[Replicant] Proprietary blob found in all Replicant 6.0 builds

Tad tad at spotco.us
Mon Nov 2 15:50:44 UTC 2020


Good morning,

Years ago, before CyanogenMod imploded:
Cyanogen, the VC-backed company, had created an SDK called Ambient meant for use in Cyanogen.
However at some point it ended up included in the CyanogenMod 13.0 branch.
Along with its hooks into many apps such as the Launcher, Dialer, Messenger, AudioFX, and Contacts.
This proprietary library even contains code (presumably) developed by/with Uber.
Yes, the app Uber, Uber.

A few months after LineageOS forked, some bits of Ambient's integration were removed.
However a lot still remains in the currently available today trees.
https://github.com/LineageOS/android_vendor_cm/blob/cm-13.0/ambientsdk/Android.mk

Due to Replicant being a fork of LineageOS, it too contains Ambient.

All 6.0 Replicant builds contain the proprietary AmbientSDK Java library blob.
I have verified this by decompilation.

I link my old sources which contain patches, checkout commits, and revert commits.
It allows building without AmbientSDK.
It is however quite old by now and will likely need rework.

You'll want the lines marked with 'ambientsdk' and 'analytics'.

https://gitlab.com/divested-mobile/divestos-build/-/blob/65df475ccc996a3de4eaa2264c86f4f85f980951/Scripts/CM-13.0_Patches.sh
https://gitlab.com/divested-mobile/divestos-build/-/tree/65df475ccc996a3de4eaa2264c86f4f85f980951/Patches/CyanogenMod-13.0


I kind of always assumed that Replicant had removed this, it wasn't until recently where I took the time to verify.
Hence why I reach out now.

Kind regards,
Tad.



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