It’s been 10 days since our awesome Kickstarter campaign is over!
During these days, I’ve spent a lot of time answering many, many people. I’m getting requests of any kind: encouragements and kind words, questions about eelo, press requests, potentiel partnerships, …
That is very exciting, and I like it a lot to have all those interactions with people from everywhere on earth 🙂
…
BUT we should not forget to FOCUS on the project development. We have to release a first beta of eelo mobile OS + web services in 6 months, and this is a lot of work.
So at the moment, we are trying to planify the project, setting up infrastructure, organize contributions from the community, and find the best engineers we can afford to work on eelo development.
From KickStarter to Indiegogo
Many people keep on asking if they can contribute because they couldn’t participate on time to the Kickstarter campaign. Direct donations are possible at eelo.io, and we have a few people who contribute this way, each day.
However, many people are more confortable with a clear “offering”, and there are a few eelo early phones still available. Additionally, we still have some time before the first rewards ship in next March, and we have been introduced to the Indiegogo team who offered to help us extending the campaign at their website. It seems that it’s very common practise to extend a KS campaign to indiegogo.
So we decided to go with this idea, and now eelo is back at IndieGogo! This will last for about one month, and will be very useful to bring more “fresh air” to eelo.
Short-term plan
Last but not the least, I wanted to share a short-term plan, so everyone has an idea of what is going on at eelo… 🙂
During the next days, we will be focusing on:
- sending the Kickstarter surveys to our 1500 backers: this will be helpful to get useful details from people for certain rewards, such as t-shirt sizes, name and firstname to display…
- start to work on a new website that will be available next week. We try to have it in several languages, and it will offer first contents about privacy (facts, recommendations…), and present what the first eelo “Minimal Viable Product” will be. Maybe it will also offer a forum where eelo supporters can discuss various topics
- recruit first people… we have already several great contributors who are engaged with eelo development, but we need to add more resources. At the moment, I’m especially seeking talented Android / LineageOS developers, so please spread the word! (contact us at jobs@eelo.io)
Thank you everyone for your great support, and let’s work together to release a fantastic and privacy-enabled alternative to Google and Apple!
–Gaël (gael@eelo.io)
The webside eelo.io is looking good !
now, because the yellow, an Penguin as Animal 🙂
or a mix, On top an Penguin, and body an Android..
secure a funny mix 🙂 or other way around, body an penguin and on top Androidhead..
Humm, an idea, add an folder (blog) on eelo.io ,
put in an .httaccess with an redirect to this blog,
later is the change more easy possible 🙂
best regards
Blacky
I finally remembered to post a request for interest to:
https://mega.nz
They supply both free and paid secure encrypted storage, and an api to access it. Besides the web interface, their platform also has native clients for most OS’s including Raspbian on Raspberry Pi (ie Debian Linux). This means the data from your Phone would be available on a Desktop installation and outside the eelo OS , while still maintaining the secure encrypted service.
BTW they allow urls to files and folders to be shared (and removed) at any time.
Like I said in the email to Mega.nz, I am not affiliated with “them”, but understand the potential of eelo, and how Mega.nz would be a welcome asset as a net service to assist in making eelo more than it could be.
Cheers
Paul
You are on the wrong path my friends, on the wrong path…
It’s completely brainless to have a privacy focused phone on your mind and taking android as a basis.
You are on the wrong path, you are heading right into a dead-end street.
Oh, and forget proprietary shit like mega.nz, while there are services like nextcloud, syncthing, owncloud, seafile, etc.
@Tom – This is a rather non-argumented comment 😉
@Gaël Indeed, and the comment just does not sound as I intended to, because I’m supportive of this project and really wish that it turns into something brilliant (under tech, privacy and security aspects).
Let’s face it: If there is an android-user, he/she is basically owned by g* as pointed out here: https://hooktube.com/watch?v=6TVAuffHJao It’s the same with apple.
Android was designed by g* to siphon ALL the user’s data to the mothership company. All the data means everything: Wlans nearby, biometric data, change in air pressure, emails via gmail, contacts, phones nearby, etc. – everything. I spent too much time on xda-developers looking for the right ROMs that I question myself: Isn’t the android-ecosystem hopeless in terms of security and privacy? What’s the point of making one more android based ROM if there are projects like CopperheadOS or Replicant, etc? I know, eelo as a project is a bit different, but still: In the end the OS will be a tweaked android.
And there is already a new ecosystem emerging: Just think of the Pyra mobile, PostmarketOS or the Librem5 project. Yeah, it’s not an easy path, I know (see Ubuntu Touch or FirefoxOS) and no way to tell if it’s even the right one, but still: If one path is wrong, you have to look for an alternative one.
Anyhow best of luck to you and the eelo project!
i think this issue needs to be approached from multiple sides.
you may think that eelo is the wrong approach, but so far other aproaches have failed to create much traction.
that is not to say that those approaches are wrong, but they are certainly more work to get to a running system.
even sailfish, at this point the best developed among android alternatives still has a lot of work ahead.
eelo is starting with a running system.
time will tell which approach is going to be successful in the long run.
my hope is, that all of them are.
one thing that is promising is the upcoming standardisation requirements for android 8, which in the future will make it easier to make portable alternative roms.
@embee Yes, you mention Sailfish, which is really good as an Android alternative. And it’s also a running system but needs polish.
The point is: There will be much work with the eelo project. That work will be invested in Android. Wouldn’t it be better to invest in something that was designed without g* from ground up? Like Sailfish? And projects like anbox? Is it even possible to get rid of g* completely from android (I mean in technical and legal terms)? What about taking (the abandoned) Ubuntu Touch as a basis and continue that development?
I was thinking about these questions because I got the impression that the android ecosystem is poisoned already (regarding security and privacy). This is why I’m not convinced using Android is the right path. Maybe it is though, so wish the project good luck with the development.