Debian on mobile feature prioritizing and fund raising proposed structure

tldr;

1. Collect issues that people feel are important. Each thread is an issue and can have multiple tags (affected devices, feature, regression etc)

2. After a month (roughly enough time for many people to propose issues) we start a poll with all suggested items to order the issues by priority

3. Create bounties on opencollective.org for the most popular issues

4. Ask people to donate and look for developers

5. If someone wants to work, they contact us and we mention who is working on the bounty page

6. Once the work is done, they collect the money from Open Collective

Introduce and describe the topic

Free Software gives right to modify the software, but to enjoy this right, we need to work collectively.

Problem

Google and Apple have a duopoly on smartphone operating systems. While Apple's iOS is fully proprietary, Google's Android is also largely proprietary (finding ROMs without Google apps is becoming more difficult/only older models have good custom roms/only accessible to smaller number of tech savvy users). Even if we manage to get custom ROMs working, the development of Android ecosystem is driven by Google which has a business model that depends on collecting maximum user data.

Background

GNU/Linux on mobiles gives a more decentralized and community-driven operating system with a focus on privacy of users. We have choices like Purism's Librem 5, Pinephone, Volla phone or some Android phones supported by Mobian, Droidian, and Postmarket OS.

Purism lead the development of PureOS with contributions like phosh, calls, chatty, libhandy etc, but that effort seems to have stalled for a long time (PureOS byzantium is based on Debian bullseye and PureOS crimson is not finished even though bookworm was released in June 2023). Other projects like Mobian or PostmarketOS are driven by volunteer developers and such projects tend to fragment developer resources since people tend to work on what is interesting to them (for example there is fragmentation with phosh and plasma mobile trying to implement same apps, though core components like kernel are usually shared) and not necessarily what is important to users. Many volunteer-driven projects lack volunteers, resulting in slow progress. 

Purism focused on providing a good user experience picking phosh and debian from many available options. But since their effort slowed down considerably in recent times, to be able to fill the gap left by Purism, we need another effort in prioritizing features and crowd funding targeted fixes and feature developments. The governance structure is inspired by [Prav XMPP App project](https://prav.app), which is driven by users.

Updated on 19 August 2024: With new PureOS subscriptions plan, the development of PureOS is now resumed [1].

Proposed governance structure

People who are already using GNU/Linux on mobile can join a codema.in group and propose the features they would like. Since this is a focused effort, we will pick a base - Mobian Trixie and Phosh. For core apps also, we will pick one app from available options.

Once we have a list of features, we can vote and find top five most wanted features. We will then try to raise funds through opencollective.org and find developers willing to implement those features. This process can be repeated if we manage to implement some top voted features.

For example, 

Phase 1: We will collect the more important feature requests or bug fixes proposed by users. We can set a deadline of 1 month for this phase.

Phase 2: Prepare a poll from the proposed features and bug fixes. We could give a month's time for people to vote.

Phase 3: Create fund raising projects on opencollective.com for the most popular 5 features.

Phase 4: Post on platforms like fossjobs.net and platforms for freelance developers to find someone willing to work on these features.

If this works out, repeat this process to implement more features.

Target audience for this project: people who are already using a GNU/Linux smart phone or are interested in it.

For people who are not yet using PureOS, Mobian or Droidian but looking to get started. You can buy a supported phone like Purism Librem 5 (this will not need non-free firmware[2] but costly), Volla phone (supported by Droidian), or PinePhone/PinePhonePro (supported by Mobian). Or one of older Android phones supported by Mobian or Droidian (though most supported models are very old).

[1] https://puri.sm/posts/pureos-crimson-development-report-july-2024/

[2] there is some non-free firmware for wifi and modem, but these devices are physically isolated via a standard

Interested? join us at https://xmpp.link/#debphoshfund@conference.diasp.in?join

Why is this important?

This is an idea to be able to prioritize features for Debian on Mobile (Mobian and Droidian with Phosh) and raise funds to develop most requested features as a community via OpenCollective.

How would you like people to respond?

Everyone can propose features or fixes that are important to them. Validate issues already proposed and comment on them with more inputs. Create new threads and add relevant tags (affected device, regression or feature, etc).

We will collect issues from 18th August 2024 to 18th September 2024 for the first issue prioritizing poll. We will start the poll to arrange the issues based on priority after 18th September.

You will need to create a codema.in account and join this group to participate.