I use Gboard, as I’m on Android.
Do you use Gboard or the clipboard feature? Or use a similar feature of an other keyboard app?
Do you use apps like NetGuard or TrackerControl to restrict net access to the keyboard apps?
Have tried some FOSS apps some years ago, but didn’t stay on them because, Malayalam(my mother tongue) and the handwriting mode(which is quite good), is not available in most other apps.
I had thought about turning on the clipboard history option and am thinking about the privacy/security aspect behind it. As per Gboard, it remembers history for 1 hour and there seems to be no sync option. So it seems sort-of safe. Thinking about such things since I do copy-paste OTP’s.
I only use FOSS ones. I hop between florisboard and unexpected keyboard, and I gave heliboard a shot again recently because it has the swipe/glide typing but I couldn’t stick with it because I was missing other features, so I’m back on floris.
Since I only use open source keyboards, I’m not really concerned about privacy…so no blocking of internet access.
I also thought about trying out the clipboard history, and also am wondering if it’s safe…
If you want to try FOSS keyboard again, HeliBoard is your best bet.
I use HeliBoard because I have to switch between 5 languages (German, Polish, English, Swedish and Korean) constantly and it does it for the most part (other than the korean) automatically for me.
I didn’t think of clipboard history yet, but I know that Keepass2Android deletes the copied passwords after a while, that’s kind of good enough for me.
It seems with Heliboard you have to switch between languages rather than having it detected automatically. It also doesn’t support swiping so not really a replacement for Swiftkey yet, for me at least.
You set up which languages you want to have there and then it switches between them when you just start writing automatically.
I just tried it again but for me it doesn’t switch automatically. It’s quite annoying since I often write local addresses etc between English sentences
Heliboard. It don’t have trackers.
FUTO keyboard. It has the best swipe-typing and voice to text out of all source-viewable ones. (Not fully open source due to the license)
For reference, here is the license. I’m curious which part makes it “not fully open source”.
First realize what is being talked about is the generally agreed upon open source definition https://opensource.org/osd
While it seems they have simplified the license removing some reasons it’s not to be considered open source, it’s still restricting commercial uses in the following two restrictions:
"You may distribute the software or provide it to others only if you do so free of charge for non-commercial purposes.
Notwithstanding the above, you may not remove or obscure any functionality in the software related to payment to the Licensor in any copy you distribute to others."
In short open source would only require the software be distributed with source under the same licensed as recieved, thus can’t restrict it to non-commercial, nor prevent the changing of payment details.
Obviously it’s a reasonably permissive license, and possibly won’t impact you from using it as an end user. It’s just has some restrictions for the creators to request payment, and to prevent third parties profiting off the product. Think Creative Commons, share alike, non-commercial for software. (While most will consider this fair its not quite fully open)
One reason they went this route was to prevent third parties form distributing their software with ads and using it in systems they are actively attempting to provide alternatives for (ie software that may spy on your system useage/and call home) the non-commercial clause has more teeth than say MIT where it would be relicensed, or GPL that while the software source would need to be provided might still be embedded in a ecosystem.
Gotcha.
Yeah, it sounds like it’s not “open source” according to a specific definition set by the OSI. But the term “open source” has grown beyond what they believe it to mean, and the FUTO license seems more than reasonable to me.
I think the freedom to commercialize worked in the past, but we now live in a time of weaponized commercialization, especially in the mobile world. It seems reasonable to me for them to want to ensure their code is not commercialized in ways that are antithetical to the purpose of the project.
So the open source community has a very clearly defined definition of “open” - open does not mean that you can just read the source code. Just reading helps with some trustworthiness, but in order to be afforded all of the protections and benefits of the word “open”, they require some form of ability to fork the code, and to be able to do useful things with that fork. No fork = not open. There are a ton of good reasons for this that I won’t dig into here but you can certainly find by looking up the free software foundation or the open source initiative.
Futo is considered “source available”
I don’t see anything wrong with limiting the commercialization of your code. I don’t agree that limiting someone from monetizing your code in a way you disagree with precludes them from “doing useful things” with a fork. Equating usefulness with commercialization seems implicitly capitalist and antithetical to FOSS. CMV.
I use FlorisBoard for pure functionality.
- I’ve been working with an odd app where you type at length but the message gets eaten sometimes. So I follow up everything with instant hits of the select-all + copy buttons
- I find the < and > arrows to navigate text much more ergonomic than holding on space to edge around, especially for long strings (webpage forms lol)
- Private clipboard is a measurable peace of mind. Had a heart attack when a private SSH key got autosuggested on the stock keyboard. Not sure if it ever gets TLS transferred anywhere though, e.g. for autocorrect training.
I do switch back to the stock keyboard for emoji search though.
