. Both Lima, the free software driver for the Mali GPU present on the Galaxy SIII (GT-I9300), and llvmpipe, the software rasterizer planned to be used as fallback on all other devices, only support @@ -298,19 +298,19 @@ lower-level API than OpenGL][17], with finer-grained control of the GPU memory and likes, making it really hard to implement OpenGL on top of it. A nice tip we got is to keep using a compositor (SurfaceFlinger) that works -with OpenGL ES. Current SurfaceFlinger still doesn’t have Vulkan support. +with OpenGL ES. Current SurfaceFlinger still doesn't have Vulkan support. Acceleration is still done through OpenGL ES or an hardware composer. As such, -compositor performance and compatibility won’t bean issue for the time being. +compositor performance and compatibility won't bean issue for the time being. ## After the Replicant BoF ### Replicant contact address We found that Fil Bergamo, who is part of the Replicant Steering Committee, -didn’t receive emails from the Replicant contact address. +didn't receive emails from the Replicant contact address. We need to setup a new email infrastructure in order to properly address this -issue. Currently the contact address is hosted at PaulK’s personal email +issue. Currently the contact address is hosted at PaulK's personal email server. Paul no longer has time to maintain it and thus we must transition to a new server, hosted in a VM at the FSF servers, that can be administered by several Replicant contributors, in order to avoid a single point of failure. @@ -352,7 +352,7 @@ So the device would have been completely usable with fully free software. They also stated in several places on their website that it would have been possible to run fully free software on the device. -This was also made possible because the device wasn’t a smartphone and would +This was also made possible because the device wasn't a smartphone and would not have any modem or WiFi chip. But they are now are planning to add a WiFi chip, and to ourknowledge, all the @@ -366,7 +366,7 @@ times, with a precision of 10 or 20 meters. In the long run, for the WiFi firmwares, it would be a good idea to have people working to get free WiFi firmwares and really solve the issue for good, -instead of finding workarounds that don’t solve the problem. +instead of finding workarounds that don't solve the problem. In the mean time, the workarounds still have the benefit of making clear what is free software and what is not; this clear separation enables us to claim at @@ -377,7 +377,7 @@ software as well. Necunos also told us that they had some underlying issues because their devices would be “dual use” devices. This is related to the fact that they are also targeting some markets like the Finish defense or secret services, but we -didn’t understood what it meant practically speaking. +didn't understood what it meant practically speaking. ### NLnet and the Android build system @@ -406,7 +406,7 @@ some phones, were still used. We also saw Maemo Leste on a PinePhone. On this device, the graphics stack was using the free software Lima driver and the graphics were fast enough. We -can’t remember if Lima was stable enough for daily use but it looks really +can't remember if Lima was stable enough for daily use but it looks really promising at least, because the whole graphical interface used it, and we saw no rendering artifacts while briefly testing it. @@ -420,7 +420,7 @@ As we had an opportunity to talk with people from the GitLab team, weasked them whether they would be open to accept patches that fix this. They explained us that such would require to double the UI work for everything, but that it might be possible to do server side rendering with the same JavaScript -that’s used on the client. The issue is that it cannot make requests from +that's used on the client. The issue is that it cannot make requests from buttons like that, so in addition to the page rendering that could happen through server-side JavaScript, introspection could be used to rewrite the buttons. @@ -439,7 +439,7 @@ was not the case in similar shops in a smaller city. This talk was held at the Hardware Enablement devroom. It quickly introduced Replicant and the smartphones ecosystem, and then -proceed to look at what affects smartphones’ and tablets’ lifetime and how to +proceed to look at what affects smartphones' and tablets' lifetime and how to increase it by making Replicant more sustainable. There was also a small, satirical play in the middle this talk. Its goal was @@ -447,7 +447,7 @@ to show how the current market trends in smartphone design and construction severely impair those that look for privacy, software freedom, and reduction of electronic waste. -Video and slides are available at the [talk’s page in FOSDEM’s website][20]. +Video and slides are available at the [talk's page in FOSDEM's website][20]. ## Extra @@ -464,7 +464,7 @@ from previous conferences that were (only) published on the mailing list: * [XDC 2019][23] -There’s also a [wiki page that lists all talks about Replicant][24] that +There's also a [wiki page that lists all talks about Replicant][24] that happened in several conferences throughout the years. * * * |