IPFS and Capyloon Mobile OS

--- tags: draft --- Meta - could do as a series * intro post * what it is * grant project * initial vision * challenges * initial feature set * addressing * homescreen icons * ipfs for device images * challenges * * ipfs implementation - iroh, mdns * ipfs for firmware updates/downloads * device to device local network discovery and connection * sharing files over ipfs between phones, QR code connection * contacts + DIDs * ipfs search? # IPFS and Capyloon Mobile OS Apple and Google are very far from implementing *anything* truly user-controlled in their mobile operating systems. This duality and lack of choice on mobile devices can't last forever - history shows us that industries and entrenched winners *can* be disrupted. We want to support experimenters and builders who are committed to a vision of user-control of the most sensitive devices in our daily lives. So we've been working with Capyloon for the last year and a half on a series of experiments to find out ## Capyloon, a Web-based Mobile OS todo: what is capyloon elevator pitch todo: paragraph on history/lineage todo: paragraph on grant todo: couple sentences warning that is not daily-use ready ## Mobile Experiments in User Agency todo: features done so far ## Future Directions * application patterns like contact integrations * * telco ## Try Capyloon * try on desktop * flash a build on a supported device ## Develop Apps for Capyloon ... ## Contribute to Capyloon ## Community * link to join #capyloon on Matrix ============================================================ # Capyloon, a Web-based Mobile OS Today's personal computing is largely controlled by the providers of mobile OS platforms. Unfortunately today that means that the whole ecosystem is dependent on rules edicted by Apple and Google: through their software distribution channels they control what can run on your devices, who can provide you software, and at which price. You were promised general computing devices in your pockets, but you got glorified GameBoys. We believe that this status quo needs to be challenged, not by a solution that would be "like iOS/Android but more Open", but by leveraging protocols and solutions that give agency to users and developers by design. We believe that decentralized web technologies are a cornerstone of an ecosystem that provide better agency and opportunities for users, developers and hardware providers. For instance it naturally provides data protability thanks to content-based addressing. Capyloon has its roots into the work done by Mozilla on Firefox OS, creating a fully featured mobile OS. KaiOS pursued that mission and shipped devices to more than 150M users in emerging markets. This establishes the Web as a viable mobile application platform with a ready to go community of developers. The FileCoin Foundation has supported work to make decentralized web technologies first class citizens in Capyloon in 2022. This covers work at different levels of the stack: native protocols handlers in the Gecko web runtime, contributions to other projects such as Iroh, WNFS and UCAN, and surfacing all these bricks in concrete demos. We also use FileCoin providers to store device images and other pre-built packages. This year the focus has been on preparing solid foundations, with some early visible use cases. This is still quite an experimental product with lots of room for new ideas at every level of the stack! That also means that it's not ready to be a daily driver yet. # Mobile Experiments in User Agency Today's support in Capyloon let you navigate the decentralized web thanks to the support for the ipfs:// and ipns:// protocols, but also to provide content: - publicly by uploading local content to a FileCoin provider such as Estuary. That includes password protection if needed. - on your local network where peers can discover each other with mDNS. We also did an early implementation of UCANs and DIDs as a fine grained authorization mechanism for content access. Rhis is a step up from the more limited permissions mechanism offered by Web apis. # Future Directions Thanks to the fundamental work done this year, we are well positioned to unlock disruptive use cases in the next phase of the project. We'll show that peer to peer protocols enable rich, dynamic interactions at various scales: from multi-device applications in the home network, to social interactions bootstrapped from your address book or your Mastodon network, or simply exchanging data without going through a 3rd party. We also believe that by building a higly composable platform, we can create a better value chain for this ecosystem. While we focused on the software side so far, we are convinced that it's even possible to include hardware providers in the mix to offer a long lasting, well maintained platform that we all deserve. # Try it out! You can try the desktop version on Mac & Linux, by following the instructions at https://github.com/capyloon/nutria#quick-start . This is also all you need if you want to work on the front-end! We also provide builds flashable on some devices: Pixel 3a and Android 10 based GSI, as well as the PinePhone and Librem5 Linux based phones. You can find links for these packages in capyloon.org/releases.html Feel free to join us in the #capyloon channel Matrix (https://matrix.to/#/#capyloon:matrix.org) and to follow us on Mastodon (https://fosstodon.org/@capyloon) or Twitter (https://twitter.com/capyloon).