🆕 Software Suggestion | ZombieTrackerGPS #2143

New Issue

2020-11-30T00:17:27Z

ldprojects commented

2020-11-30 00:17:27 +00:00

(Migrated from github.com)

Basic Information

Name: ZombieTrackerGPS
Category: GPS, Sports, Fitness, Mapping
URL: https://www.zombietrackergps.net/ztgps/ (primary site)
Source: ZTGPS gitlab page
License: GPLv3

Description

ZombieTrackerGPS is a GPS application for Linux, roughly analogous to Garmin's Basecamp software. It was motivated in large part by privacy concerns with the available commercial and online options. A second, albeit indirect privacy motivation is that most software in this space is for Windows, with the associated privacy issues that come with that OS, or worse, stores user data in the cloud. ZTGPS uses local storage only. It will fetch maps from OpenStreetMap or a map provider of the user's choice, but that is the only use of the network, and even that can be disabled and the program run in an offline mode if some cached maps are available locally. In that case, full functionality is retained even with the network cable unplugged.

The privacy policy for both the application and the web site can be found by clicking the "Privacy" tab in the footer bar of the web site. The "Help/About" menu of the program also has a "Privacy" tab. In short, there are no tracking technologies used in either the application or the web site.

The software is 100% open source, hosted on gitlab. It is aimed at Qt flavored desktops such as KDE and LxQt, but will run on any desktop if the Qt libraries are available.

Example screenshot.

Why I am making the suggestion

Fitness and GPS tracking software felt like a weak spot in the open source software ecosystem. I've heard similar laments on privacy podcasts and web forums. Many people are using online tools such as Strava, or closed source local software with sketchy privacy practices. Recently, a cloud server outage caused popular software in this area to become temporarily inoperable. I felt like this application may be of interest to people looking to build up a more privacy respecting suite of tools, or (as was my personal case) to sever a last remaining link to Windows.

My connection with the software

I am the author of the application, as well as the web page. However, I do not profit from it in any way. I pay hosting costs for the web site out of pocket.

The small scale also raises an argument against. As a one-man project, the author (me) could be struck by lighting or otherwise smote down unpredictably. It's fully open source, but if no one else stepped up to keep it building over time, the project would decay. The major external dependencies are Qt and KDE's libmarble, so any backwards API incompatibilities introduced in those must be abided in ZTGPS. Beyond those two, the only external dependencies are standard system libraries such as libc/libm,

I will keep the issue up-to-date if something I have said changes or I remember a connection with the software.

## Basic Information **Name:** ZombieTrackerGPS **Category:** GPS, Sports, Fitness, Mapping **URL:** https://www.zombietrackergps.net/ztgps/ (primary site) **Source:** [ZTGPS gitlab page](https://gitlab.com/ldutils-projects/zombietrackergps) **License:** [GPLv3](https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.txt) ## Description ZombieTrackerGPS is a GPS application for Linux, roughly analogous to Garmin's Basecamp software. It was motivated in large part by privacy concerns with the available commercial and online options. A second, albeit indirect privacy motivation is that most software in this space is for Windows, with the associated privacy issues that come with that OS, or worse, stores user data in the cloud. ZTGPS uses local storage only. It will fetch maps from OpenStreetMap or a map provider of the user's choice, but that is the only use of the network, and even that can be disabled and the program run in an offline mode if some cached maps are available locally. In that case, full functionality is retained even with the network cable unplugged. The privacy policy for both the application and the web site can be found by clicking the "Privacy" tab in the footer bar of the web site. The "Help/About" menu of the program also has a "Privacy" tab. In short, there are no tracking technologies used in either the application or the web site. The software is 100% open source, hosted on [gitlab](https://gitlab.com/ldutils-projects/zombietrackergps). It is aimed at Qt flavored desktops such as KDE and LxQt, but will run on any desktop if the Qt libraries are available. [Example screenshot](https://gitlab.com/ldutils-projects/zombietrackergps/-/wikis/uploads/6cda0b4d4771e11e052726a1c55b6097/ZTGPS-Full-Dark.jpg). ## Why I am making the suggestion Fitness and GPS tracking software felt like a weak spot in the open source software ecosystem. I've heard similar laments on privacy podcasts and web forums. Many people are using online tools such as Strava, or closed source local software with sketchy privacy practices. Recently, a cloud server outage caused popular software in this area to become temporarily inoperable. I felt like this application may be of interest to people looking to build up a more privacy respecting suite of tools, or (as was my personal case) to sever a last remaining link to Windows. ## My connection with the software I am the author of the application, as well as the web page. However, I do not profit from it in any way. I pay hosting costs for the web site out of pocket. The small scale also raises an argument against. As a one-man project, the author (me) could be struck by lighting or otherwise smote down unpredictably. It's fully open source, but if no one else stepped up to keep it building over time, the project would decay. The major external dependencies are Qt and KDE's libmarble, so any backwards API incompatibilities introduced in those must be abided in ZTGPS. Beyond those two, the only external dependencies are standard system libraries such as libc/libm, - [X] I will keep the issue up-to-date if something I have said changes or I remember a connection with the software.

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