Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

FSF announces Librephone project

fsf.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

471–480 of 669 posts

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#471

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

Arainach wrote: post #167
munchlax wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can trust hardware and software that's easy to inspect. If you can't be sure what's going on and unable to inspect or debug the hardware and software, how can you trust it's doing what you want? Proprietary hardware and software is already known to work against the interests of the user. Not knowing exactly what's going on is being taken advantage of at large scale. Let's put it this way: if you can choose betwee…

No software is "easy to inspect". Only a tiny fraction of users will ever even try. When things are inspected and problems are found, you need a way to revoke the malicious bits. You'll never notify everyone, which is one of the roles app stores play. You trust hardware and software by establishing boundaries. We figured this out long ago with the kernel mode/user mode privilege check and other things. You want apps…

> You trust hardware and software by establishing boundaries. We figured this out long ago with the kernel mode/user mode privilege check and other things. You want apps to be heavily locked down/sandboxed, and you want the OS to enforce it, but every time you do you go up against the principles of open source absolutists like the FSF. "What do you mean my app can't dig into the storage layer and read the raw image files? So what if apps could use that to leak user location data, I need that ability so I can tell if it's a picture of a bird"

Well, no. The objection isn't to sandboxing apps, but to sandboxing the user, as it were. On my laptop, I run my browser in a sandbox (eg. bubblewrap, though the implementation of choice shifts with time), but as the user I control that sandbox. Likewise, on my phone, I'm still quite happy that my apps have to ask for assorted permissions; it's just that I should be able to give permission to read my photos if I choose.

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#472

Post by positron26 »

ookdatnog wrote: post #392
honkostani wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As in every idealistic movement, the fundamentalists(which contribute all the talk and non of the walk) hijack it and drive it into a wall.

Your statement is wrong in two distinct ways: - Fundamentalists never hijacked the FSF, they founded it: Stallman is about as fundamentalist as possible about free software. - In the case of the FSF, the fundamentalists are absolutely walking the walk, both in terms of contributing software, and in terms of going out of their way to not use proprietary software.

> in terms of going out of their way to not use proprietary software.

Performative and an example of very self-defeating tactics that belie motivations other than actually accomplishing anything.

> they founded it

This is true, but it actually contributes to arguments that the FSF is full of crazies content to preach from the monastery of ascetic suffering rather than live in a world with lots of independence and strong open source.

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#473

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

Arainach wrote: post #199
munchlax wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. If their security depends on enslaving the user, their security sucks. Real security, be it your financial transactions or keeping your bird pictures safe, doesn't depend on any secret algorithm. Because it's secure.

The threat models aren't secret algorithms, they're apps reading the contents of the screen, stealing keystrokes, MITM attacks against 2FA, and much more.

So, things that can be exploited on a stock Pixel with no user root? This is a weird argument to make at the same time as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45588594 is on the front page.

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#474

Post by fsflover »

supermatt wrote: post #467
fsflover wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there are no commercial phones using postmarketOS with blobs to reverse engineer This is false: https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Purism_Librem5_(purism-li... See also my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45589096

> This is false You can install postmarketOS on it (just as you can install lineageOS, etc on a Samsung galaxy, etc), but it ships with PureOS. "The Librem 5 is a phone built on PureOS" - https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/ The project is to reverse engineer proprietary blobs - so it makes sense to go where those blobs are and reverse to match the functionality that is exposed commercially instead of guessing at a sub…

> but it ships with PureOS

Why does it matter? Yes, I would prefer that FSF collaborated with PureOS directly, but collaborating with postmarketOS also seems possible. There are enough blobs in Librem 5, which don't depend on the OS.

> which is ironic given your name

Indeed I'm quite surprised about the FSF actions lately.

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#475

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

gorgoiler wrote: post #248

It is very inspiring to see a project announced like this with the developer’s name attached to it. As someone who has always struggled with the confidence to be open about my work, let alone work openly in public, it feels extremely inspiring to see Rob Savoye (and Zoe and John behind him) nail their plans to the door like this. My thrill is matched in strength by the loathing I have for this Apple device on which I…

> The two major phone OS companies both stand on the shoulders of IBM PC, openly bootable hardware, and the fantastic software systems nurtured and built on top of these platforms — the BSDs, GNU, Linux, and the long tail of all that run on them. It is very troubling that their own platforms are the antithesis of being openly hackable.

I can kinda see a lineage from the PC to Android, if only by way of Linux being born on the 386. But Apple? They've been doing their own thing since day 1; I can easily imagine a world where IBM never existed and the iPhone is unchanged.

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#478

Post by bogwog »

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…

Did you read the article? They're not creating nor choosing an operating system for the librephone project. They're looking into reverse engineering the binary firmware blobs needed to achieve a fully free software distribution on a modern device. Afaik, this work will benefit all alternative OS projects for whatever devices they succeed with.

I guess maybe a good analogy would be like trying to port coreboot to a laptop.

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#480

Post by supermatt »

fsflover wrote: post #474
supermatt wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is false You can install postmarketOS on it (just as you can install lineageOS, etc on a Samsung galaxy, etc), but it ships with PureOS. "The Librem 5 is a phone built on PureOS" - https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/ The project is to reverse engineer proprietary blobs - so it makes sense to go where those blobs are and reverse to match the functionality that is exposed commercially instead of guessing at a sub…

> but it ships with PureOS Why does it matter? Yes, I would prefer that FSF collaborated with PureOS directly, but collaborating with postmarketOS also seems possible. There are enough blobs in Librem 5, which don't depend on the OS. > which is ironic given your name Indeed I'm quite surprised about the FSF actions lately.

> Why does it matter?

Because to reverse it you need to have a functionally complete baseline to compare it to. For the Librem that baseline is what it ships with (PureOS). For nearly every other device on the planet, that is Android.

By them focusing on creating fully functional free drivers to swap out with the non-free driver blobs on Android, they will have created a reference source that can be adapted for any other OS.

Post reply on HN