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FSF announces Librephone project

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Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#451

Post by sunshine-o »

natebc wrote: post #416
nabla9 wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In free software those who write code decide what is done and nobody else matters in the end.

This probably explains a lot of the problem then. IME those who are good at writing code are pretty bad at the social parts of running an organization. This isn't a dig, I've known and admired quite a few people who were absolute geniuses at hardware and/OR software, real engineers but they couldn't even manage a group lunch. It's just an entirely different skillset.

Like OpenBSD Theo de Raadt who was know to be quite toxic. But in the end its project is still going and highly praised after 30 years.

Let me frame it another way:

Software is like soccer, big tech is the FIFA, free software is you amateur football team.

- The FIFA will always tell you they love amateur soccer.

- The FIFA can be run by MBA, manager but your local group of friend/team cannot.

- Someone (probably the FIFA) is telling you your local team need the manager types for you to play soccer with others.

- If an overweight man who never played soccer come to invite you to play soccer in the weekend for free you might not go. If Pele come you will go.

- If an overweight man who never played soccer offer you a job at FIFA you will probably accept because you love soccer and for the money.

- The FIFA is more interested in people watching TV and ads on Sunday than people playing soccer outside. Ultimately they want you to love soccer but it need to be their way. And their way is watching TV and buying their jersey.

This is probably why Theo de Raadt might be a big A-Hole and said no to the FIFA but he is a good player and still have a fit team having fun outside every Sunday.

I wouldn't have bet on this outcome 20 years ago.

All those open source now corrupted foundations with the beautiful websites and the big titles and leadership pages pretend to be something they are not.

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#452

Post by padjo »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #389
oblio wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LOL. Compare and contrast this: > Say what you want about the Stalleman type he was very inspiring and had real leadership. So a lot of hackers followed him in his crazy vision and that gave us a lot. With this: > It is very feminine and obviously doesn't work that well. It's a super sexist comment. A comment born in the 60s, or I guess in our geek land, still in 2025.

>It's a super sexist comment. Is it? To answer this, just reverse the genders in the statement and see if it's still sexist. "It's very masculine and obviously doesn't work that well"

Yeah I think it’s fair to say that in many circumstances people would use masculine as a pejorative and not get called out for being sexist. There’s some historic power imbalance stuff at play there, but it’s still sexist.

If you have problems with some type of behaviour it’s much better to say exactly what they are rather than appealing to some platonic notion of sex characteristics, which is both offensive and poorly communicates your position.

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#453

Post by [deleted] »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #389
oblio wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LOL. Compare and contrast this: > Say what you want about the Stalleman type he was very inspiring and had real leadership. So a lot of hackers followed him in his crazy vision and that gave us a lot. With this: > It is very feminine and obviously doesn't work that well. It's a super sexist comment. A comment born in the 60s, or I guess in our geek land, still in 2025.

>It's a super sexist comment. Is it? To answer this, just reverse the genders in the statement and see if it's still sexist. "It's very masculine and obviously doesn't work that well"

[deleted]

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#454

Post by fsflover »

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?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45208925

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#455

Post by vfclists »

seba_dos1 wrote: post #164
vfclists wrote: post #140

Looks like we will have to wait forever. I can't take these jokers seriously. Years after mobile phones came onto the market they are now planning to create their own phone.

Not sure, but perhaps it could be somewhat easier to take them seriously if you had actually clicked on the link instead of living in an alternate reality where it's about "planning to create their own phone".

The FSF has never been a solid act.

For years they have studiously ignored the fact that the mobile phone is the place where many people engage with IT and have been faffing about in the desktop and server space.

Instead of leading they have always trailed behind. What they should have been doing was focusing on the software vision which they will most definitely screw up.

Focus on the software vision and wait for the deblobblable hardware to emerge or commission their own hardware from scratch.

I'm sorry but these guys have and will always be useless, much like the Wayland project.

How many years has that crew taken to create something fully capable of replacing X11?

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#456

Post by nabla9 »

RIMR wrote: post #415
nabla9 wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In free software those who write code decide what is done and nobody else matters in the end.

Spoken like someone who has zero experience developing open source software. I work for a company that makes a very popular open source product. The users lead our development, not the coders. Hell, I don't even code, and I get to tell the engineers what to fix based on what our users complain about. I suppose if you think of free software as a bunch of solo-coded GitHub projects, it can feel like the coders are king…

The context in this discussion is FSF initiated projects.

Those who are in the wider use have been started and kept people like RMS. There are hundreds of them in dustbin or with minimal use.

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#457

Post by ktosobcy »

Great. But IMHO better regulation is still needed: force makers to have unlockable bootloader and provided libre drivers for their device (for the OS that they originally ship with); force makers to provide alternatives - for example using alternative "play services" by only providing general API that others can provide pluggable implementaions…

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#458

Post by vfclists »

drnick1 wrote: post #180
vfclists wrote: post #140

Looks like we will have to wait forever. I can't take these jokers seriously. Years after mobile phones came onto the market they are now planning to create their own phone.

Someone hasn't read the article.

These guys want to build on the Android foundation. I'm sorry but this will not work.

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#459

Post by ZoomZoomZoom »

positron26 wrote: post #446
ZoomZoomZoom wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The FSF is now under the leadership of a "Bachelor of Arts degree in Media and Culture and a Master of Arts in the Preservation and Presentation of the Moving Image" who probably hasn't written a line of code. This is an exceptionally poor argument. 1. Coders are biased and often not aligned with users whose rights FSF is there to protect. Just look at any OSS vs FS discussion on this site to see examples. 2. Your…

> Coders are biased and often not aligned with users whose rights FSF is there to protect. Just look at any OSS vs FS discussion on this site to see examples. Programmers understand software ecosystems, of which free software is just a subset. I also see a lot of programmers advocating leaderships and other non-technical skills generally. If you observe a pattern where a lot of coders seem biased, maybe there's somet…

> Programmers understand software ecosystems…

Some do, some don't and happily (or begrudgingly but willingly) contribute to building a hostile larger ecosystem.

> …of which free software is just a subset.

We're mostly talking about the movement here, but OK. Don't see what's your point here.

> If you observe a pattern where a lot of coders seem biased, maybe there's something else going on?

Of course, self-interest. Mostly the need to minimize work/pay and improve hiring or promotional perspectives.

> ...because they are divisive and completely incapable of working with others or incorporating ideological diversity

That's a great argument as it applies equally to uncommunicative, autocratic, self-absorbed, deceptive entities as well as to principled, unswayed and self-consistent ones.

I'm not arguing FSF is a pinnacle of leadership, au contraire.

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#460

Post by hamburgererror »

Is there any other way than going through reverse engineering? Projects like LineageOS and others have shown this is really hard.

Why not simply start from scratch and make a truly open source phone? That is, design and build the electronics and the OS that goes on top of it. A bit like an iPhone+iOS but fully open source. Is this dream really unreachable?

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