6 ms·

µg: Open-source replacements of Google Apps and API on Android

271 points by Aissen 12y ago

erikano 12y ago
Interesting. Do they have a public road map so one can see how far they've come with this project?
mantraxD 12y ago
I know open source folks don't consider branding important, to the point they intentionally give their projects stupid names for the "irony" and so on, but I don't even have this key on my keyboard, and I don't even know how to say this. Mewjee? Mewg? Ug? Come on, folks, you can do better. Whether you know it or not, this has an actual effect on the ability of the project to spread by word of mouth (online or otherwise), therefore its success and number of contributors it'll get.
- jwuphysics 12y ago
  The URL is https://github.com/microg https://github.com/microg, so I'd have to guess "micro g".
- richardmjohn 12y ago
  Micro G... seems pretty reasonable.
  - leoc 12y ago
    I'd even say 'microgram'.
    - kissickas 12y ago
      That was my immediate internal pronunciation, but I'm almost certain that's not the intention.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- lvillani 12y ago
  "microG"? The Greek letter Mu is the SI prefix for "micro". μTorrent seems to do fine with the Mu, even though most people write it as "uTorrent" and spell it as such.
  - Nexxxeh 12y ago
    Its a ballache though, especially in 8.1 (u1) with classic start. Press the first letter and get a list of programs that start with that letter? U doesn't bring it up. Because it doesn't start with a U.
  - mootothemax 12y ago
    μTorrent seems to do fine with the Mu, even though most people write it as "uTorrent" and spell it as such. You've said it yourself there; μTorrent was rebranded by the majority of users to uTorrent, and "uTorrent" is a distinct, mostly spelt-how-it-sounds and easily-Googleable name. I doubt that an involuntary rebranding of μg to "ug" would be quite as successful, nor likely to happen.
    - Curmudgel 12y ago
      The funny thing is that in Modern Greek the letter μ is pronounced "me", so the name of the software could be pronounced "meTorrent". Spelling it with a u makes the name of the software sound like "youTorrent".
  - grkvlt 12y ago
    > "microG" Pronounced "MEE-KROG", right? First syllable rhymes with me, second frog.
- heyalexej 12y ago
  I thought the same. Branding can make or break the success of a project. I think OSS is no exception. Patio11 wrote a great piece on the branding of Heartbleed. [1] [1] http://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/04/09/what-heartbleed-can-teach-the-oss-community-about-marketing/ http://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/04/09/what-heartbleed-can-teac...
- mootothemax 12y ago
  This has an actual effect on the ability of the project to spread by word of mouth (online or otherwise), therefore its success and number of contributors it'll get I completely agree with you. "What's that you're using?" "Microgram, I think. It's cool, you should check it out" sound of frantic typing "I can't find it on Google, how do you spell it?" Variants on the above conversation happen every day. Adopting a name like μg only places petty and annoying barriers in front of potential users.
- minopret 12y ago
  Here on Hacker News, I momentarily mistook "µg" for "pg". So I thought Paul Graham was making an announcement about APIs for Android. If that had been intentional, it could have been a homograph attack.
otikik 12y ago
This needs more docs or pointers to docs. I understand what's trying to do on a high level, but I have no idea of how to use it, or its state (like, is it still in initial dev, or has it reached alpha?)
- richdougherty 12y ago
  This forum post looks like it gives an overview: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1715375 http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1715375
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
nacnud 12y ago
Great start. So will I be able to run a server where I can gradually switch out Google's implementation of services with these as they mature?
- treffer 12y ago
  Not that easy. I'm trying that right now on a second phone. I've rolled my own ROM which I'll update this weekend with all the cool new stuff (especially the mock play services / maps v2): http://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-nexus/development/rom-source-software-t2701580 http://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-nexus/development/rom... mar-v-in and his µg are corner stones to build a nice free android. As for a server side I'd suggest ownCloud at the moment. I'm running one on ipv6 at home. Works great.
  - cik 12y ago
    I couldn't agree more. I'm using ownCloud with InstandUpload to handle photo backup, and ownCloud itself for the DropBox equivalency. With Cal-DAV and Card-Dav enabled, owncloud let me disconnect from Google Contacts/Calendar. Owncloud support for rainloop means that I have GREAT webmail (which I never use) and more importantly, an IMAP server I run on top of this. It's becoming a lot easier to disconnect, with the sole exception of the Google Play store. More importantly bitnami makes it a one-click install for all of the above, minus the IMAP server.
  - rquirk 12y ago
    I commend your efforts, but a small rant: One thing that really puts me off xda is that the posts say "open source" but there is no link to anything like how to build the distribution yourself. Just a frickin' binary zip download. And that's served over http from a random site, with no checksums and unsigned. Only Replicant seem to be doing things the right way, but they are going so slow, and are so unwilling to use proprietary blobs anywhere that there's a space for something like you have here - blobs for hardware features only, no proprietary apps, strongly anti-Google, including F-droid by default - but it needs a bit of proper open source-style organization. Sigh. The whole ROM scene is a big mess :(
ricardolopes 12y ago
Great project. The importance of something like this is increasingly growing, as Android ecosystem is getting more and more dependent on Google's proprietary software. For the next steps, it would be nice to have some onboarding document for this project, as otherwise it will probably look to complex and unwelcoming. I see that most of the replacements are in a very early phase (and one of them is empty), so I hope that this project manages to survive this early state to grow into something we can actually rely on.
- DCKing 12y ago
  > as Android ecosystem is getting more and more dependent on Google's proprietary software This is untrue when you're talking about app development, which this is about. It can be demonstrated by simply pointing out that Microsoft's, Amazon's and Baidu's Android derivatives are fully functioning commercially even though the Google Play Services are not available on these devices. The Amazon App Store even has 240,000+ apps. There's an increasing amount of propietary Google software running on Android phones, but that has no consequences for other apps. No functionality of AOSP is being absorbed into Play Services at all.
  - ricardolopes 12y ago
    Google is frequently pushing new Google Play Services that developers can use for their apps. Those services have the massive advantage over AOSP APIs of having OTA updates for all, not having to rely on carriers and manufacturers for full OS upgrades. In addition, those services offer new and useful functionality that is not always present in AOSP. Therefore, it is only natural that, on a general basis, developers start using more and more of Google's proprietary APIs. This is not to say that pure AOSP is broken, or that it is impossible to have products like Kindle Fire and Nokia X. But it is a growing problem, and the fact that Amazon has to spend so much time replicating Play Services' APIs to have a decent app store (that is still considerable smaller than Google Play Store) is concerning.
    - DCKing 12y ago
      That is true. Although AOSP in itself is a complete operating system, most apps require the need for the "extras" that are provided by some cloud service. Although you can manage without, apps assume an "ecosystem" with additional cloud services rather than an OS to be present. It would be wrong to have AOSP depend on Google cloud APIs, and seperating those cloud APIs in Google Play Services also has problems. There's really no winning here for an open platform.
agumonkey 12y ago
just when lwn talks about Google free Android https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7952550 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7952550 timing is fun
- privong 12y ago
  My guess is someone posted this link after seeing the LWN piece linked on HN.
devindotcom 12y ago
Mu-G! If it's anywhere near as good as Muji...
- wyager 12y ago
  Man, I'm suffering from a major case of Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon today. I heard of Muji for the first time from three independent, unrelated sources today. To be fair, it is awesome. Just got back from the store near my apartment.
donniezazen 12y ago
Google Apps =/= GAPPS.
pbreit 12y ago
I'n sorry bit even insinuating that something like this could remotely stand in for Google Apps is completely insulting to everyone's intelligence.

