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FSF announces Librephone project

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Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#661

Post by fsflover »

gradeless wrote: post #645
SchemaLoad wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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a modern phone would take years and years of work from many people, and by the time you have it worked out, the phone is obsolete and very few people still use it.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, whic…

Can you name such devices? Precursor?

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#662

Post by TZubiri »

antisol wrote: post #657
zaphar wrote: post #656

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good for you, but that has nothing to do with whether secrecy is necessary in a security context.

it does, however, point out that there's not been a valid security context listed where secrecy would be necessary.

Pull your head out of the sand my friend. There's murders, kidnappings, wars occurring around us every day.

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#663

Post by Barbing »

hedora wrote: post #495
Barbing wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re probably 100% right and it’s honestly heartbreaking. Time to donate to the EFF and FSF I guess…

Also, time to switch back to firefox, and turn off the DRM crap. I get warnings from some sites (like radio stations) that DRM is required for the page, but haven’t noticed any breakage. Using them in that mode adds signal to their web server logs saying that forcing DRM will break their site. Everyone that cares about this stuff should be doing this. (And, no, firefox isn’t broken. Also, Firefox doesn’t include the…

Firefox 100%!

Absolutely re: sending a message.

Using Chrome feels creepy, like the Google marketing team is watching me type or something. And risking the future of the open internet.

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#664

Post by antisol »

TZubiri wrote: post #662
antisol wrote: post #657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it does, however, point out that there's not been a valid security context listed where secrecy would be necessary.

Pull your head out of the sand my friend. There's murders, kidnappings, wars occurring around us every day.

which of these requires my government to not be transparent?

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#665

Post by fsflover »

tyler-dot-earth wrote: post #553
fsflover wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are all commenters on HN ignoring the only smartphone running an FSF-endorsed [0] operating system, Librem 5, and only list everything else? I just can't get it. Even the FSF themselves didn't mention it or provided any reasoning for choosing a Google-controlled operating system - despite recommending Librem 5 earlier [1]. What am I missing? [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25504641 [1] https://www.fsf.or…

as someone who has followed this phone for a long time, it has had an image problem - fairly old hardware, early software/buggy, and bad customer service experiences. i'm still pretty tempted to play with one.

We are talking about the FSF here, not Apple. The former concentrate on the user freedom, not modern hardware or polished experience (which is a good thing).

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#666

Post by linmob »

mschuster91 wrote: post #356
linmob wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pr…

> 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. Is there any actually relevant alternative to this oligopoly? Apple doesn't sell to third parties, NVDA lacks a baseband and so does (to my knowledge) Broadcom, and it's been ages since I saw anything from Intel in the mobile space.

UniSoc maybe? It appears to be reverse-engineerable [0].

[0]: https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Jolla_C2_(jolla-c2)

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#667

Post by nextaccountic »

mike_d wrote: post #276
onli wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is going sue the fsf into oblivion. The movement has decades of legal experience, if a company would be dumb enough that company would just burn money and lose. Especially about reverse engineering software, as if patents had any power there. Apple, the end boss in that regard, not fighting on that level against the m1 project is proof enough. Second, fuck the carriers. Certifications will not persist as soon…

I understand it might seem confusing if you are not familiar with the requirements, but they are not trivial to bypass. Cell phones operate in licensed radio spectrum, so they need to have proper testing and certification ( https://www.fcc.gov/oet/ea/rfdevice ). Any device not properly certified would be illegal to manufacture or import into the US. Separately cellular networks require PTCRB certification of the devi…

This is aounds similar to the objections that were raised against the GNU project in the 80s.

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#668

Post by endgame »

bombcar wrote: post #6
endgame wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It becomes much harder to force attestation on people if there's a significant user base that runs alternative operating systems.

Do you really NEED to be forced to attest if you can make your phone look like any damn PC using a browser?

My bank is migrating online banking to an app-only platform. I could see attestation following very shortly afterwards.

Re: FSF announces Librephone project

#669

Post by Ajedi32 »

taink wrote: post #646
Ajedi32 wrote: post #626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, co…

> 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?

Your friend would have to buy a copy of the original game from the author (or a reseller) before using your modified version of the game. You could even sell your mod to others, but they would also have to own a copy of the original software in order to use it since what you'd be selling is the modification, not the original software it depends on.

This is technically already legal, except most apps don't have the source code available for you to modify in the first place, and some companies try to abuse license terms to prevent it.

> 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?

You'd just... do that? Same way you commission a mechanic to rotate the tires on your car. You'd have the source code and build tools. What's the problem exactly?

> Restricting how software is redistributed holds a great deal of power

I agree. I don't think authors of my version of Free Software should have control over how software is distributed except that new licenses have to be purchased from them. Once a license is sold, I don't think the author should have control over how that license is used or who it gets transferred to (except perhaps a modest limit on how frequently it can be transferred, to prevent shenanigans like third party floating license pools).

> developers can be paid not per copy, but per patch

I don't think this is very practical with Stallman's version of Free Software, because once you sell one copy of a patch that person can just turn around and sell it to others, undercutting you. So you'd have to price your patches at an absurdly high rate to recoup your costs. Effectively you'd be selling a personalized support contract, not actually selling software. This model sort of works in commercial contexts (hi Red Hat), but it's clearly not competitive with the proprietary software model. (Compare the market cap to giants like Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, etc.)

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