The mailing list for users of the eduroam Configuration Assistant Tool (CAT)

[Ralf Jung <jung AT mpi-sws.org>]

Hi,

> Okay, let me rephrase it then as: we are not intentionally closed
> source; it just happens to be so right now due to historical developments.

Sure, I understand.

> It IS our intention to move the code to the other SVN tree with
> anonymous read access to the source.

Great :) And thanks a lot for making this happen!

> You say "easily avoid" and that the replacement is "very badly
> documented" in the same paragraph here.
> 
> That's a bit of a contradiction; if one needs to search for hours for
> undocumented API calls then it is not at all "easy" to use those APIs.

Well, okay, you are right. I meant something more like, if developers
care and if they knew, then it's not like they would have to
re-implement half the API or something.

> However, at some point some probably very sadistic person in the know
> let me know that it *is* possible in older versions but only via an
> undocumented API call, and that it'd be easy to find it if I knew where
> to look. And then not telling me where to look. I spent hours and days
> looking through Android source (still occasional nightmares from that
> ;-) ) and couldn't find it. That's time burnt for nothing.

Oh wow, what a mean person...

>> <http://forum.xda-developers.com/android/apps-games/app-microg-gmscore-floss-play-services-t3217616>
> 
> This seems to be about end-users who want to use apps which would
> usually require Google Play Services to not need them. It doesn't seem
> to help developers with anything?

No, sorry for the confusion - that was the footnote [1], just giving you
an explanation of what I meant when I said "open-source reimplementation
of the Play Services".

As I said, I don't know any Android programming, all I do is tell gradle
to compile stuff. I can ask a friend for the details about that API, if
you are interested. The link was not meant to be those details.

That said, the µG project is *also* about re-implementing the
application side of the Play Services, so that you can create a fully
open-source apk file. Right now, if you use Play Services, there is
proprietary Google code injected into your App. This is of course
alpha-quality, too, and probably even less tested than the services-side
of the Play Services, so I'm not at all advocating that you should use
that in eduroamCAT, just explaining the scope of µG and what it has to
do with app developers.

> One needs to be very desparate to fall back to such hacks.

Kind of, yeah ;-) . That, or curious and convinced that this is the
"Right" (TM) thing to do, and willing to take the consequences.

The "hacks" part is only necessary because of Google's (and the Custom
ROM authors) lack of cooperation, of course.

> I'm sure Gareth can do that - if our attempts to move source are not
> finished soon anyway. I have opened a ticket in our project for that,
> and hope it will be resolved within hours or days. I hope the delay is
> acceptable.

It will be probably a few weeks until my institution is registered in
the eduroamCAT database at all (or whatever time it takes to do that),
so right now, the App would not even be helpful for me. So, yes, I'm
totally fine waiting a little.

Kind regards,
Ralf