271 points by Aissen 12y ago

Interesting. Do they have a public road map so one can see how far they've come with this project?

I know open source folks don't consider branding important, to the point they intentionally give their projects stupid names for the "irony" and so on, but I don't even have this key on my keyboard, and I don't even know how to say this. Mewjee? Mewg? Ug? Come on, folks, you can do better. Whether you know it or not, this has an actual effect on the ability of the project to spread by word of mouth (online or otherwise), therefore its success and number of contributors it'll get.

jwuphysics 12y ago
The URL is https://github.com/microg https://github.com/microg, so I'd have to guess "micro g".
richardmjohn 12y ago
Micro G... seems pretty reasonable.
- leoc 12y ago
  I'd even say 'microgram'.
  - kissickas 12y ago
    That was my immediate internal pronunciation, but I'm almost certain that's not the intention.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
lvillani 12y ago
"microG"? The Greek letter Mu is the SI prefix for "micro". μTorrent seems to do fine with the Mu, even though most people write it as "uTorrent" and spell it as such.
- Nexxxeh 12y ago
  Its a ballache though, especially in 8.1 (u1) with classic start. Press the first letter and get a list of programs that start with that letter? U doesn't bring it up. Because it doesn't start with a U.
- mootothemax 12y ago
  μTorrent seems to do fine with the Mu, even though most people write it as "uTorrent" and spell it as such. You've said it yourself there; μTorrent was rebranded by the majority of users to uTorrent, and "uTorrent" is a distinct, mostly spelt-how-it-sounds and easily-Googleable name. I doubt that an involuntary rebranding of μg to "ug" would be quite as successful, nor likely to happen.
  - Curmudgel 12y ago
    The funny thing is that in Modern Greek the letter μ is pronounced "me", so the name of the software could be pronounced "meTorrent". Spelling it with a u makes the name of the software sound like "youTorrent".
- grkvlt 12y ago
  > "microG" Pronounced "MEE-KROG", right? First syllable rhymes with me, second frog.
heyalexej 12y ago
I thought the same. Branding can make or break the success of a project. I think OSS is no exception. Patio11 wrote a great piece on the branding of Heartbleed. [1] [1] http://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/04/09/what-heartbleed-can-teach-the-oss-community-about-marketing/ http://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/04/09/what-heartbleed-can-teac...
mootothemax 12y ago
This has an actual effect on the ability of the project to spread by word of mouth (online or otherwise), therefore its success and number of contributors it'll get I completely agree with you. "What's that you're using?" "Microgram, I think. It's cool, you should check it out" sound of frantic typing "I can't find it on Google, how do you spell it?" Variants on the above conversation happen every day. Adopting a name like μg only places petty and annoying barriers in front of potential users.
minopret 12y ago
Here on Hacker News, I momentarily mistook "µg" for "pg". So I thought Paul Graham was making an announcement about APIs for Android. If that had been intentional, it could have been a homograph attack.

