Open sourcing proceeding

[rainemak]

Sorry @attah , I just clarified your last question – more like if there’s interest towards Sailfish Maps. And all location related low-level components have been already open sourced long time back.

My bet is that there is no need for Sailfish Maps per se – that could be there as well. A-GPS is the thing that we’re all wanting.

[nephros]

@rainemak

That said, this won’t solve all issues immediately but we can start gathering local information for the BeaconDB – @nephros had earlier some ideas also regarding Sailfish OS app. So, maybe we could create a Sailfish OS app that could be used to gather beacon data. For the open community, it looks that BeaconDB is getting traction and we as a community should be involved to help.

I think the better design compared to a dedicated collector app would be a daemon which does the collecting and submitting in the background, and UI to enable/disable that.

IIRC one of the involved backends (was it GeoClue (2?!!)) has a plugin which already does that. This could be adapted (backported) for SFOS.

This IMO allows for tighter coupling between the collector, and ofono, connman, than an app could.

[avhakola]

@rainemak

I don’t see why this would take priority but what do you think about Sailfish Maps regarding open sourcing?

If you have the rights, then please do it. I always thought the reason for getting rid of the Maps was contract ending between Jolla and Appello, and them holding copyrights to some key parts, preventing you from moving on with it by yourself.

[CLMA31]

@rainemak out of curiosity, is there any reason why all of the native apps couldn’t be open sourced? Email, calendar, camera, gallery, clock, calculator, media, notes etc?

[ApB]

We have pure maps i don’t see a need for sailfish maps. Maybe jolla can adopt it and make any changes necessary to polish it or whatever but all in all its a great app.

[crun]

@rainemak

Please, understand that there is a difference between GPS and A-GPS. Assisted GPS helps you to focus on certain region with help of WLAN APs and mobile towers. We should rollout the BeaconDB support to help with assisted GPS.

This in completely incorrect. A-GPS is downloading the GPS ephemeris data from a server.

What helps with GPS lock is regularly downloading the ephemeris from a server when a data connection is available (e.g. once a day), so that it is immediately available when the GPS starts up.

Skyhook or BeaconDB does not generally help with getting a GPS lock. It is a red herring, and should be a far lower priority for effort than making the SF GPS work properly and the A-GPS work reliably.

[elderorb]

Even though BeaconDB is not a replacement for SUPL, it still should be able to inject ephemeris data so definitely worth including into next SFOS update. Moreover, based on geoclue change log:

*2.8.0

New features:

• Add URL and API key for the Positon location service to default config comments
• Include the SSID in queries to the Ichnaea server to support BeaconDB
• Set User-Agent in web source queries and add OS info to it
• Allow disabling WiFi source and static source during compilation
• Show default Wifi URLs set on compile time in default config comments
• Add BeaconDB URLs to to default config comments
• Add a separate GeoIP location source:
  • Add an ‘ip’ config section with selectable backend methods: ichnaea, gmaps and reallyfreegeoip
  • Allow overriding URL and accuracy in ip methods with values from config
  • Use BeaconDB as the backup GeoIP URL, if URLs are not defined in ip or web source configs
  • Remove the GeoIP functionality from the web source, it now only handles queries with Wifi and 3G data
• Install sysusers.d file for the geoclue user
• Use BeaconDB as the compiled-in default server for locate and submit queries in the web source*

.. BeaconDB is already integrated into recent release, so hopefully it will not consume too much efforts from SFOS devs to upgrade geoclue.

[tortoisedoc]

Is the ephemeris data not persistent?

[nephros]

Well that’s GeoClue2 while SFOS uses the ancient GeoClue1 APIs/implementation.

Backporting would be needed, and I guess there’s the issue of GPLv3 which is a no-go for base system stuff.

[elderorb]

Oh no, GPL3 again… I wish Jolla focused on paid ports / clouds / additional services and just open-sourced everything. Current situation is just continuous decaying long-term…

[pvuorela]

Geoclue2 is quite a different thing than the older geoclue and it has architecture which doesn’t fit our needs. So backporting is unlikely possible, but we have anyway our own MLS provider which is switching to beacondb by default. And we’re unlikely to move to geoclue2 not even considering licensing or resources.

[CLMA31]

Now that Notes are open sourced, what will be next one?

[rainemak]

Please find notes app here Notes app available at Sailfish OS GitHub

We’ll try to write separate announcements from upcoming apps / components. As we write them, we probably have other tips aside. Let’s focus Notes app related comments to the Notes topic, thanks.

[nephros]

@crun

What helps with GPS lock is regularly downloading the ephemeris from a server when a data connection is available (e.g. once a day), so that it is immediately available when the GPS starts up.

Sounds doable as there seem to be plenty of sources for that data, and download tools available.

Any clues on where that data must be placed, and in which format?

EDIT: ignore me I don’t know what I’m talking about.

Add aGPS on Sailfish (and maybe UBT and Droidian) - possible way

SUPL is the protocol used for aGPS (though SUPL V2 also supports other GNSS systems, not only GPS). It is almost entirely handled by the SOC, there’s not much to see in SailfishOS, let alone Waydroid. Whenever a client requests highly accurate positioning information, geoclue-master starts geoclue-hybris which checks, if aGPS is wanted/allowed by the user (i.e. not in flight mode) and technically possible (mobile data connection available). If possible, geoclue-hybris injects current time and S…