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> Curious what are you making? A few things (You can find them all here: https://gitlab.com/kop316/ https://gitlab.com/kop316/ ) - A backend MMS client to ena

by kop316 5y ago

> Curious what are you making? A few things (You can find them all here: https://gitlab.com/kop316/ https://gitlab.com/kop316/ ) - A backend MMS client to enable use of MMS on the Pinephone - I am helping to merge MMS front end support to Chatty (the default Phosh MMS/SMS Client): https://source.puri.sm/kop316/chatty/-/tree/wip/sadiq/mm-account https://source.puri.sm/kop316/chatty/-/tree/wip/sadiq/mm-acc... - A full stack Visual Voicemail Client. > And why pursue Pinephone, is it the privacy aspect or potentially new fledging OS that may get a good market share... or just full linux being cool. It's a mix of those. I am a big open source advocate, and a huge believer in the fact that hardware I buy is hardware I should be able to use as I see fit. I will never buy an iPhone (for myself, sadly I feel Android is in such a sad state that the only phone I feel confident getting for my family right now is an iPhone) for the above stated reasons (and the fact that they intentionally segment their market to force you to buy an iPhone/Apple products to use "their ecosystem", and make it very difficult to use services that compete with said ecosystem). Stock Android likewise intentionally cripples the Android experience unless one uses Google Play services (I am aware of MicroG....but it is difficult to install unless one rolls their own OS, which I don't want to do). This is to say nothing of the Branded Android devices which range from okay to outright malicous, and the practices of app developers to force you to install their apps to suck up as much info on you as possible. I am also very tired of the forced obsolescence of Mobile Phones, and the Pinephone/Librem 5 is an honest effort to move past that. I have a stack of phones that are perfectly useable aside from the fact that they run something like Linux 3.10 or 3.18 (which the kernel itself is subject to a wide range of security issues, say nothing of using Android n-2 on it). > How was the app deployment, I have been told there's different ways to go about it, the "apt install" way being harder since your app has to be vetted and what not, understandable. I try to work within the distribution channels, but one can distribute through Flatpak (I don't presonally do that, so I have no idea how hard it is) which to my knowledge works on most distros. As far as distribution channels, someone will have to package/champion your app for a particular distribution, and depending on how popular/necessary it is, it will probably end up being you (that's the case for me on Mobian/Debian. I am the dev and package manager for my apps, but someone else has been packaging the MMS related stuff for pmOS, Pure OS, and Fedora). Your app will be vetted yes...but it is not the Apple/Google "I alter the terms of your agreement, pray I do not alter further", it is more "Do you follow good practices in coding? Do you follow the packaging standards in our distribution? Will you be around in two months to keep maintaining this app". The only reason I would outright see them willfully not distribute your app is if you act maliciously. Honestly, after working with the Debian Maintainers to include mmsd-tng into Debian, I have a much higher confidence in the quality of packages included in Debian. > It's just as far as "barrier to entry" for users that's one of the things that could be problematic if there isn't just an app store they go to. I think the biggest barrier to entry is distro maintainers do not want to add an app to their distribution to have it abandoned, which is unfortunately a chicken and egg problem for a new dev (that is at least how I preceieved it when I was working on getting mmsd-tng included into Debian. I think I will have an easier time getting vvmd/vvmplayer included since I now have "street cred"). The distribution maintainers want to see you succeed (they actively helped me learn how to package my app in Debian), but they (and I) have seen plenty of instanses where someone wants to help, then disappear a week later (which is fine, it just makes it hard to judge who will stay and who will go).

