[Music]
well as usual the first slide is who am
i so my name is jerome
jorun is the dutch pronunciation
i listen to everything including to the
term hey that works too in most cases
although it doesn't distinguish between
me and the guy next to me um
i even have a email address at the new
reports foundation uh so jerome
deweyportsman.com will work if you have
any additional questions afterwards and
you we don't talk to each other um
i have the position there of the
operational marketing manager
uh which means that i report to one of
the members of the board of directors of
the ub ports foundation who has
marketing in his uh his staff
description
and i tried to do stuff on the marketing
demand market department
uh i've been doing that since january
21st uh well except for two weeks when
there was a slight thing with urgent
software for the ministry of healthcare
in the netherlands involving some
pandemic but other than that i've been
doing this
i'm also the author of i don't know 12
plus books on open source
which i will not go into today because
lack of time otherwise i would
i'm also the project leader of the libra
plan project which is an open source
web-based
program management application that i
really love to work on
and um
i even have repositories on on gitlab
github and
some of them even got a few stars
so yeah yeah to me um but uh i bow in
respect to a lot of hackers in uh in
this um
uh on this ground because um
i'm i'm well most of the hackers have
this thing called
what's the word for it imposter syndrome
well so do i
uh so i think i know nothing and still
i've been doing open source for 20 years
and i'm pretty happy yay me um okay
phone world of today well
uh the user is the product right you buy
a phone either ios or android those are
the two flavors mainstream flavors
and the user is the product every piece
of data is collected even weather apps
do nothing more than sending home your
gps location constantly and those that
data is being sold
and you're thinking oh this is an
innocent weather app well it's nothing
innocent about it you're being tracked
and you're doing it voluntarily in a way
um
what's up sends data continuously we
don't know what data because it's of
course an ssl encryption of tls these
days
um so we don't know what data set but it
sends continuously even if you don't
talk or the
t type or whatever to anybody
data is sold to companies for targeting
ads and and market ads is these days
well
everybody's in the market of selling ads
in one way try to avoid ads for once try
to avoid for a minute not seeing a brand
name
just look around right this second and
you'll see brand names everywhere and
we're so used to it but subliminal they
work you always see there was this guy
who made a habit of putting posted cards
on every brand name in his house
well he wouldn't see brand names but it
was a very yellow interior
other alternatives yes there are and i'm
here to talk about one of them
well there's a ubuntu touch
what does it look like well there is a
10 minute demo
it's on youtube and i invite all of you
to watch it
i can try to
do i have connection here this is
spontaneous and a demo so it probably
won't work
let's see if i click on this
see there we go doesn't work
i didn't make a link out of it
okay
silly me
anyway
what what i'll put it does we don't
collect data
so that's of course
one of the goals
um
and we have the development of this
ubuntu touch project governed by the ub
ports foundation that's based in berlin
and
one of the reasons it's based in berlin
is because germany has one of the most
stricted privacy laws there is
some of the initiatives like the
founding of the ubers foundation was
sponsored by people but
you know how there is this book the most
people are good well
this one was too
although he's the sponsor he also made
sure that in the bylaws of the
foundation it's impossible
impossible for
sponsors to become member of the board
of directors
so yes you can sponsor
and will probably listen to you but you
don't have any formal say in stuff so
you keep your independence as a
foundation
um currently we have an app store that
contains about 1200 apps
so
if you install ubuntu touch on your
phone
you have 1100 apps to choose from that
includes several navigation apps we have
a telegram app we don't have a whatsapp
app
but there are games that there's a lot
to to choose from
and if you go to devices.ubuntu-touch.io
you will find 81 devices that will
support ubuntu touch
with seven of them marked as top choice
when i say 81 are supported they are
supported
from poorly to excellent
and the seven best ones
are uh of course the top choice
um
and more on how that works behind the
screen a little later small history 2011
canonical stars ubuntu touch
and everybody says
ubuntu nice os works a nice desktop see
what they will do
and in 2015 mary's gripscart a norwegian
guy says okay let's let's also do a
hacker community next to it so we
because
economical only supported two or three
devices officially
and of course they were hackers saying
well i can port this to my device so
there was a secure a community of
hackers was was coming to life
um in 2017 canonical abandons uh both
