I recently heard that these folks are running the entire operation mostly on goodwill, so I just took the time to look into it a bit. They have about $110 of monthy recurring revenue on OpenCollective [2] and about $750 monthly recurring on liberapay [3]. That's not even one minimum wage salary. That's nothing.
They received big donation of 10K they got from Mozillas Opensource Speed dating session at FOSDEM this year [4] which is great. It's not recurring though from what I can see.
BUT: for being the one project that people (me included) point to when the question of a more open mobile platform arises, having the entire infrastructure (build servers, hosting, code, not to mention someone supervising the whole thing) be done by a handful of volunteers on a shoestring budget doesn't seem right.
Edit: I am aware there are many other open mobile projects and I love them to bits, but they are nowhere near as complete an experience as AOSP + f-droid. Personally, I don't really think of android (even without google and with f-droid) as a free platform, and I don't think that will ever change. So by all means, also donate to Mobian, UBports and all the others. :)
[1]: https://bubu1.eu/
[2]: https://opencollective.com/f-droid#section-budget
[3]: https://liberapay.com/F-Droid-Data/donate ( €143.76/week * 52 / 12, converted to USD )
[4]: https://twitter.com/fdroidorg/status/1243499250551410688
Does FSF sponsor any projects? (Honest question, never thought about it...)
F-Droid seems approved as a repo for Replicant, despite its "features you may not like" (but free software) apps.
Interesting. Unfortunately my first web search does not bring up a list of particpating projects, preferably with the amount in question, like e.g. https://spi-inc.org/corporate/annual-reports/2019.pdf
lots of people have probably given up on android now though and there are multiple phones with support for a decent Linux distribution at this point.
Last time I checked (admittedly a few months ago) the Librem 5 was the most promising Linux phone but had trouble reliably making calls!
Is there a fluid and reliable (hardware and software) Linux phone?
At work we're deploying some stock Android Samsung Xcover4s and despite having good enough hardware on paper they feel really sluggish when using them (before any apps installed, fully updated, most bloatware removed with ADB).
So if a 250€ Samsung with stock Android doesn't manage to be pleasant to use, I have doubts that a Linux phone will succeed but I would be happy to be wrong.
I'm trying to degoogle my e-life, I'm planning to install GrapheneOS on my Pixel 4 XL but if there's a Linux phone that matches the user experience I may consider switching to that instead.
Not to knock OSMAnd, but Ubports' Pure Maps isn't bad, is it?
Maybe some people find it sufficient for basic navigation, but it is missing all those detailed features that you can toggle on OSMAnd to clearly show OpenStreetMap tagging (road surfaces, street lighting, etc.)
It might or might not be considered significantly different from AOSP, and at least most of the free apps in their "store" must come from F-Droid, but there's /e/: https://e.foundation Three cheers for F-Droid anyhow, and I'd have thought it should be mentioned under https://doc.e.foundation/projects-looking-for-contributors
I try to be an optimist but sometimes it's hard to picture a bright future.
Are there any open-source platforms that nail both of those factors?
Conclusion: Maybe F-Droid should be on OF.