For many iPhone users, the killer app is Apple Photos and the way it works with iCloud to provide seamless workflow between desktop and mobile. For Android users, it’s Google Photos.
Normies don’t understand the issues surrounding privacy and they can’t be bothered educating themselves on all the details. They just want to have easy and convenient access to their photos.
If Librem One offered something along these lines, it could help drive the adoption of the Librem 5.
Is there something already existing that could be brought into the Librem One suite and named as “Librem Photos?”
Pretty sure you can install a Gallery app and sync them to your Nextcloud account (whether it’s Librems or your
own hosted).
That’s pretty much what Android users who choose not to use Google services do.
I’d like Purism to have one integrated into their Librem One suite by default. Most non-technical people are not going to be capable of researching the various options and figuring out how to install it. They just want everything to be there from the moment they sign in to their phone. Then they just need to learn how to use it, which hopefully won’t be too hard.
This will be a crucial component to get mainstream adoption by normies.
Most non technical people will not be buying a Librem phone on release either. Many non technical people I know have no idea even that they’re using or not using these services and sometimes freak out when they learn google or Apple has all their photos.
IMO Purism should get the hardware working and manufactured, get some software going so that it’s usable as an internet connected device and phone device… then the rest can follow gradually.
And they can take their time to figure out how to provide these services rather than betraying their no tracking no ad philosophy by quickly copying exactly what Apple and google do.
Sorry for the confusion. I am NOT suggesting that Purism implement ads or tracking. I’m thinking more along the lines of something like the Apple Photos + iCloud combination (my understanding is that it has no ads or tracking). However, the difference would be that it would be built with FOSS and open standards so that there is no walled-garden lock-in.
All the items in the Librem One suite seem to be adaptations of existing services, so I’m thinking that there already must be something like this out there. s3ns0r Suggested above that there are gallery apps available for NextCloud, so perhaps one of these could be adapted.
Hope that makes sense. I’m out of my depth in this discussion and welcome any guidance.
The reason why I raise this issue is that I was surprised to see no mention of photos in the Librem One lineup thus far (as of today). I would think that photos is one of the highest priorities for many users. It’s what convinced boomer normies to give up their flip phones and start using smart phones - they wanted to see pics of their grandkids.
That is probably because the service ideas were made by engineers, not marketing guys
They know that photos are… Files.
It should be simple to make a photo app on top of Librem Files.
OTOH, it is less pressing on the Librem 5. You can add lots of cheap local storage by inserting a huge SD card.
Apple does not want that. Either buy overpriced local storage from the beginning, or pay for cloud storage. SD card will be cheaper after just one year.
The idea of syncing it outside the device is more like a backup / archive feature, in case
you lost the device for example.
Also it adds convenience for users who actually do something with the photos later
instead of just keeping them idle on the phone.
Using internal storage (access via cables) and SD cards is so 90s, you will have to plug/unplug stuff
many times for simple things. Nextcloud/Seafile/Syncthing are great options to look at.
Yeah, synching is key. For normies, all they want to know is that they can take a photo with their phone and it will magically show up on their other devices.
That said, having the option for SD cards might be useful for some users in some situations.
Sorry for the confusion. I am NOT suggesting that Purism implement ads or tracking. I’m thinking more along the lines of something like the Apple Photos + iCloud combination (my understanding is that it has no ads or tracking). However, the difference would be that it would be built with FOSS and open standards so that there is no walled-garden lock-in.[/quote]
Sorry, I wasn’t confused but my response was hurried
What I would have liked to expand on was that such a service opens up an easier avenue of tracking and surveillance (your pics, stored on someone else’s servers! Plus they’re on DigitalOcean, so even less safe by definition vs running their own hardware), and so Purism would need to be thoughtful and consider very carefully how to implement or design such a service to keep aligning with their goals - otherwise what’s the point of yet another Google/iCloud Photos clone that doesn’t bring a focus on privacy and anti-tracking? When you’re one ToS update, technical or malicious mishap or NSL away from eroding that same privacy…
Compared to say the encrypted email service (PGP works! And deleting old emails is a reasonable compromise if you don’t expect your mailbox to be gmail, etc), or to Librem Social (it’s public anyway!), htis needs more thought
And yes NextCloud has a gallery app, is open and federated, can be self-hosted, so it’s already a good starting point… But again just hosting it themselves without considering the implications of hosting other people’s unencrypted files and photos… Not a good idea IMO.
Hope this helps understand where my mind was going!
It looks like, they try to “create” such an online service but like the phone is crowdfunded. https://puri.sm/posts/the-new-librem-one-services/
The only strange thing is that they are kind of holding back to what libre/foss will be used, lack of transparency if you will but the marketing campaign looks good.
Would you for the love of some god share those blog posts with us. I only found some related to email and social. So it’s mastodon and openpgp implementation based on k9. This topic was referring to photos/files so I would like to see something about that.I suspect it’s going to be nexcloud so a clear statement would help. I saw an Competitive chart, good but there is nothing like “it’s going to be based on a fork of …”
That would clear things a bit.