ubuntu touch and the unity project and
unity being the the ui part of ubuntu
dutch
for
actually for business reasons so they
had a thriving product thriving
community but had to focus on other
projects and decided to cancel this one
which was of course very sad
well
the same year
we as a community
launched the ubiport's installer
and that's an application for linux
windows and mac you install the uv ports
installer you connect with a usb your
phone and it will tell you if it can
install ubuntu touch on it and if you
say yeah do that it will do that for you
now if for any chance there is something
going wrong no worries we have a
telegram help desk where there are nice
people
responding to that if people run into
trouble but given the volume of installs
it does happen sometimes but it doesn't
happen a lot
and the community starts the helium
project as well in 2017 and the helium
the hell is the hardware extraction
layer and that's where the name is a
derivative from
to try to
make a separation between the hardware
and the software
you see hell principles also in other
computer systems
the 2019 that's when the ub ports
foundation is getting established
uh with bases in berlin
and
well that's the history so far in a
nutshell
now what did we do last year
well we did stuff
the apps
ecosystem is keeps on growing we we
constantly increase the number of apps
people from the community
develop new apps that run on ubuntu
touch we have a very nice
development environment based on
clickable
and clickable is sort of a qt based
because the gui is qt
we have a qt based uh system where with
clickable you can say oh i want to code
in javascript or i want to code in rust
i want to code in in python or i want to
code in c plus you can do all that and
you you you when you start a project you
simply select what program you want to
use
and it will set up the initial
infrastructure and and create a sort of
vanilla hello world
application for you that you can start
building up on
we are
last year and today still
investing in the 2004 mission
and the
story behind that is that the current
release
of ubuntu touch is still based on ubuntu
1604.
now 1604 may sound like really old to
the average desktop user but in embedded
systems like a phone
you don't change your os so very very
frequently
so
you do but you don't so so often
so yeah we have to migrate and we do
that about every four or five years so
after 16 comes 20 and we're still
working on the migration to 20 which
also means a big shift
from the old
upstart to system systemd
which is a it's a big job
uh we're still of course maintaining
1604 and even uh bringing in new
features on that platform
um
and last year we had a new board of
directors and membership committee so
the membership committee
is a committee that
decides if somebody
who has
spent
more than i believe three months of
uh of effort into
three months or six months i i forgot
sorry um
uh who has done investment in the
community if he's eligible for um
for the election to either be elected or
to give a vote on the candidates
so that's the democratic system behind
it
and the
so the membership committee allows
people to vote and when you have the
right to vote you get an email you vote
on the candidates and those become the
new
board of directors
what are we doing this year well clearly
a continuation 2004 is where currently
lots of efforts are put into because we
really want to make that transition to
2004
and it's it's a biggie
are challenges there if there are people
here who love to participate
please do
[Music]
we still do the release of the on the
air updates for 1604
and the last one was uh 28th of june
so that's pretty recent
uh so any phone that gets on the air
updates
is pretty much up to date on on on the
current software that's uh that works
pretty well
uh we're currently getting marketing
streamlined so we have a new board of
directors there is
new plans for marketing campaigns uh
which also means
um how do you
get out the message to the world that we
exist
and
when are we a valid alternative
um
if you go to any shop a phone shop in
the netherlands you won't get a ubuntu
touch phone if you go to a phone one
phone shop in hamburg you can get an
ubuntu touch phone we have one one shop
already up two actually because they're
sisters of each other so two shops where
you can get over the phone uh you can go
to the web and you can order phones with
ubuntu touch pre-installed that's
already uh
there
we did a few awareness campaigns
i got interviewed in the netherlands by
the financial docublot
in a two-page interview about this i've
been on bnr
business news radio in the netherlands
with a podcast in the technology about
ubport so
we're trying to get that message out i'm
standing here now so there's also again
a message that will be recorded so we
can
use the link very very often i hope
so
it's constantly looking at okay where do
we find our audience and how can we
reach that audience to tell them about
look here's a phone that values your
privacy as much as you do
we are not in the business of data data
doesn't interest us other than that your
navigation should work you know that
