Eelo seeks to make a privacy-focused phone

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A focus on privacy is a key feature being touted by a number of different projects these days—from KDE to Tails to Nextcloud. One of the biggest privacy leaks for most people is their phone, so it is no surprise that there are projects looking to address that as well. A new entrant in that category is eelo, which is a non-profit project aimed at producing not only a phone, but also a suite of web services. All of that could potentially replace the Google or Apple mothership, which tend to collect as much personal data as possible.

Eelo is the brainchild of Gaël Duval, who also founded Mandrake Linux and Ulteo. In a November 2017 blog post, he noted that he has exclusively used iPhones since 2007 and over the past few years he had migrated to macOS, while using Google services extensively on both. That didn't sit well with him:

But talking with friends this year, I realized that I had become lazy and that my data privacy had vanished. Not only I wasn't using Linux anymore as my main operating system, but I was also using a proprietary OS on my smartphone. And I was using Google more and more. Search of course, but also Google Mail, Google drive and Google docs. And Google Maps.

He looked at various existing free-software mobile phone options but, as is too often the case, it seems, found that nothing really fit his needs. For one thing, he is completely sold on the iOS-style interface, while many free-software choices lean more toward an Android-like interface. That led him to found eelo, which, based on his concerns about his privacy, would need to be far more than simply yet another mobile-phone user interface.

Trying to get iOS apps running on a non-Apple phone is obviously a non-starter, however. Trying to bootstrap an entire app ecosystem is likely somewhere between hard and impossible as well. The obvious choice is to support Android apps, which can be installed from alternative repositories (e.g. F-Droid and APKPure), rather than relying on the Google Play store (and the privacy and other implications that go along with that). Duval chose to base eelo on LineageOS, which is the open-source project that rose from the ashes of CyanogenMod. In addition, LineageOS has microG, which allows apps to use Google's Play Services API, but without the binary blob.

But if privacy is the goal, there is far more to it than supporting an app ecosystem (which may have numerous privacy-dubious apps in any case). Google is able to collect so much information from Android users because the apps communicate with the mothership: mail, contacts, search, browser auto-complete, maps, storage, and so on. Some of those services will be difficult to replicate in a privacy-preserving way, but Duval has ambitious plans. For the most part, eelo will use various free and open solutions, such as DuckDuckGo for search, OpenStreetMap, ONLYOFFICE, Nextcloud, and so on.

There is already some progress on the user-interface front. The default LineageOS interface was not to Duval's liking, so he and another developer have started working on the "BlissLauncher" with a far different look and feel; there are plans to add a notification scheme and a "control center" for device and app settings and controls.

But, of course, it is hard to bring up an ambitious project without some funding. To that end, Duval created a Kickstarter fundraising effort to raise a modest €25,000 for getting the project going. It hardly seems like enough for the goals he sets out:

We need to bootstrap the project and pay developers for initial development work to reach a first viable "privacy-enabled" eelo product that users will be able to install on their own phones or order on quantity-limited pre-installed eelo smartphones. This functioning product would include: a mobile operating system with new default applications and new user interface

integrated basic web services (search, cloud storage, settings recovery)

updates for 3 years or more, with full respect of user privacy. Then we will be able to attract more contributors and the project will become naturally sustainable as it iterates to new releases.

That seems a tad optimistic, at best, but the Kickstarter is approaching triple the original goal with ten days to run as of this writing. The new goal is €100,000, which will allow more development effort, thus more first-release features. Even that seems like a tight budget to produce what Duval hopes for, but we will have to wait and see. Obviously, his open letter to Elon Musk is an attempt to change the funding situation in a big way.

For now, there are two phones being used for development, the LeEco Le2 and the Xiaomi Mi 5S, but others are on the horizon. Anything that LineageOS supports would seem to be fair game and Duval is taking suggestions.

The project is looking for volunteers, of course, but is also offering some paid positions. There are a number of different specialties listed, from Android developers to web developers to Git wranglers and Mono programmers. It is hard to say how long the positions might last (or will pay), but it is a bit different than most startup free-software projects.

There is another aspect to eelo, part of its mission as a "company in the public interest", which is to help users understand why privacy is important and, thus, why eelo is needed:

eelo's mission includes informing users about all the challenges behind their data privacy. We want to tell the story about what the web giants and state agencies are doing with your personal data - millions of dollars for shareholders, mass surveillance etc. - and why all that is a threat to democracy and peace. eelo.io is going to be a central place for information about user's data privacy.

It all sounds like a set of worthy goals that is, to the extent they will fit Duval's sensibilities, reusing parts and pieces from other free-software projects. Could it be a viable competitor in the existing mobile phone ecosystem? The track record of other efforts in this arena is mixed—none have truly been successful, however. Apple and Google are not likely to be shaking in their boots over eelo or any other alternative, sadly. The main impediment seems to be consumer interest—without users having an interest in protecting their privacy, the existing players will continue to dominate.