Questions and Interest in the PinePhone Ubuntu Touch Project

privacylover

Hello,
I am not a developer, but I am a technology and privacy enthusiast. I've got more than a decade in infosec. I have a decent sized community of my own, which is growing.

I'd also like to contribute to ideas, brainstorming and donating more than just the $5.

The whole reason behind this is because for a long time already, I have been using an iPhone merely for it's features and usability. I think we can all agree that the features are pretty great, but we all know the cost.

So, with that because I am considering to get seriously involved and would like to contribute, I have some questions.

Since the project is clearly open source, is this truly like a decentralized community project or is it more organized? I ask because the supported list shows a bunch of features which are planned but not yet developed yet. Some organization may help this along a bit, but might also have other considerations.
Are there any skills or contributions besides development which are missing or needed?
Who are the current participants who are actively helping the project along?

Lakotaubp

@privacylover The best place for ifo is probably here https://t.me/utonpine it is more active than the forum for PinePhone and no work will begin on the new PinePhone Plus until Ubuntu Touch has moved to Ubuntu 20.04 as a base rather than 16.04

alan_g

@lakotaubp as I understand it, it is just the core team doesn't have the capacity to work on this for the foreseeable future. Other people interested in progressing the pinephone can and should work on it.

CiberSheep

I don't know if you are onlly interested in the PinePhone development, but I'll answer in general as the questions are about UBports (if I understood that correctly).

@privacylover said in Questions and Interest in the PinePhone Ubuntu Touch Project:
[...]

[...] is this truly like a decentralized community project or is it more organized?

I would say there is a small core team working, but work from the community is needed.

Are there any skills or contributions besides development which are missing or needed?

Indeed. Translation, testing, documentation, promotion, etc.
There is a post about this: https://forums.ubports.com/topic/6991/how-can-i-help/13

Who are the current participants who are actively helping the project along?

Part is here: https://gitlab.com/ubports
Part is here: github.com/ubports/
Part is here: https://gitlab.com/theopenstore/openstore-meta/ and open-store.io/
Part is here: https://translate.ubports.com/
And sponsors, and people spreading the word...