infeeeee

How would it otherwise? Network based location?

Yes. Your phone could triangulate its location from nearby celltowers ane wifi networks. Google has a database of wifi routers (actually that was the point of google streetview, they collected wifi bssids alongside taking photos, they also collect this data from android devices).

With microg you can select from different dbs for this, they are called 'UnifiedNlp backends': apple has a similar db from iphones, mozilla used to collect this data with a separate app for MLS (they shut down the project in 2024 march). Microg builds an on device private db as well, it will remembers the wifi networks and celltowers you were close to, and next time you are there it won't need gps, saves a ton of battery life. This was called Deja Vu, I love this name. Search for UnifiedNlp on fdroid you can find some more options.

Since MicroG 0.3 you don't have to install these separately, Mozilla and Deja Vu are builtin, and they are more than enough

Huh? Which rom asks this? Usually you have to go through hoops to get microg, and only a handful of roms have it builtin. It can only ask if you want to enable microg not installing it or not, microg to correctly work it should be installed in /system/priv-app, to do that after boot on device, you have to be root.

Do you use any app from aurora or outside fdroid? If your answer is no, than you can use android without a GMS package.

Also as I wrote, location won't work for you underground or inside concrete buildings. If you are fine with these kind of limitations than you can obviously.

Marwin (the main developer of microg) said in some interview that he doesn't want microg to exist, and in a perfect world we shouldn't need such workaround. I would be also happy if android wouldn't depend this muhc on google

Is snapchat still a thing? Never used that but I thought from screenshots and memes that tiktok killed it (never used that either)

(I reread ops question and I can only see the term open source 2 times, but whatever, I understand what you say, and I don't want to debate about semantics.)

The point with microG is it's still the best way if you want to use android. The other options are:

• Play services (GMS), or Huawei has some similar solution because of US trade embragoes.
• You can use android without play services but notifications won't work for most apps, even if you can open them. (UnifiedPush tries to solve notification part) Wifi and cell based location won't work
• I see microG as an acceptable middle ground. I still have to give up something to goog, but it's not much compared to GMS, and I can use all available apps

But it's a Friendica post, not from Mastodon. You can't write such a long posts on mastodon

OP asked about Open Source not about privacy.

MicroG minimises connections to google servers, here you can read what addresses it still connects to and why: https://github.com/microg/GmsCore/wiki/Google-Network-Connections

Easer is not perfect, but really close:

• https://me.ryey.icu/Easer/en/
• https://f-droid.org/packages/ryey.easer/

MicroG works really well

A free-as-in-freedom re-implementation of Google’s proprietary Android user space apps and libraries.

Redmis usually have a good 3rd party rom support, if you can open the bootloader. Literally any rom is a better experience than MIUI or whatever they call that nowadays.

There is already a crdroid official available: https://xdaforums.com/f/xiaomi-redmi-note-13-pro-5g-poco-x6-5g.12860/

What is your attack vector, what type of tracking or privacy violations are you afraid of? I'm really curious.

The number of osm contributors are too small to someone start to track your edits for some nefarious reasons, targeted advertizing.

Email aliases are usually more convinient for this type of usage, basically it will be a read only address, you won't have to send anything from there.

Yes, changeset comments are more common than messages though. They are public comments. You can see all of them worldwide here: https://resultmaps.neis-one.org/osm-discussions You can see in the last week 1300+ comments were made

I review edits in my area made by new contributors frequently, write to them if their was some error, help them fix it, or if it's too complex for them I fix it etc. There are tools for that, e.g. osmcha flags suspicious edits.

Please also sign up with an email address you actually read. If you don't answer to changeset comments for a long time DWG (Data WorkingGroup) will block you.

Changeing username frequently doesn't help anything. You have a hidden user id you can't change, so tools can list all your previous usernames, even though it's not visible on the main UI.

That video is till up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vj04MKykmnQ

She went there, because in the support forum the manufacturer replied that they can only give the source code in person.

Actually that's acceptable, and does not violate GPL, they just expected that noone will show up in their sweatshop. GPL does not define how you should make the source available.