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FSF announces Librephone project

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Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#481

Post by CivBase »

mike_d wrote: post #212
criddell wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The time is right, but I still don’t think this project can accomplish much because people are generally happy with their phones. That said, the phone market is huge. They could sell enough devices to fund future development which might be good enough even if it doesn’t slow down Apple or Google. At least then there will be a device for those of us who are not happy with the state of things.

I think they will fail because they fundamentally don't understand the problem. Android does not contain binary blobs because of some evil conspiracy against free software. If they could get away with it, the whole damn thing would be open source. The problem is those blobs do things that interact with complex hardware for which only blobs are available. Even if you reverse engineer them, you are going to get sued in…

> If they could get away with it, the whole damn thing would be open source.

Who is "they"? Certainly not Google. Google has been moving open-source Android functionality into the closed-source Google Play Services for many years.

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#482

Post by bogwog »

devjab wrote: post #364
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…

As an EU citizen the biggest issue for me is that even if I bought a fairphone with grapheneOS, it might as well be a "dumb" phone. This is because all the apps to make our daily lives non-annoying require the Google Play or the Apple App store. So to me it's the lack of digital sovereignty from the EU and our individual countries that is the main issue. Sure it would be nice if big tech didn't close their platforms,…

> As an EU citizen the biggest issue for me is that even if I bought a fairphone with grapheneOS, it might as well be a "dumb" phone. This is because all the apps to make our daily lives non-annoying require the Google Play or the Apple App store.

This is a common misconception I see around here, probably because people think Graphene is yet another custom rom like LineageOS, and haven't actually tried it for themselves.

GrapheneOS supports Google Play (it ships with an app that lets you install it in one click), it does NOT give you root access, and it goes through the extra effort of implementing the obscure security features that banking apps require. I won't say 100%, but maybe 99% of apps on Google Play will work on Graphene, including banking apps. This compatibility, along with the added security and privacy features are why it's such a big deal. It's not just hype around the latest shiny custom ROM.

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#483

Post by Ajedi32 »

positron26 wrote: post #470
akagusu wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Open source loses this war because proprietary devices are streamlined. "Open source" didn't loose because it didn't fight anything. It was exactly "Open source" that enabled Google to dominate the smartphone landscape. FSF and many other have been warning us for decades that Android been open source didn't matter because firmware, play store and many other components of Android were proprietary. People gave a shit…

> It was exactly "Open source" that enabled Google to dominate the smartphone landscape. The financial interest may have preferred a licensing model, but either way, it was the financial interest that actually built a ton of this software. Linux isn't unpopular with businesses because of its license model. It is healthy because it found ways to plug into financial interest. The FSF will always push licensing models w…

This is the one big flaw I've seen in Stallman's philosophy on software. He's been thoroughly proven right I think about the dangers of closed-source (unmodifiable) software to user freedom. But I think his insistence that Free Software also needs to be freely redistributable with no payment to the author in order to be Free has greatly limited the resources available to build such software.

The FSF will argue "you can totally sell Free Software"[1], which ignores the fact that without any restrictions on distribution/copying, the fair market value of said Free Software rapidly drops to ~$0. It's not a viable business model. Companies have built alternate business models around soliciting donations, or selling support or non-free add-ons to Free software, but selling Free Software itself (at least as the FSF defines it) doesn't actually work in practice. (You can do it obviously, but it's effectively just a different way of soliciting donations at that point; the fair market value of the software is ~$0.)

[1]: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#484

Post by galangalalgol »

sznio wrote: post #334
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…

From my understanding of the article, Postmarket or Lineage or any other mobile operating system will be able to make use of this project. The goal is to provide FOSS drivers, so that you can run Lineage without proprietary blobs copied from the distribution of Android provided by the device manufacturer. It's mainly a libre purity project. A Lineage user won't be able to tell a thing, but the system will be "ethical…

There aren't even any arm or x86 desktops that are completely blob free. There is some ridiculously expensive amd power hungry power9 thing that nothing will run on, and some of sifive's newer boards might qualify. Every arm at least has some soc blobs. And every x86 has something like ime. Going straight for a blob free phone seems like getting ahead of ourselves. How about we shoot for a completely free rpi usable on the desktop first?

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#485

Post by fsflover »

supermatt wrote: post #480
fsflover wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 o…

You're right about the drivers, but you don't need to reverse engineer them for Librem 5: They are already free. You only need to do it for the firmware, which AFAIK doesn't depend on the OS.

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#486

Post by le-mark »

jacquesm wrote: post #269

Getting governments, banks and other big entities to play along here is going to be the main challenge.

One might think governments could get on board for the sake of digital independence/sovereignty ; but so far that hasn’t been the reality. One day digital sovereignty could become a real priority, then it could happen.

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#487

Post by devmor »

fsflover wrote: post #479
jrochkind1 wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are also software that is licensed?

AFAIK you can use and reverse engineer the firmware blobs on any OS, free or not.

I wonder if it's one of those situations where the potential for legal system abuse is a chilling effect.

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#488

Post by eptcyka »

fsflover wrote: post #433
pjmlp wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think just by using Librephone powered device is going to be safer, good luck.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19870406

Open firmware is but one part of the equation. The evolutionary pressure of state actors trying to deploy malware on iOS and Android forces those platforms to develop vulnerability mitigations and security architectures that currently just are not matched by anything in FOSS. Desktop linux is woefully insecure compared to these platforms. I don't want it to be, but it seems that, unless you are ready to use Qubes, no one has the time and effort to further the security of desktop linux in any meaningful way.

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#489

Post by pessimizer »

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'm pretty sure they said they're partnering with everybody that they possibly can. I also don't know what you mean by "just partner with postmarketOS." It's basically a project to create a fully-free Android-compatible distribution (or rather the fully-free low-level elements that would support this), and postmarketOS is not Android. I also don't have any idea why you think that they wouldn't be talking to everybody who is reverse engineering phones to get OSes on them.

I really do not understand this comment at all. I don't understand the weird judgemental tone, and I don't understand that people have reacted to it like there is content there.

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#490

Post by NoGravitas »

bogwog wrote: post #482
devjab wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an EU citizen the biggest issue for me is that even if I bought a fairphone with grapheneOS, it might as well be a "dumb" phone. This is because all the apps to make our daily lives non-annoying require the Google Play or the Apple App store. So to me it's the lack of digital sovereignty from the EU and our individual countries that is the main issue. Sure it would be nice if big tech didn't close their platforms,…

> As an EU citizen the biggest issue for me is that even if I bought a fairphone with grapheneOS, it might as well be a "dumb" phone. This is because all the apps to make our daily lives non-annoying require the Google Play or the Apple App store. This is a common misconception I see around here, probably because people think Graphene is yet another custom rom like LineageOS, and haven't actually tried it for themsel…

Banking apps will work on Graphene if you have sandboxed Google Play Services installed, and if the banking app requires only a basic level of Play Integrity attestation. I got the same level of support with my previous LineageOS for MicroG phone as I have with my current GrapheneOS phone, it just required a lot more tinkering (and was a lot less secure).

I do appreciate the work the GrapheneOS team puts in toward compatibility, and especially the fact that they just got RCS messaging working. But any time Google or even an app vendor wants to tighten the noose, they can, just by requiring the higher, hardware-backed attestation level.

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