FreeCalypso project description

[Paul Kocialkowski]

Le samedi 18 avril 2015 à 06:45 +0000, Spacefalcon the Outlaw a écrit :
> I just posted a detailed description of my family of projects regarding
> free phones (what I seek to achieve, what I've already done and my
> planned next steps) on the Openmoko community mailing list:

I haven't had a chance to make a statement about the FreeCalypso project
yet, so here it is now (even though the crowdfunding is over).

First off, I find it very confusing that you are calling the project
free software, when it very clearly is not. Leaked source code is not
free software and it can only become free software when released as such
by its initial copyright holder(s). In addition, I think it is not
stated clearly enough that the bulk of this code doesn't come from you
but is instead TI's leaked proprietary code.

Now I understand that you do not see any validity in that process, but
please don't call that software free software, since it clearly doesn't
match the description of free software as published by the FSF, which is
all about legal rights and requirements regarding the software. In the
end, it is all just very confusing for free software enthusiasts.

What you might want to talk about is software free of technical
restrictions, if you do not wish to put the emphasis on the legal
aspects around it.

In addition, I would like to make it very clear, for the people that do
care about those legal aspects, that any project using this leaked
source code is at risk of being shut down by TI at any point, so I
believe it is neither safe nor reliable to build anything sustainable
upon it. It is also very problematic for bigger projects to package and
ship it. Asking TI to release that code under a free license would
solve this issue. I think this is the most obvious step that should have
been taken from the very beginning. Of course, there is a chance that TI
never takes any legal action about this code, but we cannot have any
certainty about that.

As long as this code remains non-free, is publicly distributed and that
people are not encouraged to avoid looking at it, there is a possibility
that it reflects badly on OsmocomBB, where every new contribution would
have to be checked to be original and not copy/paste from the leaked
code. Nevertheless, it could be used for documenting the hardware,
perhaps by people who do not write the code directly.

Regarding original contributions to the FreeCalypso project that are
license-less, they cannot be called free software, but again
restriction-less. Writing code without any license or copyright
information actually makes that code proprietary software by default.
The person who committed the code can attack users for sharing or
modifying it at any moment, so users have no guarantee of freedom.
Publishing the newly-written code under a free license or explicitly
stating that it belongs in the public domain would solve the issue. If
the copyright holder does not wish to make any legal statement about the
code, it then puts all users at risk.

In addition, the leaked TI code is huge and there has been no security
audit of it from the community, so using it as-is causes a potential
huge security risk. Malicious features might even have been implemented
in a non-obvious way, so even if one was to read each and every source
file used in the FreeCalypso project (a task that seems far too big for
a single individual), they might still miss it. That's another incentive
to avoid using this code at all.

For all those reasons, I urge anyone wishing to contribute to the
development of free modem-side software to focus on the development of
OsmocomBB, which is done right with regard to the issues that I raised
in the email. Contributing to such a free project is also technically
much more appealing and stimulating than dealing with unclean and dirty
code! It also provides better guarantees for security as it was all
written from scratch by the community.

-- 
Paul Kocialkowski, Replicant developer

Replicant is a fully free Android distribution running on several
devices, a free software mobile operating system putting the emphasis on
freedom and privacy/security.

Website: http://www.replicant.us/
Blog: http://blog.replicant.us/
Wiki/tracker/forums: http://redmine.replicant.us/
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