[00:06:10] Live test of video calls

[00:08:30] OTA-3 progress report

[00:14:10] We talked to Purism

[00:18:20] Is 15.04 getting dropped?

[00:24:20] Getting volunteers and keeping them engaged

[00:33:12] Have you looked at Anbox on 16.04?

[00:35:15] Should we use XMir or XWayland or...?

[00:37:00] Guitar.

[00:37:18] How are push notifications coming along?

[00:43:20] What about the StationDock?

[00:44:00] How do you expect to monetize the platform to support developers?

[00:51:45] Scopes discussion

[01:00:40] Sidestage tablet multitasking

News

uMatriks voice and video calling

Marius has been working on bringing Matrix WebRTC voice and video calls to the uMatriks app. This gives users of Ubuntu Touch new ways of contacting each other, built on the Matrix network.

The feature is currently in testing, waiting for a Pull Request on libqmatrixclient. If you would like to test the feature, you may choose to install uMatriks mariogrip test from the OpenStore. Remember to check often for updates to the official uMatriks app if you choose to do so!

uMatriks is a native client for the Matrix protocol, based on Tensor and libqmatrixclient.

OTA-3 progress report

There have not been any newly closed issues in the ubuntu-touch issue tracker for OTA-3 due to our focus on our Xenial base image.

The bugs that remain are each specific to one device and involve the Android compatibility layer we have in place, so troubleshooting them involves educated guesswork for many hours (or days).

We talked to Purism

We aren't able to share many details about this development, but we have talked with Purism about Ubuntu Touch and the Librem 5 smartphone. The discussions are very positive and we're excited about what we can bring to each other.

Questions

Is 15.04 getting dropped?

Not yet. Our dream is to get all devices running 16.04 so that we can drop 15.04 without any problems. Depending on the possibility of that, we have not selected a date for the end of support for 15.04.

Have you looked at Anbox on 16.04?

Not yet. We mentioned multiple times in this episode that we want to get the actual operating system working before we try to toss more layers on top of it.

How are push notifications coming along?

Marius has written a proposal for the new decentralized notification server and API, which you can find at mariogrip/notifyer-specs. We'd appreciate comments on the proposal if you have any.

What about the StationDock?

Hardware is hard. The StationDock is currently a neat project to play with every now and again (most of the time is spent waiting for yet another prototype board to ship), but it is not something we're focusing much time on.

How can we monetize Ubuntu Touch?

If any header in these notes gets used as clickbait, that will be the one.

This question comes from there being an adblocker available in the OpenStore, released by Marius. If a platform developer is hostile toward ads on the platform, how do you expect people to make any money from free apps?

We really don't have an easy answer for this question. The content and method of monetization (paid apps, ads, donations, etc) allowed in the OpenStore is a decision that should be made by the OpenStore team. At the moment, the OpenStore allows a publisher to include a donation link on an app's store page. If you love an app, we encourage you to donate using one of those links to support its development.

Historically, monetized app stores on GNU/Linux operating systems haven't been very successful. Canonical's own Ubuntu Software Center is a good example of this. Interestingly, though, the Elementary AppCenter is gaining traction for itself as a pay-what-you-want (with a suggested minimum) model.

Musings

This is a new section for this episode, since the topics discussed didn't really fit into 'news' or 'questions'.

Getting volunteers and keeping them engaged