Which phone should I buy for running Replicant?

[Paul Sokolovsky]

Hello,

On Sun, 29 Sep 2013 14:32:42 -0400
"Ryan de Laplante (personal)" <ryan at ryandelaplante.com> wrote:

> 
> 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.

Such problem obviously exists. That's why
official open-ath9k-htc-firmware release is indeed a breakthru.
Unfortunately, it's hard to tell from looking over just one evening how
much of WiFi handling in ath9k implemented in sowtware and how much in
hardware (same for OpenFWWF which is in asm at all). But all in all,
it's not the first open-source WiFi handling solution available
(hostapd is around for long time).

All in all, I'd be really interested to know if available source code
is enough to reproduce WiFi implementation for a
compatible/new/SDR-like chip. BT is much simpler protocol, there's very
little magic in it, and it's definitely possible to collect existing
code for more or less complete firmware/stack implementation. It's of
course won't allow to release devices with "WiFi" and "Bluetooth"
markings, as that requires certifications and/or licensing, but we talk
possibility of community-developer firmware here. As both these
protocols are ISM 2.4MHz, it won't be exactly easy to enforce
non-allowance of this. Definitely, not easier than prohibit
alternative MP3 codecs. GSM is different story, its strictly licensed
and controlled frequency, so any "intruding" will be prosecuted by
government (that's rather good than bad I'd say), even though some
aspects of GSM exist in FOSS (I don't know how much).

And besides the above, there's always "throw it all and make your own"
approach, just like OGG waved bye-bye to MP3. Achieving competitive
speeds is not trivial, but 1-2Mbit/s are readily achievable with
off-the-shelf dirty cheap modules (like nRF24).

That's BTW which way WSN (Wireless Sensor Networks) go. There's
open-source Zigbee stack at
http://www.freaklabs.org/index.php/FreakZ-Open-Source-Zigbee-Stack.html ,
but nobody cares. Including its author any longer. Zigbee failed to
deliver market conquest, and people shy away from it into new things,
including open like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DASH7

> Ryan
> 



-- 
Best regards,
 Paul                          mailto:pmiscml at gmail.com