Re: [libreplanet-discuss] Libre Mobile

[Harry Prevor]

I hate to break it to you guys, but considering we don't even have a
100% free *computer* yet, we're still a far way away from being able to
say a phone is completely free. In fact, I'll go ahead and claim that
it's impossible to achieve simply based upon the fact that nobody has
done it yet. I'd love to be proven wrong though.

I feel like the main reason why there hasn't been much success in
"completely free" recently is because nobody understands what it
really means. Let's break it down for a moment:

1. Assume 50% of people in the world know what software is.
2. Assume 5% of those people actually care whether or not their
software is proprietary or "open source".
3. Assume 5% of those people want their software to be truly free and
not just "open source".
4. Assume 5% of those people aren't fooled by products like Android
(not AOSP, but modified Android on phones) that almost always contains
blobs and added proprietary software from OEMs.
5. Assume 5% of those people know that Linux isn't actually free
-- it contains tons of binary blobs and firmware.
6. Assume 5% of those people want all of their software to be free.
7. Assume 5% of those people aren't satisfied with the freedom of their
current setup.
8. Assume 5% of those people know about and are willing to fork over
the $700 to buy a Lemote Yeeloong.
9. Assume 5% of those people know that even the Lemote Yeeloong isn't
truly free due to nonfree embedded controller firmware and nonfree
firmware on the HDD.
10. Assume 5% of those people want to do something about it.

Well, right there we have .000000000097% of the world's population.
Assuming 7 billion people in the world, that's about half of half of
half of one person. No wonder nobody's done it yet.

RMS did a talk about this subject a LibrePlanet 2013. Someone took a
video of it, which I'd highly reccommend watching (although not all of
it is about mobile phones):
<https://trisquel.info/en/forum/rms-talk-libreplanet>

I own both a GTA04 and a Yeeloong, both of which are unfortunately not
*truly* free as some people may believe.

Living free is tough.

-- 
Harry Prevor