Re: [GNU-linux-libre] Smartphones and freedom

[Graziano]

On Thu, 20 Jan 2011 09:34:47 +0200, "A.J. Venter" 
<address@hidden> wrote:
> Hi guys,

Hi A.J.,
it's good to read you again!


> Been a while since I've been active on this list - but I would like
> your feedback about this matter firstly to verify some of the
> information I have, and to discuss how we as free software activists
> and developers ought to be responding to things as they stand.
>
> Currently it's heartening to see the growth of Google's Android
> platform in the smartphone space - modern day smartphones are, for 
> all
> matter of practicality - small computers and the same issues of
> freedom we see on computers must apply there. I say this is 
> heartening
> as Android is currently the most free smartphone operating system to
> make any impact on the market. OpenMoko is more free I believe but
> limited to a single device, not widely available (I am not aware of
> anybody selling them in my country for example) and very expensive 
> due
> to the lack of network operator contracts.


Smartphone Freedom comparison (thanks to a LibrePlanet Italia member 
called Gnutoo):

http://libreplanet.org/wiki/Group:Hardware/Freest/SmartPhone


Replicant, a fully free software Android:

http://replicant.us


F-Droid, a libre alternative to google Market that includes only libre 
apps:

http://f-droid.org/

F-droid will be included by default in Replicant as soon as we release.



> So looking at android - the OS as it comes from google has four major
> freedom issues that stand out I'll look at them separately.
>
> The first is google's own non-free application stack. Here google may
> actually have done freedom an inadvertent favor though. Their
> insistence that custom mods not ship the stack with their roms
> actually forced those customized stacks to be more free (though they
> didn't prevent them shipping it at all, and most of them ship it as a
> separate package). However if you use a stack like CyanogenMod then
> it's easy to avoid installing this software. It does cut you off from
> the google marketplace - but since google does not restrict
> alternative marketplaces and several are already in the offing
> (including one from Amazon) nothing actually prevents us from
> developing and pushing a free software marketplace app - and only
> listing free apps in it (more on this in a bit).



All Google apps (including Google Market) are removed from Replicant.

We now have our libre market called F-Droid thanks to CiaranG.


> The second issue is that of drivers. It is my understanding that it 
> is
> currently impossible to do a blob-free android version as most phones
> contain hardware without free drivers and would not be usable at all
> with it. What makes this worse is that I further understand this is
> not fully changeable. Specifically it's my understanding that the
> current GSM patents require all phone manufacturers to buy a license
> in order to make their radio controller chips and that this license
> specifically prohibits the release of driver source code. I hope I
> understand this wrong, but if I'm right  then we effectively have a
> hardware patent that means no phone OS ("smart" or otherwise) can be
> entirely blob free until these patents expire (which is not for some
> time). Can anybody perhaps shed more light on this ?



You are right. Proprietary firmware are our biggest problem at the 
moment.

The situation is similar to the one that Coreboot is facing.

Companies ship new phones and discontinue the not-so-old ones too fast 
so that by the time we are able to support a model it is already 
discontinued.

I don't see this trend changing with newer google developer phones but 
instead getting worse.
Using the first google android developer phone, the ADP1 or even the 
htc dream, you could make/receive calls using only free software. Using 
a more recent developer phone like the nexus one you need a non free 
firmware just to make calls!


This is why I think we should talk to e.g. Lemote to convince them to 
build and ship a libre phone.
Only this way we can be sure it will be supported longer.

There is also the GTA04 project from Golden Delicious - a project to 
create modern replacement board for the FreeRunner case + display, using 
ARMv7 CPU and 3G modem:

http://lists.openmoko.org/pipermail/community/2010-November/063760.html



> The third is apps. Currently the android marketplace is best 
> described
> as having a significant minority of free software in it. That's a
> great deal better than the near-zero availability on competing
> platforms like the iPhone but it's still by no means a win. This does
> mean however a free software marketplace app, which also only 
> contains
> free software listings would have an available list of initial
> products to offer - such a marketplace app would also I believe
> greatly increase the potential user-base for free software app
> developers and allow them more direct contact with their free 
> software
> loving users. I have not been able to find any indications that such 
> a
> project is being planned anywhere though - should it be considered as
> a possible item for the high priority list perhaps ? Mind you, I've
> been interested in learning app development on android, this is
> perhaps a complex point but it could well be a worthwhile project to
> work on. Any thoughts on the idea ?


