financial situation and development activity

[Simon Josefsson]

Paul Kocialkowski <contact at paulk.fr> writes:

>> because the last offical supported device is Samsung Galaxy S3, i wonder
>> if you have difficulties to accomplish a port to a newer phone,
>> supported by Cyanogenmod.
>
> You might want to read about the Replicant project's roadmap for the
> future:
> http://blog.replicant.us/2014/09/replicant-homepage-and-roadmap-for-the-future/
>
> I decided not to keep dedicating valuable time ressources on mainstream
> devices that are fundamentally flawed (non-free bootloaders) while
> better devices exist out there. I am now focusing on those better
> devices, but it takes a lot of time and I don't have much available.

Is this your view on use of your own time, or do you believe that the
Replicant project should not support devices with non-free bootloaders?
I think this is a bit unclear from your blog post, and I believe it is
an important distinction.

I'm happy with Replicant on the S3.  While I also would like phone with
a free bootloader, the options that are available today are really far
away from being usable as a everyday phone.  So for me, until there is
better commodity hardware available, it is either using Replicant on S3
or giving up on what Replicant has achieved and go back to using some
less nice OS (e.g., CyanogenMod) on the S3 or some other phone.

I believe there is a role for free software and security/privacy-aware
OS's on commodity phone hardware with hardware that require some
non-free firmware.  Similar to how gNewSense, trisquel, libreCMC, etc
exists for commodity PCs/routers that may have some non-free hardware
components in them.  Right now, Replicant is the only contender in the
space as far as I am aware of.

/Simon

> You may also want to read the slides of my FOSDEM conference:
> https://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki/Conferences#Reached-milestones-and-ongoing-development-on-Replicant
>
>> Regardless if caused by too few developers, a
>> poor financial situation, or maybe other reasons?
>
> The reason why things are not moving forward very fast is that I have
> less time than I used too and I'm the only developer working on
> Replicant. Our financial situation is not a problem at this point.
>
>> I like the replicant project very much and would love to help you.
>
> You're welcome to get involved on the technical side. While I decided to
> not port Replicant to any new flawed mainstream device in the near
> future, it doesn't mean you cannot focus on that if you want to!
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