Free Your Android

Contribute and Help Others!

Liberated Android Robot

Help us to encourage people to liberate their devices and convince app developers to release their app as Free Software. The various Free Software initiatives also need help and we need to ensure that they stay free as in freedom. If you just want to spread the word about this campaign, there is promotion material available for download, translation and ordering.

Operating Systems

The Replicant initiative is in urgent need of help. It lists many ways to help out on its homepage.

Even though other versions of Android are all based on Free Software, sometimes non-free applications are added to these ROMs. If you know about non-free software added to LineageOS or other versions of Android, please let us know about it! We collect current information in the wiki.

Apps and F-Droid

The F-Droid initiative lists many ways to contribute. Have a look! Maybe there is something that you can do easily.

Adding Apps Yourself

You are encouraged to add applications to F-Droid yourself. A manual is provided to help you. There is a long queue of applications that wait to be added. Adding them works by filling a simple recipe file which controls how a package is built from source. If you like to add apps yourself, you should read about how F-Droid works with git and how to create these so called metadata files.

Freeing Non-Free Apps

Unfortunately, there are still some applications that do not have a free alternative. To use the proprietary app is a bad idea; it takes away your freedom. Even if you don't know how to program, you can contact the authors of crucial apps and ask them politely for their reasons for not publishing their app as Free Software. Many apps are available without payments, so money is not always the dominating reason. Sometimes one email can make a difference and there have already been successful attempts: The Chess Walk app for example is now liberated.

Apps That Still Need To Be Liberated

We collect apps that have no free counterpart, but are important to have on a free system in our wiki. Please add other essential apps there. People can contact the authors of those apps and ask them why they are not Free Software.

Responses to Objections We've Heard from App Developers

Only when we understand the motivation of programmers who keep their apps proprietary, we know what needs to be changed in order to change their minds and to convince them of liberating their own app. Please contribute your experiences with developers of non-free apps here and share useful responses to their objections.

Contact

If you want to stay informed or like to work with others on a free Android system, you can subscribe to the mailing list. You can also ask questions or give input by writing to android@lists.fsfe.org. For technical questions about apps, the F-Droid IRC channel is a good place to ask. For exchange about the lower layers of Android, the Replicant (Webchat) and LineageOS IRC channel (Webchat) is more suitable. Everybody in this community is very friendly and loves others to help, so don't be shy and get involved!