jcun4128 5y ago
This will probably be nuts to follow since HN doesn't have any kind of notification but I appreciate your response. why is a backend needed for MMS? is it not direct like phone > cell tower > phone? That's cool with the purism work. > A full stack Visual Voicemail Client Just don't embed ads in it like Android ha > MicroG I have not heard of that I just hate the bloatware it is particularly a problem on cheaper phones and part of the carrier eg. Boost they have these notifications you can't get rid of, that's the stuff that "boils my blood". Heh I have a stack of phones too, I bought an old Windows Lumia device just because I used to really like it despite that all the app APIs are broken on it sadly. Interesting info about the deployment stuff. Yeah someone pointed out if your app is like a basic to do list probably not going to get added. There's also the name thing... like I feel pretty confident doing apt install filezilla that I actually get the FTP client. Anyway good luck to you, maybe I'll see you in this field ha whenever I get back into this. My Pinephone is currently just sitting on my desk uncharged. I gotta check out Matrix too have not really heard of it, offhand I'm like "is it like Mastodon" or something... but yeah.
- kop316 5y ago
  > This will probably be nuts to follow since HN doesn't have any kind of notification but I appreciate your response. You're welcome! > why is a backend needed for MMS? is it not direct like phone > cell tower > phone? The MMS stack is....interesting. It is a mix of SMS and HTTP (SMS acts as a signalling to the client (phone) to tell the client an MMS exists, and HTTP is used to get/send an MMS), and MMS has its own encoding scheme. mmsd-tng is an abstraction layer to do MMS decode/encode and send/recieve it all, so a chat application just has to talk to mmsd-tng to get/send MMS. There is a modem Abstraction layer (the two popular ones are oFono and MOdem Manager), and neither support MMS natively. However, with mmsd-tng, they don't need to. (visual voicemail is the same way, except it uses IMAP...yes email IMAP for downloading voicemails) > Just don't embed ads in it like Android ha haha. My GUI isn't exactly pretty, but it works! Plus if I went crazy and did that, it's pretty easy to fork my work. > I just hate the bloatware it is particularly a problem on cheaper phones and part of the carrier eg. Boost they have these notifications you can't get rid of, that's the stuff that "boils my blood". This is sadly why I steer my family to getting iPhones, despite my personal misgivings of Apple. > Interesting info about the deployment stuff. Yeah someone pointed out if your app is like a basic to do list probably not going to get added. A lot of devs are volunteers as well, so the dynamics of the "app store" is much different. I personally think the biggest issue is making sure apps just don't get abandoned. If you really don't want to use official distro channels, flatpak seems to be the way to go (but you can build your own apt repository too if you really want to). > Anyway good luck to you, maybe I'll see you in this field ha whenever I get back into this. My Pinephone is currently just sitting on my desk uncharged. Thanks! I'm not hard to find on Matrix > I gotta check out Matrix too have not really heard of it, offhand I'm like "is it like Mastodon" or something... but yeah. I liken Matrix to "IRC on steriods" or "Slack without the vendor lockin". It's a group chat with different servers and channels.

by kop316 5y ago

jcun4128 5y ago

This will probably be nuts to follow since HN doesn't have any kind of notification but I appreciate your response. why is a backend needed for MMS? is it not direct like phone > cell tower > phone? That's cool with the purism work. > A full stack Visual Voicemail Client Just don't embed ads in it like Android ha > MicroG I have not heard of that I just hate the bloatware it is particularly a problem on cheaper phones and part of the carrier eg. Boost they have these notifications you can't get rid of, that's the stuff that "boils my blood". Heh I have a stack of phones too, I bought an old Windows Lumia device just because I used to really like it despite that all the app APIs are broken on it sadly. Interesting info about the deployment stuff. Yeah someone pointed out if your app is like a basic to do list probably not going to get added. There's also the name thing... like I feel pretty confident doing apt install filezilla that I actually get the FTP client. Anyway good luck to you, maybe I'll see you in this field ha whenever I get back into this. My Pinephone is currently just sitting on my desk uncharged. I gotta check out Matrix too have not really heard of it, offhand I'm like "is it like Mastodon" or something... but yeah.

kop316 5y ago
> This will probably be nuts to follow since HN doesn't have any kind of notification but I appreciate your response. You're welcome! > why is a backend needed for MMS? is it not direct like phone > cell tower > phone? The MMS stack is....interesting. It is a mix of SMS and HTTP (SMS acts as a signalling to the client (phone) to tell the client an MMS exists, and HTTP is used to get/send an MMS), and MMS has its own encoding scheme. mmsd-tng is an abstraction layer to do MMS decode/encode and send/recieve it all, so a chat application just has to talk to mmsd-tng to get/send MMS. There is a modem Abstraction layer (the two popular ones are oFono and MOdem Manager), and neither support MMS natively. However, with mmsd-tng, they don't need to. (visual voicemail is the same way, except it uses IMAP...yes email IMAP for downloading voicemails) > Just don't embed ads in it like Android ha haha. My GUI isn't exactly pretty, but it works! Plus if I went crazy and did that, it's pretty easy to fork my work. > I just hate the bloatware it is particularly a problem on cheaper phones and part of the carrier eg. Boost they have these notifications you can't get rid of, that's the stuff that "boils my blood". This is sadly why I steer my family to getting iPhones, despite my personal misgivings of Apple. > Interesting info about the deployment stuff. Yeah someone pointed out if your app is like a basic to do list probably not going to get added. A lot of devs are volunteers as well, so the dynamics of the "app store" is much different. I personally think the biggest issue is making sure apps just don't get abandoned. If you really don't want to use official distro channels, flatpak seems to be the way to go (but you can build your own apt repository too if you really want to). > Anyway good luck to you, maybe I'll see you in this field ha whenever I get back into this. My Pinephone is currently just sitting on my desk uncharged. Thanks! I'm not hard to find on Matrix > I gotta check out Matrix too have not really heard of it, offhand I'm like "is it like Mastodon" or something... but yeah. I liken Matrix to "IRC on steriods" or "Slack without the vendor lockin". It's a group chat with different servers and channels.