A crowdfunding campaign to build a free baseband

Spacefalcon the Outlaw falcon at ivan.Harhan.ORG
Sat Apr 11 18:15:03 UTC 2015


"dimonik, dimonik" <dimonik at letiko.com> wrote:

> IMO, your project is not scalable then,

Whatever.  I started my project in 2011 in order to improve my quality
of life, and I *will* reach my own personal goal: with my free phone
firmware I'll be able to call my significant other and check the time
on my pocketwatch (phone) *without* using any proprietary software.
And I know a few other people whose quality of life will also be
improved by no longer having to use proprietary software in order to
stay in touch with their family/friends/etc.

And what do *you* seek to accomplish by knocking my project down?  If
I were to drop my project and go spend time at the beach instead, how
would it benefit you?

Paul Sokolovsky <pmiscml at gmail.com> wrote:

> 2+ MB is "small part"?

TI's full source for the GSM+GPRS protocol stack weighs 51 MiB - and
that is just the C source (*.[ch] files) for the core protocol stack.
The complete ZIP with the reference firmware deliverable for the
LoCosto chipset weighs 120 MiB.

> Thank you, god, that I don't have a fixation to
> have my own GSM stack then.

So you have no problem with using proprietary software whenever you
need to use a phone?

Just to be clear, I am not seeking to have "my own" GSM stack
(rewriting this stack from scratch is OsmocomBB's approach which I
don't subscribe to) - I simply want the phone in my purse to be free
from proprietary software for which I have no source and which I am
therefore powerless to improve or troubleshoot.

All software has bugs and misfeatures, and I have never had a phone of
any kind that doesn't suck in one way or another.  Whenever my phone
misbehaves, or something doesn't work right, or some aspect of the UI
(mis)design drives me nuts, I want to be able to fix it myself,
recompile, reload the firmware image with my fix applied, and enjoy
not having the original problem - instead of the current situation
where one's only available option is to throw the phone away and get a
new one; that new phone might hopefully fix the original bug, but
introduce 3 new ones in return.

> ... I'd also think that L1, which needs to interface with hardware is
> the most critical, upper layers can be taken from other implementations,
> like OsmocomBB or FreeCalypso.

Then why don't *you* work on that project.  Would it be possible to do
what you propose?  To the best of my knowledge and understanding,
probably yes.  Is it something that I would be willing to spend my
unpaid volunteer time on with absolutely no benefit to me or my family
or any of my friends?  Hell no.

> But then I no nothing about GSM stack, you're expert here,

I'm nowhere close to a real expert on GSM.  People like Harald Welte,
Dieter Spaar, Sylvain Munaut etc (the OsmocomBB crew) *are* real
experts, but unfortunately they seem to have no interest in producing
a free firmware phone which an end user could use - instead all they
like to do is hack.  Thus those who do need a free firmware phone as
end users are left with nutty pseudo-experts like yours truly as the
only available providers of a practically usable implementation.

> If you'll be looking at MTK code in more details

Very unlikely.

The only way I anticipate going beyond TI Calypso would be if someone
publicly leaked a firmware source for some 3G-capable chipset, a source
that includes the 3G protocol stack.  The uncaring capitalists are
threatening to shut GSM/2G networks down, so being able to make use of
3G as well would be a benefit significant enough to take the enormous
pain of switching to another chipset - although of course I would
invert the preference order in that the firmware would always prefer
2G when it's available, and only use 3G as a last resort.  But MT6260
has no 3G support, hence it offers no practical benefit to the user
over the Calypso.  And I'm not aware of any other source leaks that
include 3G.

VLR,
SF


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