there seems to be great interest in mobile "chat" applications and/or replacements for text message/sms service. there also seems to be an abundance of software trying to address this interest.
a recent article by @joshualund presents an interesting overview of software in this field:
of the software discussed in this article, only four are open source/free software - and have already been released.
i'll disregard the unreleased and closed-source software, since i am not interested in non-free software (particularly for the purpose of secure infrastructure), and it's pointless to speculate about unfinished code.
so these are the options i'd consider at least potentially interesting:
ChatSecure, based on XMPP and OTR
Surespot
Telegram, the cryptography of which seems to be questionable, according to experts
TextSecure which seems to be particularly highly regarded
there is at least one more contender that is not listed in joshua's article:
tox, as announced and discussed here
(and finally, i suspect there are even more ways to use OTR on android, but i haven't researched those so far)
it appears that right now, none of the interesting software packages are available via f-droid, and there seem to be various serious reasons for that.
i plan to dig deeper into TextSecure and Surespot (and possibly tox) soon, and write summaries of what i find.
a little while ago, i built my own package of k-9 mail 4.802.
recently, an up-to-date build of 4.803 appeared in the f-droid package repository. so i just uninstalled my self-built package and installed the new one via f-droid.
by using export/import settings, it was a job for all of 5 minutes, and i'm back to having a fully functional imap client on my cyanogen-based (almost entirely) free software nexus s.
i've been using my cyanogenmod 11 based nexus s system (with the entire userland consisting of free software) for a few weeks now, and i'm feeling increasingly at home on it.
here's a list of software that i currently use (and recommend):
- cyanogenmod (cm11, based on android 4.4.x) as the base distribution of the android system
- f-droid as a repository of free android software (replaces "google play store")
- k-9 mail for email (to connect to my own imap/smtp services)
- OsmAnd for looking at maps and to do turn-by-turn navigation (it is mostly based around local copies of openstreetmap data)
- DAVdroid for calendar/contacts (connecting to my own davical service)
- sipdroid for voice over ip telephony
- twidere a free twitter client
- c:geo for geocaching
i've installed all of these packages conveniently, using the f-droid client software (with the exception of k-9 mail, of which i recently built my own package).
since sometime in 2011 i've been running an instance of the davical server for my personal calendar/contact needs.
at first, the android client situation was pretty bleak (especially when it came to free software clients). by now there are a number of good options that i have used:
- aCal is a standalone caldav client (it doesn't integrate with android's calendar subsystem)
- the AndroidCaldavSyncAdapater
- and most recently DAVdroid
since DAVdroid is free software, exists in the f-droid repository, looks very neat and offers an all-in-one bidirectional sync setup, i decided to go with it for my new nexus s cm11 setup.
it works very seamlessly so far. the only stumbling stone i have found is mostly self-inflicted: i am running my davical instance with a self-signed ssl certificate. DAVdroid expects me to set up my android device to accept my ssl cert (as opposed to handling the exception itself). That makes a lot of sense to me, but turned out to be more messy than i expected.
a basic procedure for accepting a "self signed" ssl certificate on an android device is described here: the certificate is saved into a file, converted using openssl, and import it into android's credential storage.
however, in order to do be allowed to import and use "User"-specified certs, android enforces that a "screen lock" must be configured. there is also a permanent "Network may be monitored" warning in the notification area. (on top of that, on my cm11 device, i got a strange error message asking me to provide a password to access credential storage - this message disappeared when i set up a lock screen)
i'm not sure why ssl cert management on android difficulty is so difficult - it makes very little sense to me.
so i think eventually i'll want to take this ssl key topic a step further (i haven't tried this yet, but i believe the way to go would be):
- generate my own CA cert
- add that CA cert to my android device
- generate certs for my own ssl sites that are signed with my CA cert
i've always been using k-9 mail as my email client on all my android devices. at first i've used the package from google's android application store.
lately i've reinstalled my nexus s with a build of cyanogenmod "cm11". the plan for that reinstallation was to only run free software applications on the device (which means, among other things: no "google play store"). to find and install free android software, i've been using the excellent f-droid application collection.
however, the version of k-9 mail that f-droid currently provides seems not to work so well on the new android 4.4.x version i'm running - so i tried to figure out how the build process of the f-droid team works, how k-9 can be built, and what one would need to do to help f-droid build a new version of k-9 mail.
for now i've built a debug apk version of the latest k-9 release 4.802 to try on my device, following this how-to.
some links i wanted to store here (mostly for myself), to use if/when i decide to try and contribute to f-droid's build of k-9 mail:
how to export/import settings (for easier replacement of k9 packages during build experimentation): http://grokbase.com/t/gg/k-9-mail/139h7v16xt/import-export-settings
after having used google's version of android on my nexus s for over two years, it was high time for a fresh start.
i decided to install a "nightly" build of cyanogenmod 11 (cm11) - which is based on android 4.4 ("KitKat") - after a cursory glance at forum postings where people sounded reasonably with these builds.
i got the rom itself from here: http://download.cyanogenmod.org/?device=crespo
and the latest clockworkmod ("cwm") 6.0.4.3 from here: http://www.clockworkmod.com/rommanager (the older version of cwm that the cyanogen installation manual refers to doesn't seem to work for cm11 daily - you do indeed need the new cwm)
with these two packages i followed these general instructions: http://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/Install_CM_for_crespo - and am now looking at a fresh android 4.4.2
as a next step, i installed the "f-droid" software installation client from https://f-droid.org/
my plan is to only install free (open source) software onto this device - and f-droid is an awesome repository of free/open source software for android. the client software works similar to the proprietary app-stores and offers functionality for searching as well as automated updates of installed packages.
i'm starting this new blog today with the intention of collecting and maybe straightening out my thoughts on and use of android devices - specifically with the intention of limiting my use of non-free software, and being more aware of (or even avoiding) privacy issues that arise.
sometime in the late 1990s i started to become aware of the free software movement and started optimizing my computer usage for freedom. i've probably never been entirely "clean", but i've definitely had times when i could enumerate easily the exceptions to the rule of using free software for almost everything. and had reasoned out the tradeoffs that came with any given piece of proprietary code.
however, over the last years i've given up a lot of that state of affairs as i started to play with mobile computing devices. these days i'm using one android smartphone and one android tablet. which are neat to have, but then again, i have absolutely no idea what the hell i am running on them, and am making far more tradeoffs in terms of proprietary code and loss of privacy than i can ever hope to intelligently reason about in my mind.
right now i'm hopeful that over the coming months i will be able to dig into these questions and also to find some answers. and maybe even end up with a much cleaner mobile computing environment.
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jacobvanloon