Distronode Open-Sources the District AI Apps for iPhone, iPad, Android and Linux

Distronode has published the source code of the District AI apps. The repositories for the iPhone and iPad app, the Android app and the Linux desktop app are public on GitHub under the Apache-2.0 licence, and they are the same repositories every release is built from. They join bridgewatch and District Scheduler, which brings the open-source projects Distronode publishes to five, each with its own page under distronode.com/open-source.

All three are available now: the iPhone and iPad app on the App Store, the Android app on Google Play, and the Linux desktop app as a download from its repository. They let District AI customers take and place calls, read their messages and look up their contacts away from the browser.

Releases are built in the open too. Each app is now built and released by a GitHub Actions workflow in its own repository, and the iOS and Android builds are signed there with keys the workflow borrows for one run, so no signing key or store credential is stored in the repositories or on GitHub. Each Linux package carries a signed attestation of the build that made it. The versions in the stores today were built from the same repositories before those workflows existed, and each repository's release names the commit its store build came from.

The apps are open source, and the District AI service they connect to is not. A build made from the source still needs a District AI account to sign in. The District AI and Distronode names, logos and app icons are trademarks, so a build someone else distributes must carry its own name, icon and identifier.

The apps need a District AI account to sign in today, and Distronode wants them to work without one as well. It has not yet worked out what that would look like or whether it can work, and it is asking first what people would use the apps with, in an open discussion on GitHub.

Issues, pull requests and questions go to GitHub, where each repository has Discussions open for questions. Each app also has a read-only mirror on GitLab. Security reports go privately, through GitHub's private vulnerability reporting or to opensource@distronode.com, as each repository's security policy describes.

Nothing changes for customers, and no action is needed. Why Distronode published the apps, and what developers can build from them, is in the blog post. Each app has its own page: District AI for iOS, District AI for Android and District AI for Linux.