> Librephone is a new initiative by the FSF to bring full computing freedom to mobile computing environments. The LibrePhone Project is a partnership with Rob Savoye, a developer who has worked on free software (including the GNU toolchain) since the 1980.
I found very little info about it online. There is this github org:
The fact that the FSF doesn't even seem to have a web page on their own site describing LibrePhone leaves me with little expectation that this project will succeed. I can't find anything on Savoye's site or socials either.
> a developer who has worked on free software (including the GNU toolchain) since the 1980
Can they really not find ANYONE outside their bubble? A phone lives and dies by its UI and they pick someone who primarily does toolchain/CLI work? I don't get it.
Based on the livestream, the project is for Rob to find the freest Android ROM and phone and then reverse engineer the proprietary bits to the FSF's standards. Not very well communicated, but he seems qualified to do that.
1) Too few developers to keep up with new Android releases, or with devices becoming obsolete over time. They got stalled trying to update to Android 11 (2020) and never finished.
2) Refusing to support newer devices that doesn't meet their demands (e.g. must have a removable battery). Turns out, the market doesn't respond to the demands of a small open-source project.
I don't understand the need to be all the time updated with the bleeding edge upstream when there aren't enough devs/contributors. Every underfunded understaffed project fails the same way: tying to keep up.
They already did that. The previous release was based on Android 6, and is functionally useless nowadays given that it only runs on a couple of Samsung devices all released around 2011-12.
If you're trying to maintain a fork of a large open-source project, and especially one which needs to interoperate with external systems like Android, keeping up with upstream releases is not optional. The upstream will move on without you.
I briefly looked but either I'm blind or it doesn't exist - is there a video of the event anywhere? I'd love to watch the talks.
Side note - if FSF wants its message to reach a wider audience and get more people to care about free software it should really get out of its own bubble. Why wasn't this streamed and archived on YouTube? Yes, this is a rhetoric question - I know perfectly why. My point here is - and let me make a colorful analogy:
If you're, say, a Scientology missionary, what the hell is the point of preaching inside of your own church, to people who are already Scientologists? If you want to be an effective missionary you go out where the non-believers are, and you don't immediately tell people about Xenu, the planetary ruler from 70 million years ago, or else they'll immediately dismiss you and think you're batshit crazy. You ease them in step-by-step.
FSF puts ideological purity as an absolute number one (e.g. recommend Trisquel GNU/Linux, which is pretty much unusable on most machines for normal people), and they refuse to spread the message on platforms where non-free-software people are (e.g. YouTube), and then we're all surprised that the free software movement is dying, and non-copyleft licenses are dominating (although, yes, there are other reasons for that too).
> you don't immediately tell people about Xenu, the planetary ruler from 70 million years ago
What is fsf’s equivalent of Xenu that they shouldn’t tell you about up front? I want to say you should need to be at least level 3 at fsf before learning about rms.
They could as easily put the video on some of the OSS solutions as that. Or they could self host. They do not value effective advocacy for their ideas.
I do not see the FSF as an effective organization today.
Damned if you do - damned if you don't. It's the dilemma all counter-culturists struggle with. Greta Thunberg famously sail to climate conferences: "She is an ideological purist! She don't convince everyday people!" If she had flown instead: "She is such a hypocrite! She doesn't live what she preaches!"
The lack of any chipset that would have tolerable information for producing those or any lifetime or willingness to deal with someone smaller than a Sony or LG. But yeah, drivers is close to where that ends up breaking.
Maybe Framework might one day be able to support the market with new hardware.
We need an open hardware consortium to promote software freedom. If we don't have an open hardware environment that is a foundation for free software, we are fighting a losing battle.
I would love whatever they put forward to succeed, but I have to guess this is them aligning an endorsement/marketing around a current project such as PostmarketOS
The new project is LibrePhone:
> Librephone is a new initiative by the FSF to bring full computing freedom to mobile computing environments. The LibrePhone Project is a partnership with Rob Savoye, a developer who has worked on free software (including the GNU toolchain) since the 1980.
I found very little info about it online. There is this github org:
https://github.com/LibrePhone
which mirrors PostMarketOS: https://github.com/LibrePhone/pmOS, 'The Linux distribution for mobile devices and beyond…'
I found very little info about it online. There is this github org:
Probably not related, it's unlikely that the FSF would host anything on GitHub.
