Experiments with Matrix for the Purism Librem5, Starring Ubports and Nheko

https://matrix.org/blog/2017/09/28/experiments-with-matrix-on-the-purism-librem5-starring-ubports-and-nheko/

by rippsu • 9 years ago

119 33 9 years ago

Arathorn6• 9 years ago

(author here: i’m waiting for someone to tell me how installing qt5.9 on ubports is actually a oneliner if you know what you’re doing... :D)

rippsu• 9 years ago

installing qt5.9 on ubports is actually a oneliner if you know what you’re doing

Arathorn6• 9 years ago

jcelerier• 9 years ago

sed 's/\n/;/g' and tada, one liner

ThatGeoGuy2• 9 years ago

Congrats to the Matrix team (mostly Matthew/Arathorn?) for this! This is a really cool proof of concept for making a native mobile client for Linux. One question, though: my understanding was that some of the work needed to use megolm/olm correctly and securely was in matrix-js-sdk (unless I read the audit wrong). That said, how much work would need to be done to current Qt/GTK SDKs to replicate this (I assume it's mostly key management stuff), and how would the team keep this in sync with any changes made to the JS SDK in the future? Alternatively, am I misunderstanding something fundamental?

I've already backed Purism's Librem 5 campaign, and I think everyone else should too, if they care about a fully free handset. It can be found at https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/ if you were looking for it.

Arathorn6• 9 years ago

At the moment about 60% of the code required to do e2e encryption is in the main SDK layer (as it has to hook into all of the Matrix API stuff, client UI/UX and local storage), and 40% in libolm. This isn’t great as it makes porting the app code between platforms more work than it could be and risks bugs - but we have already ported it to ios and android, and kitsune is working at porting to libqmatrixclient and penguin42 is porting it to glib for use in libpurple. In future we’ll try to push more of this down into crossplatform library on top of libolm (libolmmatrix?) which can then have a slightly hairy API to call back to the main SDK to do HTTP and storage operations etc - but for now we’re trying to get it out of beta in the current architecture before we then go and refactor it all.

So: in an practice a native Librem client would use libqmatrixclient or something similar, with the application layer E2E functionality handled by that library - but in future that could be factored out to simplify life for everyone.

Another approach could be to use a sidecar process to proxy the traffic and offload all the E2E stuff (which we need for a shim for simple clients anyway - even curl etc). But nobody has yet stepped up to build this, plus integrating with UI is a bit of a pain (local popup notifs + local web interfade for key management?). It would be a superfun project for someone wanting to play with E2E though!

ThatGeoGuy2• 9 years ago

Thanks for the response. Seems like there's a lot of work to be done on refactoring, but I can appreciate that E2E stuff is still in beta.

As for that last remark, perhaps it's a good GSoC proposal?

jjrh• 9 years ago

It's awesome to see they are so gung ho to get work started. Here's hoping the librem gets funded and things get on track on the hardware side.

ZenoArrow2• 9 years ago

I really hope the Librem 5 meets its target (I'm a backer). I'd also hope that the fundraising deadline could be extended if it only needs a few more days to complete. Having a FLOSS phone platform, especially with a strong communication platform like Matrix at its core, is something that should ultimately do a lot of good for the continued growth of open source/free software.

sexydefinesher• 9 years ago

if they keep going at their current pace they will most likely make it.

ZenoArrow2• 9 years ago

$821,660 / 35 days = $23,476 a day (on average)

$23,476 * 25 days = $586,900

$821,660 + $586,900 = $1,408,560

Fundraising campaigns are rarely linear and often see an upsurge at the end, but it's still clear that the fundraising trajectory is slightly behind the $1,500,000 target at the moment.

teddyh6• 9 years ago

Too bad that the Purism Libre5 won’t qualify for FSF’s RYF¹ certification². I’m sorry, I really don’t mean to come off as snarkily dismissive as this might appear. Let me try again.

This project certainly seems to try to do their very best, and what they have achieved might be all that’s possible to achieve at the present time. I just wanted to, as politely as I might, note that there are those of us for this is a dealbreaker, and that we will rather go without than get the current good-enough product. (If there were none of us, there would be no commercial incentive for any company to keep improving in the right direction.)

I really don’t mean to dismiss anyone’s effort; honestly.

1. https://www.fsf.org/ryf

2. https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/

Arathorn6• 9 years ago

which bit disqualifies for RYF ooi? the need for a proprietary baseband module, even if it’s “external”?

teddyh6• 9 years ago

That information is in the second link I provided.

Etzos3• 9 years ago

Considering how they phrased it and the fact that no phone has the FSF's RYF certification I would tend to think it's because it's currently impossible.

That they took the time to add a note about RYF certification and that they will continue to keep the FSF up to date on this shows that they do care about this. I honestly don't think there's any more you could ask of them.

teddyh6• 9 years ago

it's currently impossible. […] I honestly don't think there's any more you could ask of them.

I don’t dispute that. I have no ill will towards them. I just, you know, won’t actually be buying the phone until one exists which is RYF-certified. I just felt it important that someone pointed this out – while surely their effort towards RYF compliance counts for much, it won’t get me all the way towards actually buying it. I’ll wish them all the luck in actually achieving it, but I (at least) won’t be buying anything until they actually get there.

mixedbit• 9 years ago

If they manage to launch Libre 5, the future iterations may fix this shortcoming. If Libre 5 fails, we are stuck with Android & iPhone, which have much bigger problems.

mlinksva• 9 years ago

Even if Librem 5 fails, there will be subsequent fund-a-significantly-more-free-phone attempts. $1.5m is really a small amount.

Anyway I do hope Librem 5 succeeds (meeting threshold, shipping...going mass market...) and will probably back it.

craftyguy2• 9 years ago

we will rather go without than get the current good-enough product

What are you using now?

If there were none of us, there would be no commercial incentive for any company to keep improving in the right direction

Well, no, the current Librem5 campaign shows there are folks who are willing to shell out money for something drastically better than any other solutions out there today. It's not perfect, but I would rather encourage companies who are striving towards perfection even if they are not perfect today.

I think Purism understands that there are still gaps in coverage, they even admit it on the campaign page. If they no longer make progress towards closing those gaps in future products, then I'm right there with you.. they should be dropped.

My philosophy aligns more with the FSFE than the FSF.

wink• 9 years ago

TL;DR: If you love FOSS-friendly hardware and if you love Matrix, please preorder a Purism Librem5 Matrix-native smartphone, so we can fully bring native Matrix communication to both phones and desktop!

Something about this header rubs me the wrong way. This is not "hey, throw us 10 bucks because $reason" (The Librem 5 seems to be 599$ and it's not from a company I moderately trust to ship a good product, on time)

Call me cheap, but I've never bought a smart phone for more than 300 EUR, and they've all worked fine at the time (HTC Click, HTC Vision, (ok, the Kingzone wasn't great) and Nexus 5X (still 100% fine with it, right now).

creatonez• 9 years ago

I am very excited for this. I will buy a free software phone with Matrix as a first-class citizen in a heartbeat. Matrix and Purism seem to be putting a lot of effort into paving the way for truly free phones.

Experiments with Matrix for the Purism Librem5, Starring Ubports and Nheko

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