data yeah but not what you're doing with
the phone is your business and not ours
it's an open source
operating system
we are still in the business of
strengthening cooperation with more
hardware partners
and
there are several
phone manufacturers who
um
uh
like to work with us well i hope they
like to work with that but we like to
work with them definitely
on getting ubuntu touch working on their
hardware so they can sell their phones
they can get the message out and we try
to make sure that the the software works
as best as possible
and basically keep our users as happy as
possible
that the thing just works you know
like and that was the title of the talk
making sure we have a phone that does
what you expect and nothing more
um
now what's hot on our endless backlog
well there is a first book about app
development and
um
even if the cover on on the screen uh
you can now if you like order this on
lulu.com publishing on demand you always
have the latest content
in the book
we did a workshop yesterday with this
training book everybody who attended the
training got a piece of gutter
got one of those books
and um
people can now
well
follow along who does the training how
you can
develop apps and we are already
discussing what to do in a second book
so
it's very likely that i will become
uh in existence a second book on um
programming for ubuntu touch and that
one goes more into sensor stuff because
the gui and how an application works
we've already covered that in in part
one
we have volte who here has ever heard of
volte before
okay maybe i should change that who
hasn't heard of faulty before
yeah okay so maybe i should explain to
you because the other ones already know
it right
so volte stands for voice over lte and
lte is an extension if i'm correctly of
g4 gsm generation 4
which means you get sort of a data voice
over ip over a wireless connection
and it's clearly the future of
phone calls
so the
the 2g and 3g second generation third
generation gsm
networks are already being switched off
so at some point your phone needs to
support volte otherwise you can't make a
phone call
which would be bad for phone
well come think of it who uses his phone
for phone calls these days right
oh you do okay yeah one of the few
probably um
and for wifi then as a self-explanatory
right you simply do voice over wi-fi
which in a way is easier because you
don't have to connect to a modem with
certain encryption standards and
well
access the the modem part of the
hardware
that has his own protocol which is not
really open and well there are
challenges there
we are working on video calls for native
apps we're working on cell broadcast
esim
that's of course also a new development
that you don't get a sim card but you
get a sort of
a key that is your authorization to
access the wireless network
uh bluetooth
well we have bluetooth but they're
still
showing up new devices with new
extensions on bluetooth that we need to
support in ubuntu touch as well
power management is of course always
crucial because you want your phone to
last as long as possible and
we're developing policies for apps in
the background because currently it is a
linux kernel
on top of that we have android we have
helium hardware abstraction layer we
have ubuntu touch as the gui and app
environment
and
it doesn't
run apps in the background that's
by design and we're thinking about well
maybe we should
um
device backup and recovery also
something that's well nice to have at
least
um now how do we do some of those stuffs
well volte for instance we work uh with
sysmocom
as anybody of you know who has not heard
of sysmoncom before
yeah a lot of you right okay who has not
heard of osmocom before
okay so
osmocom is an open source interface
hence the os mocom
with which you can set up your own gsm
network
so you take a bunch of raspberry pi's
you take a certain piece of hardware
which is
um not really very cheap but then you
can create your own gsm network
you put an antenna in the air and
suddenly you have gsm mch
you can't do that in a lens because of
licenses but
other than that is technically possible
well osmocom is an open source project
run by harold welter also from berlin
i believe anyway for german i think he's
in berlin but i'm not exactly sure
and he also has
a commercial company sysmocom where they
work on
protocols wireless protocols on phones
in the broadest sense of the of the word
so they work on well ios i guess android
definitely and they also work from us on
developing volt for um
ubuntu touch and that's for instance
sponsored development so somebody's
picking up that bill
knowledge management
well like i said recently released
application development training the
training is by the way cc license so
everybody can use it it's you don't have
to buy the book it's also on the web
uh urls will probably follow in this
slide deck
we have a forum with 1.2 million
hits every month so there's a lot of
discussion going on a lot of development
a lot of people
talking about how to get things done how
to build stuff
like i said it's it's a big community
it's it's globally and that's
it's amazing sometimes i get emails from
people all over the world of course