Yes, F-Droid is free software and up and running.
Everyone can download it and install it on every android phone.
By default it is connected only to the fdroid app repository that 
contains only android application released under a free license.




> The final and perhaps biggest problem right now is that even though
> there are fully (or a near as patent law allows depending on how
> correct my understanding in point two is) free android mods available
> - these cannot run on all phones. Most phone manufacturers are
> actively trying to lock their phones down to only running their own
> versions. Most of these phones have got published mechanisms by which
> the locks can be bypassed (as is done for example on most HTC phones)
> so it's not a major issue yet but Motorola has a series of phones now
> that are effectively impossible to root as a physical chip on the
> device prevents it from booting if the OS is not authorized by
> Motorola. Effectively they've tivoized the phone. Sadly since
> android's linux kernel has not adopted GPLv3 there is nothing at the
> kernel level that stops them doing so. It would perhaps be 
> interesting
> to see if any of the code android contains is GLPv3 licensed, if so -
> this could allow for an effectively legal way to shut down the
> practice (or at least force them to replace said code, which may be
> enough motivation to rather just comply). That said - I do believe
> that we need to consider some published and official list rating 
> phone
> companies by their friendliness to user freedom - notably the freedom
> to replace the phone operating system with a different one. Motorola
> would score a zero. Those phones with only software level 
> restrictions
> (e.g. the ones that can be jailbroken) a slightly higher score
> (effectively to say: you can hack this, but don't trust the supplier
> not to change that later as they did try to stop you - they just
> failed) - and indicate which (if any) phones actively encourages and
> hacking and does not contain restrictions on it. I believe the Nexus
> One was fully unrestricted - but sadly it's not on the market 
> anymore.
> I'm not aware of any others but I think there may be some out there ?


Yes with Replicant we are trying to make a list of supported phones 
with detailed informations about root permissions, etc. here:

http://replicant.us/supported-phones/




> It's worth noting that there is currently hacks available to get even
> non Android versions of GNU/Linux to run on some phones (notably
> Ubuntu) using the same hack that allowed Android to be installed on a
> number of Windows phones and there are rumors (though I've found some
> going back at least as far as 2007) that Canonical is working on an
> official one. Ubuntu of course is far from fully free - but as we've
> already gotten a few free distro's based off it - it would suggest
> that at least in theory getting Gnewsense for example to do the same
> would not be impossible. This however is at best a tiny emerging
> market - and currently seems to be less likely to gain the kind of
> industry infiltration that Android has - if only because Android has
> successfully gotten most phone manufacturers on-board and this in 
> turn
> has led to network-operator (a crucial price management aspect in the
> phone market).


I discussed a lot about a comparison between a GNU/Linux mobile os 
approach and an Android/Linux mobile os approach.


At the moment the most used GNU/Linux mobile distribution is SHR but 
it's still in testing, still buggy and not ready for prime time despite 
the great efforts and the great people working on it:

http://shr-project.org/trac


On the contrary going with the Android/Linux approach (with Replicant) 
would allow us, at least on some models, to have a stable libre 
operating system able to do telephony, messaging and even 
maps/navigation without problems.


> I wouldn't think of this mail as a proper statement of facts, rather
> as a question-set and discussion starter (I did look to try and find
> any other references on the topic but came up empty handed - there
> doesn't seem to be any FSF position papers or similar available, of
> course I may just have failed to find them - any such sources would 
> be
> useful). What is the community's current feelings about this growing
> side of computing - and how are we to respond to it to protect and
> promote user freedoms here ?
>
> Thank you
> A.J. Venter


--
Graziano Sorbaioli
Founder, LibrePlanet Italia
http://sorbaioli.org
http://www.groups.fsf.org/wiki/Group:LibrePlanet_Italia