Which phone should I buy for running Replicant?

Ryan de Laplante (personal) ryan at ryandelaplante.com
Sun Sep 29 18:32:42 UTC 2013


On 2013-09-29, at 2:06 PM, Paul Sokolovsky <pmiscml at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 27 Sep 2013 13:20:23 +0200
>> I seriously doubt it is that easy or even doable and my expectations
>> of ever seeing a free firmware for these chips are close to zero.
> 
> This probably gets more and more offtopic, but can you elaborate what
> would be reasons for that? I obviously don't disagree, but I think that
> the main reason for that is that community - at the whole, then GNU/FSF
> endorsing subset, then finally those who often practice "freedom"
> rhetoric - don't want free drivers *that* much. People want new Visual
> Basic in the shape of JavaScript, to make it thrash and crash even on
> their toaster, that's why projects like http://nodejs.org/ thrive, and
> projects like OpenFWWF and
> http://git.bues.ch/gitweb?p=b43-ucode.git;a=summary die.


I was recently talking to an engineer about the need for wifi, bluetooth and modem chips with open firmware for use in projects like Neo900 and Replicant. His response was:

> Currently there is no way to create open hardware for Public wireless (Cell radios) or ISM radios like Bluetooth and Wifi without paying royalties to Qualcomm, Intel, Motorola (Google) and Nokia (Microsoft). It's not that dsigners like me don't want to create great products like that, is that those big companies own the patents on the physical layer of the communication protocols and they are not only protected by the law, but also protected by governments and special interest groups.



Ryan

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