This seems pretty relevant on the heels of yesterday's popular discussion on how "Free software Hasn't Won" [0] in terms of tools available to the average consumer.
Just because pieces are open-source (or "free software") doesn't mean the autonomy and capabilities we want are necessarily present in the overall system.
> Practically, Librephone aims to close the last gaps between existing distributions of the Android operating system and software freedom. The FSF has hired experienced developer Rob Savoye (DejaGNU, Gnash, OpenStreetMap, and more) to lead the technical project. He is currently investigating the state of device firmware and binary blobs in other mobile phone freedom projects, prioritizing the free software work done by the not entirely free software mobile phone operating system LineageOS.
The time is right for this project I hope they succeed.
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 is where I feel they could truly make the biggest difference for freedom for the average user.
Why would the FSF be working on a problem that has absolutely no technical element? What exactly do you want them to tell your bank and your government? Why exactly can't you tell your bank and your government that?
> that is where I feel they could truly make the biggest difference for freedom for the average user.
By doing what exactly? Telling your government to change their ID policies? You seem to be complaining at your health food store about the nutrition of McDonald's food, because most people eat at McDonald's and that's where they would make the most difference.
Historically we have seen bumps in Linux usage because of cross-platform support. Either officially or unofficially. So I agree that focusing on making that transition more seamless will be of more benefit than telling people they need to use something different or suck it up. There is a reason rooting and making banking and other high security apps functional has been pretty popular.
In that case, I will own a surveillance phone JUST for the government ID app, and put that into airplane mode almost all the time, except for the few times per month where I need that shitty app.
The rest of the time, I will use a free phone.
All the apps that I will not be able to use any more? Doesn't matter. I am now old and grumpy enough to realise that phones are utterly evil and actually useless. Give me a camera, Google Maps (or better a non-Google alternative), Signal and a browser, and I don't need anything else.
I think it gives them the ability to compare device support of "LineageOS with vendor kernel" and "LineageOS with unblobbed near-upstream kernel" as a measure of progress. If you get the latter working as well as the former, bringing up PostmarketOS on the same kernel is a much smaller problem.
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.
One of the two processors (the ARM one) in the PinePhone modem runs a proprietary Linux distro, which can be replaced by a free distro. The code on the Hexagon processor can't be replaced yet though I think.
>Librephone aims to close the last gaps between existing distributions of the Android operating system and software freedom
I am so happy they are focusing on Android, one of the most popular operating systems widely used by every day people. This is important work for providing user friendly, free software to users.
Let's just hope they don't fall into the trap of disqualifying binary blobs sent as part of drivers vs opting for hardware that harcodes the blob.
For it to succeed, they must also help put pressure on governments (countries like Brazil or Italy) and banks to stop depending on "Play Integrity" because only Google has the keys (and blocks leaked ones) so we can't count on bypasses being available (it's not just a matter of obfuscation).
This needs to be done before age verification apps become universal..
Took them long enough... The free software movement was still stuck on PC despite the fact the whole world moved to mobile. Glad to see they're finally starting to catch up.
They should probably prepare themselves to make ideological concessions... The situation is very ugly here in mobile land. Treacherous computing, remote attestation, DRM, all ubiquitous and normalized...
It's a great idea. Why not join forces with the PinePhone and Librem folks? They're building the hardware and I'm sure they could use more software folk to help out with the firmware and OS.
How will this phone comply with child safety laws?
*Edit* Because Idiots are Downvoting me, look at the texas law SB 2420 as an example. These phones will essentially be illegal in texas unless they comply with already passed laws.
The phone is the critical root identity anchor for most of the world now. And many countries outside of the west has already made the Sim card a root identity. Additionally to make it trustworthy (think Google wallet and digital wallets and so on) to work they cannot trust the end user because effectively you the user don't own your own identity. So that's why the phone has to be proprietary - so that it's secure element can be trusted in interactions with the state-big-tech nexus. I talked about my experience with this while attempting to cross borders in SEA. https://polykey.com/blog/architecting-anti-fragile-trust-at-...
The hardware was a little difficult to obtain in the US, and WiFi worked only with a blob of questionable provenance.
It looks like Replicant has been stuck for several years, and they recognize that they need to find a new device, funding, etc.
(After Replicant, I spent some time on PostmarketOS with various devices, and then gave up and bought iPhones, and then got ticked off and moved to GrapheneOS.)
