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FSF announces Librephone project

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Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#241

Post by wltr »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #192
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.

> much because people are generally happy with their phones. Talked to many iPhone owners this year? The 17 hardware has a bizarre choice of a camera button / pointless physical change, and IOS 26 is pretty much hated by everyone. I use iPhone, and have happily for years but F if this isn’t the worst OS I can remember. The first downgrade really.

Have you been around when iOS 7 was released? If not, I’d say that was the same, whatever that means. Things might get better, but we’re not entitled to it.

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#242

Post by linmob »

neilv wrote: post #146

> The FSF has been supporting earlier free software mobile phone projects such as Replicant, Hopefully this project will go better than Replicant. Here are my notes on running Replicant on the (then already very old) flagship Samsung GT-I9300: https://www.neilvandyke.org/replicant/ The hardware was a little difficult to obtain in the US, and WiFi worked only with a blob of questionable provenance. It looks like Repli…

I am pretty sure that it's not going to be the Librem 5, despite Purism's efforts to get it RYF certified (which, thinking of the Redpine WiFi card) went so far that they seriously impacted user experience.

Why? There's no Android port for that device and they keep mentioning LineageOS.

Even the PINE64 PinePhone would be more likely, as that has Android support and even some LineageOS 22 support [1]. The Replicant project had eyed it as a target device [2].

That said, I'd expect a different device, and, assuming LineageOS supports one, and I would not be suprised to see a device that's not powered by a Qualcomm, Mediatek or Samsung SoC.

[1]: https://github.com/GloDroidCommunity/pine64-pinephone/releas...

[2]: https://blog.replicant.us/2024/03/replicant-status-and-repor...

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#243

Post by wltr »

lostmsu wrote: post #30
monero-xmr wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If rich techies on this website want to support something worthwhile, here you go

Not rich but is there a way to contribute specifically to this project? The donate button on the website does not work.

Upon commenting, I removed the snarky part of the website being visually… well, bad. After all, FSF isn’t about design and aesthetics, right? But donate button not working demonstrates the whole seriousness of the effort.

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#244

Post by classified »

I want this, even if it means we have to pay some of the people who work on this.

> Librephone will serve existing developers and projects who aim to build a fully functioning and free (as in freedom) Android-compatible OS.

It may well be that Google will not rest until "Android-compatible" means that they can put their foot down on this. We should be prepared for that eventuality.

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#245

Post by linmob »

nicman23 wrote: post #235
neilv wrote: post #146

> The FSF has been supporting earlier free software mobile phone projects such as Replicant, Hopefully this project will go better than Replicant. Here are my notes on running Replicant on the (then already very old) flagship Samsung GT-I9300: https://www.neilvandyke.org/replicant/ The hardware was a little difficult to obtain in the US, and WiFi worked only with a blob of questionable provenance. It looks like Repli…

hahahahaha 2k for a phone that cannot last a day. yeah no. i d rather go for a redmi with postmarket os. it does not even have a blob free modem

That's their US made patriot phone, the regular less than half of that. Also, please read up on the concept of economies of scale.

If you go with postmarketOS (good!), and don't want to touch anything that touched Purism, better avoid anything GTK (Phosh, GNOME Mobile and related apps). While Purism did not make a competitive phone, their investments into libre software went great and keep paying off.

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#247

Post by goku12 »

eptcyka wrote: post #237
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…

When it is this late, it might as well have been never.

That's certainly not the case here, even if it's true sometimes. The duopoly is gradually tightening their grip on the customers' wallets. It's worth it at any stage to reverse their cash grab.

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#248

Post by gorgoiler »

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 type, whose entire boot process is miserably locked down from the very start. It is like a bicycle made from Mickey Mouse logo bolts where the spanners are proprietary and not for sale. The situation is just as ludicrous.

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.

Librephone could be successful in a few ways. Outright, as a device, but also as a carrot to bring open handheld hardware to enough people to drive political change (with a small-p, the politics of society, as well as politics of the big-p kind) such that iOS and Android would have to follow suit. With actual public policy Librephone could also end up being a stick: bringing about legislation that requires computers of any kind to be able to boot software of our choosing. Right-to-repair plus plus, if you will.

With enough Librephone devices in the right hands, either the market or the law will demand that we have the same openness and freedom to use our devices the same way we do commodity x86 hardware today. The same freedom imprisoned and exploited in the core of mine and your phone, right now.

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#249

Post by [deleted] »

NetMageSCW wrote: post #221
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've kinda migrated to the worst-case scenario already and it's really not that bad - for my use case. I have an old phone (actually running LineageOS rather than stock) that works as you perfectly describe as a glorified digital token. This device doesn't come with me. There's no banking I need to do, on a day-to-day basis, requiring said token, that has to be done right now or the world will end . It can wait until…

To me that sounds like sacrificing living for a principle and missing the point.

[deleted]
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