The fact that the FSF doesn't even seem to have a web page on their own site describing LibrePhone leaves me with little expectation that this project will succeed. I can't find anything on Savoye's site or socials either.
> a developer who has worked on free software (including the GNU toolchain) since the 1980
Can they really not find ANYONE outside their bubble? A phone lives and dies by its UI and they pick someone who primarily does toolchain/CLI work? I don't get it.
Based on the livestream, the project is for Rob to find the freest Android ROM and phone and then reverse engineer the proprietary bits to the FSF's standards. Not very well communicated, but he seems qualified to do that.
"should they just donate to postmarketos" is the sort of obvious followup
What happened to the last attempt?
https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority-projects/free-phone
Looks like:
1) Too few developers to keep up with new Android releases, or with devices becoming obsolete over time. They got stalled trying to update to Android 11 (2020) and never finished.
2) Refusing to support newer devices that doesn't meet their demands (e.g. must have a removable battery). Turns out, the market doesn't respond to the demands of a small open-source project.
I don't understand the need to be all the time updated with the bleeding edge upstream when there aren't enough devs/contributors. Every underfunded understaffed project fails the same way: tying to keep up.
Just skip a version. The world won't end.
They already did that. The previous release was based on Android 6, and is functionally useless nowadays given that it only runs on a couple of Samsung devices all released around 2011-12.
If you're trying to maintain a fork of a large open-source project, and especially one which needs to interoperate with external systems like Android, keeping up with upstream releases is not optional. The upstream will move on without you.
I briefly looked but either I'm blind or it doesn't exist - is there a video of the event anywhere? I'd love to watch the talks.
Side note - if FSF wants its message to reach a wider audience and get more people to care about free software it should really get out of its own bubble. Why wasn't this streamed and archived on YouTube? Yes, this is a rhetoric question - I know perfectly why. My point here is - and let me make a colorful analogy:
If you're, say, a Scientology missionary, what the hell is the point of preaching inside of your own church, to people who are already Scientologists? If you want to be an effective missionary you go out where the non-believers are, and you don't immediately tell people about Xenu, the planetary ruler from 70 million years ago, or else they'll immediately dismiss you and think you're batshit crazy. You ease them in step-by-step.
FSF puts ideological purity as an absolute number one (e.g. recommend Trisquel GNU/Linux, which is pretty much unusable on most machines for normal people), and they refuse to spread the message on platforms where non-free-software people are (e.g. YouTube), and then we're all surprised that the free software movement is dying, and non-copyleft licenses are dominating (although, yes, there are other reasons for that too).
> you don't immediately tell people about Xenu, the planetary ruler from 70 million years ago
What is fsf’s equivalent of Xenu that they shouldn’t tell you about up front? I want to say you should need to be at least level 3 at fsf before learning about rms.
They could as easily put the video on some of the OSS solutions as that. Or they could self host. They do not value effective advocacy for their ideas.
I do not see the FSF as an effective organization today.
It's important to spread the word to those who haven't yet hurd the good gnus.
Damned if you do - damned if you don't. It's the dilemma all counter-culturists struggle with. Greta Thunberg famously sail to climate conferences: "She is an ideological purist! She don't convince everyday people!" If she had flown instead: "She is such a hypocrite! She doesn't live what she preaches!"
Just be grateful South Park hasn't done an episode about the FSF and RMS (yet)!
Isn't the main problem with phones the lack of real "free software" drivers and firmware? Are they finally going to wrangle that one?
The lack of any chipset that would have tolerable information for producing those or any lifetime or willingness to deal with someone smaller than a Sony or LG. But yeah, drivers is close to where that ends up breaking.
Which is why phone projects should start with new hardware.
wouldn't that mean they would be starting with new hardware that doesn't exist? So they'd have to make their own?
Maybe Framework might one day be able to support the market with new hardware. We need an open hardware consortium to promote software freedom. If we don't have an open hardware environment that is a foundation for free software, we are fighting a losing battle.
Yes, that's exactly it.
That seems ambitious for the FSF.
I would love whatever they put forward to succeed, but I have to guess this is them aligning an endorsement/marketing around a current project such as PostmarketOS