otikik 12y ago

This needs more docs or pointers to docs. I understand what's trying to do on a high level, but I have no idea of how to use it, or its state (like, is it still in initial dev, or has it reached alpha?)

richdougherty 12y ago
This forum post looks like it gives an overview: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1715375 http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1715375

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

nacnud 12y ago

Great start. So will I be able to run a server where I can gradually switch out Google's implementation of services with these as they mature?

treffer 12y ago
Not that easy. I'm trying that right now on a second phone. I've rolled my own ROM which I'll update this weekend with all the cool new stuff (especially the mock play services / maps v2): http://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-nexus/development/rom-source-software-t2701580 http://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-nexus/development/rom... mar-v-in and his µg are corner stones to build a nice free android. As for a server side I'd suggest ownCloud at the moment. I'm running one on ipv6 at home. Works great.
- cik 12y ago
  I couldn't agree more. I'm using ownCloud with InstandUpload to handle photo backup, and ownCloud itself for the DropBox equivalency. With Cal-DAV and Card-Dav enabled, owncloud let me disconnect from Google Contacts/Calendar. Owncloud support for rainloop means that I have GREAT webmail (which I never use) and more importantly, an IMAP server I run on top of this. It's becoming a lot easier to disconnect, with the sole exception of the Google Play store. More importantly bitnami makes it a one-click install for all of the above, minus the IMAP server.
- rquirk 12y ago
  I commend your efforts, but a small rant: One thing that really puts me off xda is that the posts say "open source" but there is no link to anything like how to build the distribution yourself. Just a frickin' binary zip download. And that's served over http from a random site, with no checksums and unsigned. Only Replicant seem to be doing things the right way, but they are going so slow, and are so unwilling to use proprietary blobs anywhere that there's a space for something like you have here - blobs for hardware features only, no proprietary apps, strongly anti-Google, including F-droid by default - but it needs a bit of proper open source-style organization. Sigh. The whole ROM scene is a big mess :(

ricardolopes 12y ago

Great project. The importance of something like this is increasingly growing, as Android ecosystem is getting more and more dependent on Google's proprietary software. For the next steps, it would be nice to have some onboarding document for this project, as otherwise it will probably look to complex and unwelcoming. I see that most of the replacements are in a very early phase (and one of them is empty), so I hope that this project manages to survive this early state to grow into something we can actually rely on.

DCKing 12y ago
> as Android ecosystem is getting more and more dependent on Google's proprietary software This is untrue when you're talking about app development, which this is about. It can be demonstrated by simply pointing out that Microsoft's, Amazon's and Baidu's Android derivatives are fully functioning commercially even though the Google Play Services are not available on these devices. The Amazon App Store even has 240,000+ apps. There's an increasing amount of propietary Google software running on Android phones, but that has no consequences for other apps. No functionality of AOSP is being absorbed into Play Services at all.
- ricardolopes 12y ago
  Google is frequently pushing new Google Play Services that developers can use for their apps. Those services have the massive advantage over AOSP APIs of having OTA updates for all, not having to rely on carriers and manufacturers for full OS upgrades. In addition, those services offer new and useful functionality that is not always present in AOSP. Therefore, it is only natural that, on a general basis, developers start using more and more of Google's proprietary APIs. This is not to say that pure AOSP is broken, or that it is impossible to have products like Kindle Fire and Nokia X. But it is a growing problem, and the fact that Amazon has to spend so much time replicating Play Services' APIs to have a decent app store (that is still considerable smaller than Google Play Store) is concerning.
  - DCKing 12y ago
    That is true. Although AOSP in itself is a complete operating system, most apps require the need for the "extras" that are provided by some cloud service. Although you can manage without, apps assume an "ecosystem" with additional cloud services rather than an OS to be present. It would be wrong to have AOSP depend on Google cloud APIs, and seperating those cloud APIs in Google Play Services also has problems. There's really no winning here for an open platform.

agumonkey 12y ago

just when lwn talks about Google free Android https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7952550 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7952550 timing is fun

privong 12y ago
My guess is someone posted this link after seeing the LWN piece linked on HN.

devindotcom 12y ago

Mu-G! If it's anywhere near as good as Muji...

wyager 12y ago
Man, I'm suffering from a major case of Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon today. I heard of Muji for the first time from three independent, unrelated sources today. To be fair, it is awesome. Just got back from the store near my apartment.

donniezazen 12y ago

Google Apps =/= GAPPS.

pbreit 12y ago

I'n sorry bit even insinuating that something like this could remotely stand in for Google Apps is completely insulting to everyone's intelligence.