I wonder whether the FSF is already collaborating with Purism on this, to leverage their work on the Librem 5 and PureOS, which I believe the FSF is well aware of. If the FSF manages to muster a lot more open source volunteers on a more affordable hardware, but that work is also usable for Librem 5, then it could be a win-win. (And Purism also has something called Liberty Phone, which is a made-in-USA Librem 5 phone, so their lawyers should talk about trademarks in any case.)
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 functions is key to being able to write replacement software, so we may have less non-free software to deal with. I don't have any experience in trying to reverse engineer software, so the best I can do for now is cheer on from outside, unless I want to try my hands at this stuff later.
I also like that this project is not intending to produce an Android-based distro, but focusing more on reverse engineering. Although I read that the results are targeted at helping developers of Android-compatible OSes, the results can hopefully be used by non-Android [GNU/]Linux distros and perhaps other *nix stuff, like the BSD distros. The FSF (by way of developer Rob Savoye) recognizing that a project like this is not going to be quick, easy, or cheap, and is a long term effort is good, as that likely means this project isn't going to be easily abandoned just because of not being able to produce quick results.
I hope that this whole effort can eventually let us break free of the Apple-Google mobile device duopoly, as it sure is getting tiring for me to stick with one of these two companies for my mobile computing needs.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 76.4 ms ] threadJust because pieces are open-source (or "free software") doesn't mean the autonomy and capabilities we want are necessarily present in the overall system.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45562286
The time is right for this project I hope they succeed.
> that is where I feel they could truly make the biggest difference for freedom for the average user.
By doing what exactly? Telling your government to change their ID policies? You seem to be complaining at your health food store about the nutrition of McDonald's food, because most people eat at McDonald's and that's where they would make the most difference.
The rest of the time, I will use a free phone.
All the apps that I will not be able to use any more? Doesn't matter. I am now old and grumpy enough to realise that phones are utterly evil and actually useless. Give me a camera, Google Maps (or better a non-Google alternative), Signal and a browser, and I don't need anything else.
Currently scope only seems to go as far as the operating system
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.
https://themodemdistro.com/ https://github.com/the-modem-distro/
I am so happy they are focusing on Android, one of the most popular operating systems widely used by every day people. This is important work for providing user friendly, free software to users.
Let's just hope they don't fall into the trap of disqualifying binary blobs sent as part of drivers vs opting for hardware that harcodes the blob.
This needs to be done before age verification apps become universal..
They should probably prepare themselves to make ideological concessions... The situation is very ugly here in mobile land. Treacherous computing, remote attestation, DRM, all ubiquitous and normalized...
*Edit* Because Idiots are Downvoting me, look at the texas law SB 2420 as an example. These phones will essentially be illegal in texas unless they comply with already passed laws.
Any reason that can't happen now in something like the Steam Deck?
I can't take these jokers seriously.
Years after mobile phones came onto the market they are now planning to create their own phone.
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 Replicant has been stuck for several years, and they recognize that they need to find a new device, funding, etc.
(After Replicant, I spent some time on PostmarketOS with various devices, and then gave up and bought iPhones, and then got ticked off and moved to GrapheneOS.)
I wonder whether the FSF is already collaborating with Purism on this, to leverage their work on the Librem 5 and PureOS, which I believe the FSF is well aware of. If the FSF manages to muster a lot more open source volunteers on a more affordable hardware, but that work is also usable for Librem 5, then it could be a win-win. (And Purism also has something called Liberty Phone, which is a made-in-USA Librem 5 phone, so their lawyers should talk about trademarks in any case.)
https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/
https://puri.sm/products/liberty-phone/
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 functions is key to being able to write replacement software, so we may have less non-free software to deal with. I don't have any experience in trying to reverse engineer software, so the best I can do for now is cheer on from outside, unless I want to try my hands at this stuff later.
I also like that this project is not intending to produce an Android-based distro, but focusing more on reverse engineering. Although I read that the results are targeted at helping developers of Android-compatible OSes, the results can hopefully be used by non-Android [GNU/]Linux distros and perhaps other *nix stuff, like the BSD distros. The FSF (by way of developer Rob Savoye) recognizing that a project like this is not going to be quick, easy, or cheap, and is a long term effort is good, as that likely means this project isn't going to be easily abandoned just because of not being able to produce quick results.
I hope that this whole effort can eventually let us break free of the Apple-Google mobile device duopoly, as it sure is getting tiring for me to stick with one of these two companies for my mobile computing needs.