- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.ml
- foss@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.ml
- foss@beehaw.org
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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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.
So they could do it for pixels and this open source firmware could be used by Graphene OS, for example?
Yes, though the future of GrapheneOS on Pixels after 10 is currently in question
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.
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.
FSF did not create Libreboot
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.
it’s hard to create a chain of trust without trusting the hardware
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 rather use a deblobbed device than wait for obscure security features that provide no real-world benefit to my use case.
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.
The FSF approach the microcode is just brain dead.
Could not have said it better lol. I dislike their overall mentality that they don’t care about proprietary code if it’s baked into hardware. But at least I can sort of understand how they got that idea. But with the microcode part, I just cannot even fathom how did they come up with such stupidity.
The project’s aim is to create an Android-compatible OS. I like the Linux-on-phone approach of postmarketOS better but whatever they end up working on should end up benefitting both projects since they’ll probably just be contributing driver code like postmarketOS. It’s weird that they don’t even mention postmarketOS in the announcement.
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.
I don’t know as much about phones as I do with computers but would I still be able to contribute in any way?
I’m trying to fund these projects. It might not be much, but but a little bit now and then might make a difference.
A dedicated community has been created for this, see https://lemmy.ml/c/librephone (I just saw this community and joined myself)
As long it is not liberated hardware from blobs it all is useless.
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.
Good for now *
