461–470 of 669 posts
Unfortunately, even if you could completely de-blob the kernel itself (and for many chipsets, that would require a considerable amount of reverse engineering work!), smartphones bear the Curse of the Modem. In a modern smartphone, modem is often a part of the SoC itself - and it runs some of the biggest and fattest blobs you've ever seen.
Not insurmountable, given the availability of srsRAN. https://www.srsran.com/
Unfortunately, even if you could completely de-blob the kernel itself (and for many chipsets, that would require a considerable amount of reverse engineering work!), smartphones bear the Curse of the Modem. In a modern smartphone, modem is often a part of the SoC itself - and it runs some of the biggest and fattest blobs you've ever seen.
This is the big barrier here, and unfortunately, it is legally impossible to open source. In most countries, the spectrum that cell phone carriers use is licensed to the carrier, under the condition they only connect devices that are guaranteed to comply with the requirements of using that spectrum. The end user (i.e. the person with the phone) has no license to use the spectrum. So in order to get regulatory certifi…
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Why do we have to have million Linux distros? Why do we have to have dozen desktop environments? Because in FOSS world every single actor is a snowflake with unique vision. Any form of cooperation ends up in drama and moral accusations.
The FOSS world is primarily about freedom. You don’t have to align with someone else’s vision, you don’t need to be profitable, you don’t need to care about other projects
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> 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…
In free software those who write code decide what is done and nobody else matters in the end.
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…
Mobile software is unfortunately not really a lego that can always be combined at will. In your examples you compare Android rebuilds with real Linux distros. The projects also have quite different goals (providing full manufacturer ROM replacement for Android on Lineage OS to reusing any old hardware to basically run servers on PostmarketOS).
Most PostmarketOS devices start out using LineageOS kernels, and many are atill using those.
Why not use PostmarketOS kernels on LineageOS?
The ultimate goals are different, but cooperation on upstreaming kernel work would benefit both.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mobile software is unfortunately not really a lego that can always be combined at will. In your examples you compare Android rebuilds with real Linux distros. The projects also have quite different goals (providing full manufacturer ROM replacement for Android on Lineage OS to reusing any old hardware to basically run servers on PostmarketOS).
That's not entirely true. Most PostmarketOS devices start out using LineageOS kernels, and many are atill using those. Why not use PostmarketOS kernels on LineageOS? The ultimate goals are different, but cooperation on upstreaming kernel work would benefit both.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thats clearly not what the OP is suggesting as per "Why do we have to have /e/OS instead of a better supported LineageOS, because /e/ is a 1:1 copy anyways?". Both cases are android. /e/OS is not librephone. There's little point in "partnering" with postmarketOS, because the project is literally about clean room reversing the proprietary blobs found in android devices: https://librephone.fsf.org/site/ - there are no…
> 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
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 subset for base implementation on a non-official OS?
> See also my other comment
It seems you are just as confused about this project as the OP, which is ironic given your name.
Ultimately, I don't think the most important challenge is in binary firmware blobs, but the software which people depend upon to run their lives. What does it matter if you can run a completely free software stack on your phone, if your bank software (or your required government ID, as is looking depressingly likely) requires you to run a Big Tech approved phone OS? Perhaps the FSF can't do much about that, but that…
Use the website. I’ve never seen a bank where a mobile app is the only option for remote access. If my bank did that, I’d switch banks.
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…
> 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…
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 while ignoring financial interest, basically abandoning users and businesses. There are how many billion smartphone users on Earth, and the FSF expects volunteer programmers and volunteer donations recruited on one of the worst websites I have ever seen to carry the load? Give me a break.