TL;DR; This is a call to every FLOSS developer interested in working towards Free Software driven mobile phones, esp. targetting the Fairphone 2. If your only show stopper is lack of development hardware or lack of financial support, please go on reading below.
As I see it, the Fairphone 2 will be (or already is) the FLOSS community platform on the mobile devices market. Regularly, I get new notice about people working on this or that OS port to the FP2 hardware platform. The combination of a hardware-wise sustainably maintained mobile phone platform and a Free (or sort-of-Free) operating system being ported to it, makes the Fairphone 2 a really attractive device.
Personally, I run Sailfish OS on my Fairphone 2. Some weeks ago, I got contacted by one of my sponsors letting me know that he got involved in setting up an initiative that works on porting the Ubuntu Table/Phone OS to FP2. That very project is in need of more developers. Possibly, it needs exactly YOU!!!
So, if you are a developer that meets one or more of the below requirements and are interested in working in a highly motivated team, please get in touch with the UT4FP [1] project (skill requirements taken from the UT4FP website):
- Expert knowledge on Android Build System (AOSP / Cyanogenmod);
- Experience in porting devices to Android;
- Knowledge of build-up of systems like Ubuntu Touch, SailfishOS, Firefox OS;
- Knowledge of or understanding the Ubuntu Touch build system and the available manifests: UBports, but also phablet.ubuntu.com;
- Experience with Git / repo C/C++ experience for (potentially) customizing code• Reverse engineering → Debugging individual components on the basis of logcat, dmesg, syslog, strace (Boot, Graphics, Camera, GPS, Wifi etc.);
- Debugging build errors and adjusting (Android) Makefiles;
- Building a devicetree or migrating an existing devicetree for the purpose of a successful build;
- Knowing where to find which components. (i.e. GitHub, CAF, Vendortrees (blobs));
- Knowing how to patch a kernel and how to port AppArmor;
- You know how to document each step and are willing to make all codes and adjustments available.
My sponsor offers to send out FP2 devices to (seriously) interested developers and if needed, he can also back up developers financially. If you are interested, please get in touch with me (and I'll channel you through...) via IRC (on the OFTC or Freenode network).
light+love
Mike (aka sunweaver on IRC)