uh with with questions that when they
are related to marketing i'll get them
so
thankfully those are not hundreds
because i couldn't cope but
yeah there's a lot of action going on
we have some general telegram channels
like uv ports
general
telegram that works everywhere we have a
welcome and install so if you
would install
ubuntu touch on your device with the uv
ports installer and you run into any
kind of problem just put on telegram
welcome and install group and there is
somebody who is friendly responsive and
will help you out and i can say that
with confidence because i had the same
challenge myself
that's about two years ago
and there's of course uv port sporting
if you have a device and you want to get
that
uh
ubuntu touch for that device running and
you have porting questions you can ask
around and people should be able to help
you
port stuff to the device that you want
to port to if you're into that kind of
thing
and that's just a sub group because we
have a telegram channel for almost every
language in the world including dutch
mum who is sitting here is very active
in the dutch group
thank you so much
and
yesterday we had terence helping out
he's from the community helping out on
the application development we have
sander from the dutch community who also
pitched in developing the training stuff
it's it's amazing what we as a community
do
support supported devices well they show
again on devices.ubuntu.io
and the data that they shown there
is a representation of a yaml file
so whenever somebody
adds a device he creates a yaml file
with um
a list of features and whether or not
this port already supports that feature
and if there are still some issues with
some functionality you can even add a
link to the ticket on gitlab so people
can do the research and maybe say oh
yeah let me fix that for instance
or do some more research
and um the repository of those yaml
files is shown in this url which i won't
repeat here and you probably are not
interested at the moment but i will
upload the slides and you can look at
them later right
okay
that's it
[Music]
i'm
i'm even surprised myself that i'm
already at the end
it's
those are only 14 slides and
i think i just about covered everything
from an awareness perspective
but
every subject has his own
death that you can dive into and talk
about and
i'm not one of the ubuntu touch
developers you know i do develop stuff
but python linux c rust and go i'm
learning those two but
this is a business
with a speciality and
i'm not qualified as a technician to do
technical ubuntu touch stuff but
this is absolutely an amazing project
with
the heart in the right place it's open
source we're going in the right
direction
there are
i wish there is there is this new thing
news
thing
that has an nda
who doesn't know what an nda is
okay
non-disclosure agreement
so i can't tell about it
but i can't tell about it for a year now
but it is coming and when it is it's yay
um
so i know
sorry sorry that i know more than you i
wish i could tell you but i can't
but
we're going in the right direction the
developments are promising uh i know
there are other phone oss and it's great
to see them working together oh we
solved this uh bug oh that's nice let's
see yeah we solved that bug oh yeah
let's use that one that's the open
source magic
so the more the merrier in a way
and i really hope that we can change the
world
make it better by using and distributing
a phone os that puts the user first and
doesn't see the user as a product
so i'll shut up now and let's go to
questions
you you you stop talking and ask for q
and a so whatever floats it but um so
please go back to your um to your place
so we have you in the best slide for the
recording and we start with the
microsoft on the front please okay hi i
hope my question hasn't been already
been answered in the first couple of
minutes um about apps i wanted to know
um
are you planning to make it easier to
port android apps either by um
having a compatible api or maybe even an
android runtime yeah so
android is in a way uh slimmed down and
in ubuntu touch but we don't support uh
the apps like on android android we
don't support android apps but
there is there's a group working on a
nbox an nbox is sort of a container for
android apps
so
yes you can run whatsapp on ubuntu touch
because whatsapp can run in nbox which
runs on ubuntu touch
but
don't shoot me if it's still a little
bit buggy so i i won't say it's ah you
should go that direction but yeah we're
working on it it's promising i know
people who say yeah it works for me
great fine but i'm i'm not convinced
that it's rock stable and everybody can
use that all right
you're welcome mike in the back please
hi i had a look at
the list of the supported devices online
sure and i noticed that out of the seven
start devices there's two made by google
you can feel my question coming
how confident do you feel saying that if
you combine one of these google devices
with ubuntu touch
that none of the user's data gets
collected and sold well it's yes it's a
ubuntu it's a google phone hardware you
wipe the software you put your own stuff
in it
and you don't track people
