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FSF announces Librephone project

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Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#341

Post by dariosalvi78 »

sunshine-o wrote: post #320
saagarjha wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like Stallman had quite the impact on you. Is it really so foreign to you that putting someone in a leadership position that can broaden that reach to people who are unlike you might be worth doing?

I only saw him once and I immediately understood how he could lead such a revolution. It is not about being "like him", he was just some fat old man with a big beard and I remember thinking he probably smells pretty bad. What was broad and inspiring was his vision and leadership as an human.

I am also very fond of Stallman, but we need to recognise that he had as many lovers as he had haters. He may have pushed many outside of the free software movement in fact because of his character.

I still think that the FSF needs a strong character with a clear vision, man or woman, but maybe with less orthodoxy than RMS.

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#342

Post by sznio »

SchemaLoad wrote: post #213
Worldblender wrote: post #175

Finally! It took the FSF long enough to catch up with the overwhelming usage of mobile devices, but it's better late than never. I like that this project is trying to tackle something much more challenging that can't be done with just software: reverse engineering device firmware and binary blobs, the pieces of software that actually make hardware components interface with an OS. Understanding how this stuff function…

I hate to complain, but I can't help but feel this is kind of impossible with the resources available to the people working on it. Reverse engineering a modern phone would take years and years of work from many people, and by the time you have it worked out, the phone is obsolete and very few people still use it. The Apple Silicon macbooks seem a good example. The M1 came out about 5 years ago now and with a whole pr…

>by the time you have it worked out, the phone is obsolete and very few people still use it.

If you work out a phone from 5 years ago, you're not that far off from a phone of today. Nobody designs it all from scratch, you mostly modify the old one. Getting the foundations going will take years - adapting the foundation to a different phone of the same series will only take months.

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#343

Post by zo1 »

qwertox wrote: post #323
guerrilla wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their point is obviously that they can't if they aren't qualified. I don't know if that's actually true but it's clear what they're arguing here anyway.

But how does this relate to gender? Even if you assume only two genders, why would being a feminine person play any role in their qualifications? That's what the comment was about.

I would imagine because women are under-represented in this field, so naturally we have to weight gender over qualifications. It's just the way things are. I wish it wasn't and qualifications/ability played a 100% part in these decisions.

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#344

Post by [deleted] »

dariosalvi78 wrote: post #341
sunshine-o wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only saw him once and I immediately understood how he could lead such a revolution. It is not about being "like him", he was just some fat old man with a big beard and I remember thinking he probably smells pretty bad. What was broad and inspiring was his vision and leadership as an human.

I am also very fond of Stallman, but we need to recognise that he had as many lovers as he had haters. He may have pushed many outside of the free software movement in fact because of his character. I still think that the FSF needs a strong character with a clear vision, man or woman, but maybe with less orthodoxy than RMS.

[deleted]

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#345

Post by bluenose69 »

BaudouinVH wrote: post #340

dear FSF, let's discuss your https://librephone.fsf.org/ web site. It does the job but it's not easy on the eye. Full-width line of text. Readability nightmare. Here is how it looks with just a link to a CSS (I closed my eyes on the cssbed.com and picked one at random). https://librephone.surge.sh/librephone-website.html

Yup, that's pretty bad. But, as an old fart with old eyes, I now use Safari and click the 'reader' version on many sites. Frankly, the web in it's early years was preferable to much of what I see nowadays. But, like I say, I'm an old fart. Heck, I used punch cards throughout my undergraduate days.

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#346

Post by veber-alex »

drnick1 wrote: post #188
dotancohen wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my country we have a large religious community that eschews smartphones. Due to this no company or government agency requires a smartphone for service.

This is a very good thing. I don't think many people here on HN reject technology, but sometimes no technology is better than one that is not controlled by the user.

No it isn't.

They just use an SMS code instead which is not secure at all.

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#347

Post by pas »

sunshine-o wrote: post #294
MYEUHD wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

the smart strategy is to put effort into projects that have a fork failsafe option

and concentrate effort on the components that don't have this (ie. drivers, hardware, codecs, whatever), but instead what we got is 20 more years GnomeJS and whatnot.

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#348

Post by ruszki »

guerrilla wrote: post #315
saagarjha wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like Stallman had quite the impact on you. Is it really so foreign to you that putting someone in a leadership position that can broaden that reach to people who are unlike you might be worth doing?

Their point is obviously that they can't if they aren't qualified. I don't know if that's actually true but it's clear what they're arguing here anyway.

There are studies about this. A lot. Many of them garbage, because their reference points were garbage (like 2008), or flat out lied, but it's quite clear that even if it matters on C-level jobs, it's miniscule. It was studied a lot because of Norway, and the following countries in Europe. Either it was pure sexism to have a distorted sex distribution, or C-level jobs don't really matter for companies outlook. I don't think that it's the latter. Btw, these studies also show that "experience", and "qualification" were distorted for no good reason.

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#349

Post by darkwater »

zo1 wrote: post #343
qwertox wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But how does this relate to gender? Even if you assume only two genders, why would being a feminine person play any role in their qualifications? That's what the comment was about.

I would imagine because women are under-represented in this field, so naturally we have to weight gender over qualifications. It's just the way things are. I wish it wasn't and qualifications/ability played a 100% part in these decisions.

> I would imagine because women are under-represented in this field,

So the ones in the field have passed a higher barrier and pressure and are more qualified than the p80 male.

This could be another spin on the topic ;)

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#350

Post by t43562 »

j45 wrote: post #336
notrealyme123 wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what exactly is the problem? To many options?

The options thinking they're an island retreat only for those who agree with their way while standing on the same continent. What's missing is building something that resonates with the user/consumer's experience backwards, not just personal preferences or interpretations, which is fine, but at that point it's a personal project, not a product, or much larger unless it really captivates both people who can contribute…

Either software is free or it isn't. You can't have single-vision-central control and freedom. Android is an example of an effort that took something free and made a usable mobile operating system ontop of it - but lead straight back to the problem that it isn't fully free.
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