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FSF announces Librephone project

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Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#291

Post by cookiengineer »

rjdj377dhabsn wrote: post #274
cookiengineer wrote: post #265

Why can't they just partner with postmarketOS here? Why do we have to have /e/OS instead of a better supported LineageOS, because /e/ is a 1:1 copy anyways? Why do we have to have a Librephone project now instead of partnering with say, Fairphone and the Pine64 people? Open source loses this war because proprietary devices are streamlined. The only thing that comes close to this is GrapheneOS, LineageOS, and postmark…

Why is eBPF a problem?

A lot of functionality of newer Android releases (Android/AOSP 13 and later) rely on eBPF [1] for both interception of process insights and sandboxing of processes. eBPF in a nutshell is a way to build kernel hooks, so that you can also disallow or intercept syscalls or kernel API calls that the Apps are executing behind the scenes.

eBPF was introduced with Kernel 4.14 officially (but partly long before that). Most LineageOS supported devices still rely on older kernels, the most range being around the Kernel 4.4 or 4.9 branches, which lack that eBPF functionality. The LineageOS maintainers were backporting a lot of things already, but that's the "hardcut of now unsupported legacy devices" that people are experiencing with their old phones.

The issue here is that upstream vendors (e.g. Fairphone, actually meaning upstream Qualcomm IoT) only maintain their outdated kernel versions, and never maintain them in the sense of updating their driver code into newer kernel releases. The drivers are always stuck in an outdated state of a feature frozen kernel.

I'm just making this specific example with the Fairphone because "5 to 8 years support" isn't what most people would think it is. It means "only the really critical security patches of old stuff gets backported" and does not mean "hey we migrated our old code to a new kernel and Android version".

For example, Fairphone 1, 2, 3, 3+ are all stuck in old kernels right now (4.9 being the latest backport for the FP3+) and are essentially not updatable because of this.

I don't try to blame Fairphone here, because other manufacturers are much much worse in this regard. Fairphone and Pixel are already the "as good as it can get" for third-party ROMs case.

I mentioned postmarketOS specifically, because they're trying to fix that by upstreaming the kernel drivers, so that Linux support of those devices will stay updated with newer kernel releases (hopefully).

[1] https://source.android.com/docs/core/architecture/kernel/bpf

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#292

Post by Itoldmyselfso »

cookiengineer wrote: post #265

Why can't they just partner with postmarketOS here? Why do we have to have /e/OS instead of a better supported LineageOS, because /e/ is a 1:1 copy anyways? Why do we have to have a Librephone project now instead of partnering with say, Fairphone and the Pine64 people? Open source loses this war because proprietary devices are streamlined. The only thing that comes close to this is GrapheneOS, LineageOS, and postmark…

> GrapheneOS has huge problems because of Pixel devices, which LineageOS could help with.

What are these "huge problems" caused by Pixel devices?

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#293

Post by demaga »

rcarmo wrote: post #260

Well… mixed feelings here. I spent a lot of time dealing with early smartphones and hacking away at Android, Tizen, FirefoxOS (remember that?) and several variations on that theme back when manufacturers were vying for differentiation, and I get that the FSF has a mission, but I don’t see this panning out. Like many folk who’ve been watching Google’s gradual shutdown of AOSP and alignment with Apple in terms of platf…

> you can do that with web apps

And this is not even always possible. In Ukraine, government app is released as an app, not a web service. Same goes for banking app. You just can't do these things from other devices, you must have (mainstream) Android or Apple phone.

I've been looking into projects like GrapheneOS for a while now, but it is just impossible to use in Ukraine.

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#294

Post by sunshine-o »

MYEUHD wrote: post #288
sunshine-o wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> the FSF is at least 15 years late to really launch something in that space Not really. https://replicant.us is an FSF-supported project. But it kind of died due to the lack of contributors. IMHO, postmarketOS is better than Replicant or any other Android Rom, because it doesn't depend on Android.

Yes we should have seen (me included) that going the free android distribution path was a long term trap.

This is where the Stallman hard, radical and long term vision make a lot of sense in retrospect. Because we see now Google is pulling the rug.