it's as simple as that
yeah unless of course they made
something embedded
that we don't know about
yeah
but that's the same that's the same for
intel processors where there's minix
running in
and probably is a way to upgrade that
either replace it by something else and
we still don't know how to do that
or i miss the talk about it here that
wouldn't surprise me in a bit
okay thanks oh you're welcome
ah yeah thank you
i see you have a lot of telegram
channels yes are also plans to migrate
to a more distributed system like matrix
for instance
yeah there are matrix clients for for
but to touch definitely yes i mean
also the
support the support channels you have
okay
well
it's a community so it's you can't catch
them so no doubt there are matrix
channels there are discord uh
initiatives uh we have a forum we have
telegram it's it's all over the place so
probably it's full of bridges already
yeah that that one i know for sure yeah
okay thank you you're welcome
mike in the back please
i'm somewhat confused
ub ports ubuntu
yeah
uh is ubuntu still in place in play
okay so
you have ubuntu
as a distribution which is made by
canonical and they have the brand name
for the word ubuntu right and the circle
of friend symbol
they started ubuntu touch and they have
abandoned that product
and now a
community is continue to work on ubuntu
touch
but a community cannot get
a license to use a brand name so there
is a ubports foundation
which is the legal body to try to govern
as much as you can govern an open source
community i think i don't have to
explain that here
but that's from a legal standpoint
an entity that helps
the community in getting things done so
if a company wants to
have a contract with another entity they
cannot make a contract with the
community but they can have a contract
with the ub ports foundation and the ub
foundation is a license holder of the
ubuntu touch brand name
logo and
derivatives
if i recall correct
ub ports
and they have the domain name
ubuntu
io
but the legal identity is ubuntu ports
on top
uh the ub foundation has several domain
names and actually i don't know if they
own ubuntu touch because also the the
app store is an initiative of one of the
community members so he has the domain
name and he has the app store
and
he runs a very good ship i must say
but he owns
the open store dot io domain name as an
example
uh okay thank you no yeah fine messy
okay
mike in the front
please okay and uh in the start you were
talking about uh the weather app
collecting data yeah
the weather app on this device
on this software wouldn't that also
collect the same data yeah and sell it
no
why not
well why would we
because it's the same company
no it isn't for the webinar
no
there are weather apps for ubuntu touch
that get the location data from the gps
sensor
and use that to do a
probably a rest call to an a weather api
somewhere online to get away the weather
data
uh but it's not stored it's not uh sold
it's
uh we only use it for the purpose for
which it is intended because we
and with we i mean both the community
but also the ubi foundation are not
interested in user data because we're
not in the business of selling user data
and that's the one of the founding
principles
of the foundation
yeah i know but the people the company
who makes the weather app is interested
for your
touch
wouldn't they collect that data
if you if there would be an ubuntu touch
application created by a company who
wants to sell off your gps location yeah
then you're right
but we have a large community and a
weather app from the community is simply
a weather app from the community who
does not sell off data
thank you you're welcome
how good is the quality of the product
would you use it as a daily driver
lots of people are using it as a daily
driver
i when i started this i'm going to be
honest right when i got started this
project i got a phone officially
supported ubuntu touch
and
i
switched my sim card and i went to a
meeting an hour drive away and the
meeting was longer than i expected so i
was gone a long time and i started using
the navigation to get there and by the
time i got there navigation didn't work
and
also it was not able to answer telegram
messages or
calls and i did it and my wife was
trying to call me as in when are you
coming home and i didn't pick up my
phone which was
rare
and that's one and a half years ago
and the next release fixed it that fixed
dead bug
so since then
i can assure you rock solid connectivity
absolutely um i know of people in the
audience that i won't mention by name at
the moment who started working with
ubuntu touch as a two-week experiment oh
i have a phone lying around let's see
how this works that's years ago
and it's yeah it works and they were
happy and they kept on using it
and i think that's
that's the way you should address this
it's a tool it's a connectivity tool and
it's not a sensor
for multiple commercial entities it's
your device
and and you use it for what you want to
do with it and that's it
and that's what i
passionately believe in
thank you you're welcome
if you ask questions please come close
to the microphone you're helping our av
angels um
working
