Which phone should I buy for running Replicant?

[Paul Kocialkowski]

Le jeudi 26 septembre 2013 à 00:36 +0200, Michael von Glasow a écrit :
> Then it becomes a question of how low-level you can get without the air 
> becoming too thin freedom-wise. Is it acceptable if the chip design is 
> proprietary? Is it acceptable if the firmware/BIOS etc. is proprietary?
> 
> In the latter case there are differences, too. While in a perfect world 
> the BIOS of my PC and the firmware for every hardware component in it 
> would be free, I can live with a compromise of those things being binary 
> blobs as long as they just sit in the device, respond to well-documented 
> (and freely available) commands, do their job and let me run free 
> software on top of it. A good deal of hardware supported by Linux works 
> that way. As for WiFi chips, the GTA02 had WiFi support without the need 
> to install binary blobs in the filesystem. GPS is also less of an issue 
> as many chips support NMEA or another protocol supported by a free and 
> open driver. While not truly free and open, these devices at least have 
> an interface that free and open software can use.

I agree with your description of the current situation, but I wish it
was clear to everyone that this is a personal compromise and it means
that these devices currently do not respect your freedom (but you may be
fine with it). That's why I don't fully agree to the FSF definition of
things, which implies that read-only software is hardware per se and
that applying the four freedoms to hardware makes no sense since we
cannot in practice exercise these freedoms.

Instead, I think software freedom is based on principles that don't
become any less relevant or important when it turns out that they can't
practically be exercised. The fact that there is nothing we can do about
preinstalled non-free firmwares running on chips may be a strong
argument in the favor of making a (personal) exception and actually
accepting these chips, but it doesn't mean that freedom has any less
relevance there. However, I understand the FSF has to draw the line at
some point and has to find that sort of workaround to still claim that
ethical computing exists, even thought I believe this is not true given
our current situation. Also, I think the same argument applies to
hardware, and it's even more obvious that making ethical and
freedom-respecting hardware is far out of our reach.

When it comes to where I personally draw the line, my opinion is that
most obviously, I am going to use computers, first because I enjoy doing
so and also because it makes sense since I'm actually working on
improving the situation, as a Replicant developer. Just like RMS had a
choice of improving the situation or stop using computers at all. I
think we all face that same dilemma since the situation wasn't fully
resolved as of today. Hence, I agreed to do some exceptions, that I
summarized under: "I'm willing to accept non-free software running on
separate chips, that are not the main processing unit". Then I noticed
that you make the distinction of loaded non-free firmwares and
preinstalled ones. I believe the only real distinction here is the fact
that loaded non-free firmwares cause distribution problems: they
shouldn't be distributed with free software distributions. That's what
we decided doing for Replicant, and I'm never going to try to make
Replicant ship with non-free firmwares preinstalled. That is obviously
encouraging the use of non-free software, which is bad. Aside from that
aspect, which doesn't really affect me as a user, as long as I can find
these firmwares in a way or an other, the situation is the same as with
preinstalled non-free firmwares. More accurately, it's even better,
since loaded firmwares make it possible to write free software
replacements for them. So my exception applies to both read-only and
loaded firmwares.

Hence, I do use the WiFi/Bluetooth firmwares on my Replicant devices,
and I think it makes as much sense as using the (preinstalled) modem
firmware.

> Issues arise when the software interfaces are kept secret by their 
> manufacturers. A notorious example is the Broadcom GPS chip used in the 
> Nexus S and Galaxy S.
> 
> Another problem arises where the driver needs to send the firmware to 
> the device as part of the initialization process, as that will prevent 
> these devices from being used legally with free software. Technically, 
> these devices could be made to work with a firmware blob extracted from 
> the manufacturer's official driver (which can be for a different OS), 
> but shipping that firmware blob with the OS is not a legal option, 
> unless the manufacturer releases a redistributable version of their 
> binary firmware, which they typically don't.
> 
> On 25/09/13 23:39, Dmitriy Nikandrov wrote:
> > Don't get you.
> >
> > I was speaking about proprietary firmware, which is still needed to
> > use different hardware. Even if you find totally open driver & maybe
> > integrated in Linux kernel.
> > Good example is b43 driver
> > http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/b43 - it doesn't work
> > without proprietary firmware.
> >
> >
> > 2013/9/25, SheemOn Shapiro <first.sheemon at gmail.com>:
> >> You are grossly inaccurate and historically a defeatist.  When we started
> >> developing bad Unix and later Linux, everything was closed.  Google was a
> >> search engine and no more.  Look at the current Linux source tree and then
> >> repeat your statement...
> >>   On Sep 25, 2013 9:30 AM, "Dmitriy Nikandrov" <dmitriy.nikandrov at gmail.com>
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >>> Not only phones,
> >>> but also laptops, desktops, routers, etc... Even Raspberry Pi in it's
> >>> heart is closed source.
> >>>
> >>> The problem is that there is no OPEN HARDWARE chips (with open firmware):
> >>> for Wi-Fi
> >>> for GSM (even can't be because of patents on core specifications)
> >>> for LTE
> >>> for GPS
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> 2013/9/25, Nick <replicant at njw.me.uk>:
> >>>> Quoth Brian Kemp:
> >>>>> To be clear - the driver is free. The firmware is not.
> >>>> Gosh, looking at the table on the status page [0] I see that there
> >>>> are no devices which have wifi without non-free firmware. So there
> >>>> are no phones which have either free wifi or free gsm parts? The
> >>>> situation sucks even more than I realised as a casual observer.
> >>>> "Sure, you can use your phone freely, so long as you don't want any
> >>>> connectivity."
> >>>>
> >>>> /me sighs.