FSF announces Librephone project
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) today announced its project to bring mobile phone freedom to users. "Librephone" is an initiative to reverse-engineer obstacles preventing mobile phone freedom until its goal is achieved.
Librephone is a new initiative by the FSF with the goal of bringing full freedom to the mobile computing environment. The vast majority of software users around the world use a mobile phone as their primary computing device. After forty years of advocacy for computing freedom, the FSF will now work to bring the right to study, change, share, and modify the programs users depend on in their daily lives to mobile phones.
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Bobo The Great
in reply to Jure Repinc • • •Not a good choice for a name, at first I though it was just another linux phone that would be useless for 90% of people.
Very cool project instead, hope this can lead the fondation for a 100% open source mobile OS.
the_q
in reply to Bobo The Great • • •davetortoise
in reply to the_q • • •the_q
in reply to davetortoise • • •davetortoise
in reply to the_q • • •But if the userbase becomes too large, tech companies will see their bottom lines affected, and it'll be enshittified like everything else. And it'll become a more attractive target for malware, of course.
non_burglar
in reply to the_q • • •silly goose meekah
in reply to non_burglar • • •non_burglar
in reply to silly goose meekah • • •silly goose meekah
in reply to non_burglar • • •non_burglar
in reply to silly goose meekah • • •silly goose meekah
in reply to non_burglar • • •UltraGiGaGigantic
in reply to silly goose meekah • • •silly goose meekah
in reply to UltraGiGaGigantic • • •Doesn't have to be. Marketing also includes a website, that you as a user need to consciously visit to see, which I would definitely consider consensual.
Commercials like billboards are a different story, those definitely suck
Ferk
in reply to silly goose meekah • • •I feel it's a bit like the usability vs security dilemma.. you can try to optimize to have both, but then you won't have as a result neither the most secure system nor the smoothest user-friendly experience, but something in between (you might still consider that "secure" or "usable", but that just depends on where you set your expectations).
If you want to maximize marketing then the result won't be as ethical as it could be, and if you want to maximize ethics then the result won't be as marketable as it could be.
silly goose meekah
in reply to Ferk • • •Ferk
in reply to silly goose meekah • • •Good marketing means achieving an arbitrary limit of what you consider "good" marketing. So it depends on where you set the bar.
The best marketing necessarily requires some level of unethical behavior, because being honest and saying the whole truth doesn't sell. Everything has drawbacks and benefits.. the better marketing minimizes (or even hides / fails to mention) the drawbacks and emphasizes the benefits, which is a form of deception.
pinguinu [any]
in reply to non_burglar • • •EponymousBosh
in reply to Bobo The Great • • •ProgrammingSocks
in reply to EponymousBosh • • •EponymousBosh
in reply to ProgrammingSocks • • •Holytimes
in reply to Bobo The Great • • •The day a open source project has good marketing is the day the end of the world happens.
It's just impossible for some reason.
iopq
in reply to Jure Repinc • • •Peasley
in reply to iopq • • •TMP_NKcYUEoM7kXg4qYe
in reply to iopq • • •The issue is that for the FSF, what they call "software freedom" is their number one goal. So what's likely to happen is that they create some kind of "deblobbed" firmware that breaks many features and security of the device, which Graphene OS will refuse to use.
I hope this project will be useful but am worried that they'll just make a shittier version of someone else's work like they did with e.g. Libreboot.
ExtremeUnicorn
in reply to TMP_NKcYUEoM7kXg4qYe • • •There's a bit of hyperbolism and distortion in that comment.
So first of all, the FSF did not create Libreboot, that was just a coreboot distribution by one (or two) people and I would not call it shitty, it had prebuilt binaries with working GRUB configs for the models supported, even allowing for full disk encryption with a well written guide on how to do so.
Secondly, it's hard to create a chain of trust without trusing the hardware. As long as the manufacturer remains in control of any part of it, you will get the same situation thay we have now. I would rather use a deblobbed device than wait for obscure security features that provide no real-world benefit to my use case.
However, I think this may not catch on. Hundreds of millions of people use completely outdated phones with spyware of some form on them right now, they simply don't care.
TMP_NKcYUEoM7kXg4qYe
in reply to ExtremeUnicorn • • •Indeed (as I said) they did not create it, they made a shittier version of it, called GNU boot. Or I guess maybe not "the FSF" but devs under their umbrella. I think Linux Libre would be a better example. Or all the crappy "FSF approved" distros listed on their website.
That's true but that's not really their stance. They trust the hardware and the software running on said device, as long as they don't have access to the software. Microcode updates are an example of this. They don't like microcode "blobs" in the kernel but trust the outdated vulnerable microcode running on their CPU.
I would not. I would prefer not to get hacked by spectre type attack. I also don't like broken virtualization on my CPU and don't want my CPU to destroy itself by high voltage.
But yes, I agree that to trust the software, we need to trust the hardware first. This also means that there is basically no "Respects Your Freedom" hardware. Every such hardware runs proprietary software which the user cannot see. And even if it ran no such software, it's still just proprietary hardware, which we cannot study, create derivatives, etc. If I ran the FSF, I would acknowledge that there is nothing but grey area, instead of drawing an arbitrary line through the grey area.
Going back to phones, I am just worried that the Librephone project will focus too much on moving the proprietary parts from software to the hardware instead of actually helping users to get more freedom.
LeFantome
in reply to TMP_NKcYUEoM7kXg4qYe • • •TMP_NKcYUEoM7kXg4qYe
in reply to LeFantome • • •majster
in reply to Jure Repinc • • •I think this intiative is spot on. I would describe current approach of 2 major OS vendors, Google and Microsoft as such:
Microsoft demands standardization at firmware level via UEFI, ACPI etc. because they bring OS kernel and userspace.
Google demands Linux API version and brings just userspace.
In theory Google approach better facilitates open ecosystem but each OEM treats Linux kernel as just a firmware blob so the end situation is actually worse.
On the PC we have standardized firmware while Android chases Linux API levels each release and thus undermines the whole ecosystem.
blobjim [he/him]
in reply to Jure Repinc • • •RedCat
in reply to Jure Repinc • • •This is amazing news!
I'm glad the fsf is actually taking it upon itself to create more solutions especially since it has become increasingly irrelevant throughout these years and sadly been replaced by the corporate "open source" hellscape.
We need free software, not "open source" corporate bullshit.
Open source was invented in the first place as a way to get people from being radicalized by the free software movement, since it would take money out of their filthy, greedy pockets.
loxdogs
in reply to Jure Repinc • • •hamsda
in reply to loxdogs • • •If you don't want to have any freedom until you have it all, you'll be slave forever.
You're letting perfect get in the way of good enough.
solardirus
in reply to hamsda • • •Jankatarch
in reply to Jure Repinc • • •MrSulu
in reply to Jure Repinc • • •vas
in reply to Jure Repinc • • •