yeah thank you um there's basically a
follow-up question of the previous
previous
question here how do you make sure that
the
app stores for ub ports stay clean of
checking tracking companies especially
if uv ports will grow and you get
millions of users
which i hope will happen
um then there's a business case for
providing apps that do all this tracking
stuff
as they do now on android yeah and
if we are massively
successful
that some taiwanese developer thinks hey
let me put a bitcoin miner in there
because yay bitcoins
um
then that means we're massively
successful so that part is good and we
have to figure out how to solve this
bitcoin mining stuff right
currently we have this guy running the
open store who reviews the contributions
and
um
most of those contributions have
when you submit an application you
upload an icon you put in a name and and
the url to the to the git repository
so
that's already
if you put in a hidden bitcoin miner you
probably won't mention the url where
they can find the code
so it's relatively easy to to review
that
um
but yeah currently
we're pretty safe and we're relatively
small
and
that makes it easy to to be safe
and
if we become more successful
we get more event
sellers of phones
which will probably donate uh
some money to the ub foundation which is
not mandatory you can use it for free
but it's in the interest of a vendor to
support ubi foundation to continue
development of the os right
and then we can hire people
even if the community can't
handle that
workload we hire people to do the
security reviews of newly
submitted apps
you
it's a hard requirement to have open
source
apps for your play stores app stores
well currently it's it's not mandatory
and you can you said these are those are
clickable apps uh but you can program in
also in russian
c plus plus c plus is of course compiled
so
you would get uh
an application that is does not need to
be open source okay if it's an open if
it's a javascript application in qml
embed it then
everybody can read the source code right
uh when it's c plus and you only see the
compiled result you don't know what's
behind it
so so is your question maybe i can help
you out it's a question more about
what's the equivalent to um google play
protect for example where google says we
will make sure that this is not a
malicious software is is the question
going in that direction
well that's another uh
thinking of similar processes that
android store has to review the apps to
make sure that everything that comes
into it is really open source yeah
um
what i'm
seeing uh with my open source track
record i i see a community that's that's
thriving that's developing good stuff
and that is also
evolving
so at some point no doubt there should
be mandatory review of new apps and then
somebody will pick up the challenge and
organize that and make that happen are
we currently there no we're currently
not there yet but yeah i've every
confidence that we will
at the moment that we see that happening
because
as a foundation
we don't have a commercial interest
and we want to
make a popular and safe
open source
operating system for mobile devices
well nice thank you okay you're welcome
are there any more questions
you're probably around somewhere right
where can people reach you
um well jeromeypods.com
works i have two more slides
we really need devs by the way so
go to telegram uv ports underscore devil
and this is how to get in touch we have
a website we have twitter telegram email
info or yoon that also works
we have code on gitlab and github we are
still migrating to get lab by the way
and we have a translation website and we
have a documentation website
and we have training material but we
don't have training.ubpos.com
yet but there is um
there is a website for where the
training material for the application
development is is currently online and
people can visit that if they want to do
application development
that's my last slide are there any more
questions last chance
all right one more okay okay
just one more
uv port is not the only
linux for phone
applications
very notable one is purism which has the
librium five
can you tell something more about the
differences and
the
similar goals that you have i wish i
could
and it's not that i don't want to
because there's a lineage os there's the
pine phone there is uh that one you have
a vola os you have uh
the
uh
the the dutch one
um
fairtrade fairphone model 4 with lots of
sensors and cameras which is cool
and they're all working in the same area
of
client
customer empowerment in a way you know
privacy awareness
and
i have
almost a day job keeping up with this
project so
i'm not the
consultant who knows all the os's and
and the exact uh differences i'm so
sorry
ee foundation is also a very notable uh
of course yeah
okay thank you you're welcome
well if there are no more questions i
thank you so much for your time in this
hot uh tent i hope you have an amazing
event uh the rest of the days and if you
have any questions just see me outside
in a sec second it's cooler outside and
inside so
and other than that drop me an email and
i'll try to do to help you out and
yeah get you
on your way okay
bye bye
you