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FSF announces Librephone project

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Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#641

Post by dang »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #469
RIMR wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[flagged]

Personal attacks will get you banned here, and you did it more than once. No more of this, please, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: you've unfortunately been posting tons of flamewar comments to HN and clearly using the site primarily for this, so I've banned the account.

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#643

Post by pas »

pietro72ohboy wrote: post #406
pas wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

people followed Stallman because the GNU stuff was interesting and good, then we got decades of endless dick-measuring about whose freedom is more free, GPL2 or GPL3 or MIT or AGPL or ... and while the differences have consequences in the grand scheme of things what mattered is what the trillion dollar corporations wanted, because the FSF didn't manage to do shit, not even the feminine coordination (nor the masculine…

The GNU stuff was precisely what FSF managed to do. They didn't manage to do more because they had a fraction of the resources large corporations had. People wanting more just doesn't create more by itself, they were reliant on our contributions and we failed them. Today, I have access to quality tools on my computer and my computer runs Linux without any of the drama that proprietary equivalents bring and looks visu…

that we failed them might be true, but mostly they did their things and the times changed, and lots of those things are not what users want/need, so the FSF/GNU got almost completely weightless.

... it seems to me that Stallman and the FSF got complacent by their relative (and out of my ignorance I'm now assuming that also unexpected) success, and also they completely misunderstood their value proposition, ie. the product, it was not gcc, emacs, or Hurd or whatever, it was the innovation to allow and foster technical public capital accumulation. (and still, it's absolutely a not solved problem to this day. the wheel is reinvented too fucking many times, even in software.)

... of course they do deserve credit, gratitude and a lot of respect and support for their integrity and steadfastness!

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#644

Post by floxy »

NoGravitas wrote: post #500
dotancohen wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does a banking app need that a PWA can not provide?

Technically nothing. In practice, banks will demand remote attestation of the environment the app is running in.

Does anyone have a recommendation for a good "Remote Attestation 101" tutorial? I'm trying to wrap my head around why someone couldn't just run an Android emulator to run your banking app or whatever. I mean there then must be hardware keys that are not present in the code, but then there must be a revocation method for compromised hardware keys, etc..

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#645

Post by gradeless »

SchemaLoad wrote: post #213
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…

I hate to complain, but I can't help but feel this is kind of impossible with the resources available to the people working on it. Reverse engineering a modern phone would take years and years of work from many people, and by the time you have it worked out, the phone is obsolete and very few people still use it. The Apple Silicon macbooks seem a good example. The M1 came out about 5 years ago now and with a whole pr…

Yes it will take many years. This whole thing has already played out with FSF and Replicant. They ended up stuck working on a couple of ever aging devices as many new generations of devices were launched and all the technologies in smartphones evolved.

If people want open devices they should maybe better explore open hardware. Im not talking about devices, like Librem where the schematics are open but the chips, which are the parts which do all the work, are all closed, but rather devices with open silicon.

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#646

Post by taink »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #626
taink wrote: post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The initial sale never has and never will be the issue with non free software; in fact, they can sometimes be acquired free of charge. I get your sentiment and I agree with you that some software can indeed be proprietary without being predatory or abusive. I think there is an issue with your definition of "user freedom". What do you mean by it? Stallman, when defining free software, does not bother with standards or…

I think what GP means by "user freedom" is that the software acts in the interests of its users rather than the interests of its developers. Some proprietary software does do that, but there's an inherent conflict of interest there since the developer has a monopoly on the ability to control said software. Software that is open to user modification (which is how I would personally define Free Software) protects again…

> Stallman goes further than my preferred definition, insisting that Free Software must also be freely redistributable with no required payment.

What do you mean? What would free software requiring redistribution payment look like? Say I send a copy of a free-as-in-freedom game that I may or may not have modified in some way to a friend or on a forum, should I pay its author(s) for this? How could I, for instance, commission someone to modify software if I want to change it when I don't have the skills to do so myself, in your definition of free software? I think a simpler definition, like Stallman's, is less restrictive of software modification.

Restricting how software is redistributed holds a great deal of power, especially when you remember the idea behind free software is that you get to have control over your software. Copyleft is such an example -- it is highly restrictive.

I get the financial issue one could have with free software as defined by Stallman; freeing the software you distribute is a difficult decision. Free software is advocated from the point of view of its users, who are ignorant to the difficulties one might face when developing and publishing software. If this is a decision you can make, it is kinder to your users to free the software you publish.

Side note: free software requires one to examine how they value commodities. Do you value the object itself, or the human time it took to make it? In a world where software is thought of as free by default, developers can be paid not per copy, but per patch. I believe such a world would be better for software quality because I agree with you that competitive markets are better at aligning with consumer interests than monopolies.

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#647

Post by encrypted_bird »

ryukoposting wrote: post #598
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.

> people are generally happy with their phones I'm not. Samsung treats my phone like dirt. I'd love to have some actual ownership of a device I spent $900 on last year. I don't think my wife is happy with her iPhone either. She bought one of those little NFC fridge magnet things that locks your phone out of social media apps. She and I are dissatisfied in different ways, but there's a theme here.

Tbf parent did say that people are _generally_ happy with their phones. I.e. they didn't say everyone is.

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#648

Post by pkphilip »

Given the nature of the phone hardware, would it be easier to develop a phone architecture from the ground up rather than trying to reverse engineer the existing phones? For instance, wouldn't it be easier to start with a power efficient, battery-powered SBC and then add on components needed for a phone rather than trying to reverse engineer a whole bunch of binary blobs and run into issues with DMCA etc?

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#649

Post by fsflover »

woodrowbarlow wrote: post #493
penguin_booze wrote: post #394

Ugh, I don't know. From a practical standpoint, I can see why basing on Android makes sense. But I really wish we can "somehow" extend an existing Linux distribution (or an Android kernel, even) with a user space reworked to function well on small screens. Maybe that's a pipe dream. What I'd really, really prefer is to be able to program the device with the same ease as developing a local Linux application. If I need…

i agree, except the web part. Purism did a lot of work to build Phosh, based on Gnome, with GTK apps that had fluid layout. on a phone-size screen, the UI was suited for touch; but connect it to a screen and everything seamlessly switches to a standard Gnome UI. i would rather see this get mainlined into Gnome, and for it to be common-practice to design desktop apps with a fluid layout that can adapt to phone screens…

> i would rather see this get mainlined into Gnome

This is exactly the plan of Purism, https://puri.sm/posts/how-to-be-upstream-first/

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#650

Post by jlokier »

DirkH wrote: post #275
jeena wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then I would need to constantly charge two phones and keep two phones in my pocket all the time because I never know when I would need to do those things on the go.

You check your banking apps multiple times each day with the frequency and unpredictability expected from messaging apps? If not that frequently or unpredictably then you could just plan to use your laptop for banking some time during the day.

> You check your banking apps multiple times each day with the frequency and unpredictability expected from messaging apps?

I almost do, yes. Life's complicated, I use several bank and credit card services a day. I'm not at home at suitable times for my banking needs. And payments for purchases sometimes require confirmation in real time via phone app.

> If not that frequently or unpredictably then you could just plan to use your laptop for banking some time during the day.

I used to do that years ago back when it was an option.. But these days, 3 banks I use (two for business) require using their mobile app to authenticate login on a laptop browser. There's no other option.

One of the card apps I have to use often won't even run when Android developer mode is enabled, which is quite annoying.

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