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#295

Post by franga2000 »

Itoldmyselfso wrote: post #292
cookiengineer wrote: post #265

Why can't they just partner with postmarketOS here? Why do we have to have /e/OS instead of a better supported LineageOS, because /e/ is a 1:1 copy anyways? Why do we have to have a Librephone project now instead of partnering with say, Fairphone and the Pine64 people? Open source loses this war because proprietary devices are streamlined. The only thing that comes close to this is GrapheneOS, LineageOS, and postmark…

> GrapheneOS has huge problems because of Pixel devices, which LineageOS could help with. What are these "huge problems" caused by Pixel devices?

Probably that Google is dragging their feet releasing Pixel kernel and other source code. LineageOS has many years of experience getting a working system on top of bad or incomplete sources, including getting kernel source out of vendors in the first place.

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#296

Post by wolvesechoes »

cookiengineer wrote: post #265

Why can't they just partner with postmarketOS here? Why do we have to have /e/OS instead of a better supported LineageOS, because /e/ is a 1:1 copy anyways? Why do we have to have a Librephone project now instead of partnering with say, Fairphone and the Pine64 people? Open source loses this war because proprietary devices are streamlined. The only thing that comes close to this is GrapheneOS, LineageOS, and postmark…

Why do we have to have million Linux distros? Why do we have to have dozen desktop environments?

Because in FOSS world every single actor is a snowflake with unique vision. Any form of cooperation ends up in drama and moral accusations.

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#297

Post by franga2000 »

demaga wrote: post #293
rcarmo wrote: post #260

Well… mixed feelings here. I spent a lot of time dealing with early smartphones and hacking away at Android, Tizen, FirefoxOS (remember that?) and several variations on that theme back when manufacturers were vying for differentiation, and I get that the FSF has a mission, but I don’t see this panning out. Like many folk who’ve been watching Google’s gradual shutdown of AOSP and alignment with Apple in terms of platf…

> you can do that with web apps And this is not even always possible. In Ukraine, government app is released as an app, not a web service. Same goes for banking app. You just can't do these things from other devices, you must have (mainstream) Android or Apple phone. I've been looking into projects like GrapheneOS for a while now, but it is just impossible to use in Ukraine.

If it's a government app, you can pressure the government in many more way than you can let's say a bank - and FSF has experience in that kind of pressure. I hope their technical initiative also comes with a parallel legal/policy initiative that tries to get governments to stop using things like attestation.

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#298

Post by mobileturdfctry »

The fact that there is proprietary software running in "open source" mobile phone OSes may not be addressing the source of the problem. Because it seems that by funding a project like this it almost implies that the parties funding it don't necessarily trust the people who own and thus could open source the proprietary blobs tomorrow.

The leap I seem to have trouble getting to is this. If you can't trust the people responsible for the proprietary software, how can you be sure that they won't turn around and start using new chips or software once the existing ones are reverse engineered? Perhaps it's about patents and the patent holders could be using this IP as a cash cow?

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#299

Post by charcircuit »

jacquesm wrote: post #272
charcircuit wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me: Open Source Firmware signed by OS > Firmware blob signed by device manufacturer > Firmware blob hardcoded by device Manufacturer The FSF treats hardcoded firmware blobs as "free" and updatable firmware blobs as nonfree despite there not being a big difference between them in practice. And practical differences like being able to fix security issues benefits users.

> And practical differences like being able to fix security issues benefits users. More often than not these updates are not actually benefits to the users.

Can you provide such an example? Because of bugs in the new version? A lot of the time old versions can still be loaded.

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#300

Post by boudin »

bebna wrote: post #280
cookiengineer wrote: post #265

Why can't they just partner with postmarketOS here? Why do we have to have /e/OS instead of a better supported LineageOS, because /e/ is a 1:1 copy anyways? Why do we have to have a Librephone project now instead of partnering with say, Fairphone and the Pine64 people? Open source loses this war because proprietary devices are streamlined. The only thing that comes close to this is GrapheneOS, LineageOS, and postmark…

I got an FP5, would not buy again.

I got a FP4, will definitely buy again.
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