[Replicant] [Replicant - About the Replicant project - msg5193] RE: Have you looked at Tizen?

[Bob Summerwill]

One year on ... Tizen has proven to be a real disappointment in practice.
The open governance has not come to fruition, and there is no real
community.

   http://www.mobilelinuxnews.com/2015/06/tizen-the-emperor-has-no-clothes/

Sales are good, though, and I think there is still a hope that Tizen can
become the #3 mobile platform, and one with better "genetics" than Android.
  If the open governance is not addressed, though, that will be of little
benefit to GNU/Linux mobile hackers.


http://www.tizenexperts.com/2015/06/samsung-sells-a-million-tizen-z1-smartphones-in-less-than-six-months-more-models-coming-soon/

My own primary focus has shifted to Sailfish OS, with an eye on Ubuntu
Touch, Firefox OS and the recently announced Plasma Mobile, all of which
now look a better fit than Tizen for scratching my own "itch":

   https://dot.kde.org/2015/07/25/plasma-mobile-free-mobile-platform
   https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9947146

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/3ejo62/plasma_mobile_a_free_mobile_platform/ctfmhn7

As you so kindly explained to my more naive self a year back, though, the
harder issues still remain:

1. Proprietary baseband processor (which is perhaps practically unsolvable
due to the complexity of the standards, and is better ignored, with the
hope of future ubiquitous mesh networking for most urban users)
2. Binary blobs for drivers, especially for GPU drivers.   Efforts underway
on the Linux desktop front - Freedreno, Noveau, Lima.    Hybris provides a
pragmatic bridge to get mobile Linux OSes working on a wide range of
hardware, but at the cost of side-stepping this hard issue.    Are any
people working on bringing these free drivers to mobile, do you know?
3. Secure bootloaders, root access, "stores".

Am I missing more?

Best wishes ...


On Thu, Jul 17, 2014 at 9:33 AM, <no-reply at replicant.us> wrote:

>
> http://redmine.replicant.us/boards/33/topics/5193?r=5745#message-5745
> Paul Kocialkowski
>
> > With Tizen being close to "just another distro", it becomes trivial for
> anybody in the existing desktop GNU/Linux world to bring their weight over
> to mobile, because mobile is where all of the action is in computing now.
>
> I hope you're right and the technical proximity between Tizen and other
> GNU/Linux distros will make it easier to have a strong community of
> developers working on the core issues of the system, the proprietary
> hardware abstraction libraries.
>
> > Around the world, phones are going to be the first computers that many
> people have.
>
> I always makes me very sad to hear such claims. Tablets and phones are
> mostly tool to consume information and content, not to produce any. Have
> you tried writing a blog post from your tablet or your phone? Traditional
> computers are much more usable to create content, so I hope they survive
> despite your sayings. I don't want computers to be yet another way to make
> people passive consumers while they're an opportunity to be the exact
> opposite!
>
> > Weight of numbers raises the importance of getting solutions to the
> burning HAL, bootloader and free hardware issues.
>
> Right. As much as I find phones and tablets useless, I figured that we
> might as well have them running free software if people are going to use
> them.
>
> > I am an optimist. You have to be. Otherwise why bother?
>
> Well, it's a matter of carefully deciding on which task to spend your time
> when you want to achieve a goal. If the goal is software freedom on mobile
> devices, I don't think Tizen will be so much of an asset (but hopefully,
> I'm wrong), so I'm not so optimistic about it.
>
> > And maybe that is where we are different? I truly care about broad
> adoption, and would prefer that huge numbers of people had something which
> is more free than they currently have, even if it isn't perfect. That is a
> bridge to freedom. With regard to search engines, perhaps 99.9% of people
> use them all the time, me included. Many of those people are unaware what
> they are "selling" in doing so. I am aware and use them anyway. They are
> just way too useful for me not to use them.
>
> What's the point of having many people use free software if they don't
> know the ethical motivations behind it? So many people have Android devices
> which run free software for a big part, but only a fraction of them are
> aware of the stakes of free software and really care. What did having a
> large number of users bring us? Mostly weight in debates about standards
> and such. Of course, I'm all for spreading the word about free software and
> if many people come to agree with our ideas, I'll be very happy, but when
> you start compromising on your ideas to make free software widely spread,
> you soon end up with that same Android situation, where people are using
> free software but still don't care (that's the whole issue with open source
> by the way).
>
> > IMHO to choose NOT to leverage that existing system on the basis that it
> would be compromising your principles is really cutting off your nose to
> spite your face. It is accepting defeat. Similarly, not having a Twitter or
> Facebook presence is to miss all of the eyeballs. I know these are "enemy
> tools", but you use them knowingly and turn their own tools against them.
> Well, that's my approach anyway. I don't see that as immoral. I see it as
> rational "war strategy and tactics".
>
> Using tools such as Facebook to promote our system implies that we endorse
> the use of such tools, which we don't. This gets in the way of the message
> we are trying to deliver. I think it is our duty as good neighbors to try
> and educate the masses about the issues we are dealing with, but it doesn't
> mean this has to be an absolute final goal. People have to take a few steps
> in our direction in order to reach our message. This means for them not
> relying on tools such as Facebook to learn about it.
>
> > If you don't care about having users then you won't have users. Don't
> you want more people to be using free OSes?
>
> I don't understand why I would want that. I do not claim that I hold some
> kind of truth that others are too blind to see. If people are happy with
> their proprietary systems, iPhones, facebook or whatever, well, good for
> them. My aim is to provide an alternative for people with interest in the
> stakes we're dealing with, not to make sure every single person on Earth
> agrees with me.
>
> > There are millions of people out there who would love to use your
> software, if they only knew it existed, and why it was important. Don't you
> see that as a key part of your mission?
>
> If people are not aware, it's good to let them know about this, that's our
> duty as good members of our community, but I don't think this is really a
> problem nowadays. The Snowden revelations were covered by national
> television all around the world and I'm sure that anyone with interest in
> these topics will find out about free software pretty soon. The information
> about Replicant is pretty easy to find out about if you're looking for it:
> we have a blog, a wiki, a wikipedia page, etc.
>
> I disagree this is the real reason so few people are interested in
> Replicant and software freedom on mobile devices in general. The real
> reason is most likely that people just don't care and even though they know
> about privacy issues, know that software somewhat restricts them, they just
> don't care enough to do anything about it. Mainly, privacy and freedom are
> not the values that prevail in their decision making processes. In today's
> modern societies, it is all about passive consumption, easiness, doing as
> few as possible, etc. The idea of happiness is totally detached from any
> notion of effort or intellectual process. That's the model of societies we
> live in. Now of course, I agree that it doesn't suit me at all, but who are
> we to decide for the masses what is good for them? If most people are very
> happy with it, who are we to say that we know better? Of course, the people
> who turned our societies this way at first went ahead and forced people
> down that path, that's for sur
>  e, but that still doesn't make it right to try and decide for others what
> is good for them, even if it only seems fair.
>
> > Just building something so that people have the option is like having a
> life-changing religious experience and then living in a cave for the rest
> of your life :-)
>
> The comparison with religion is sort of relevant here. I would say that
> trying to make as many people as possible use my system is indeed the same
> attitude as religious people trying to convert more and more people to
> their religion. I just do not understand that attitude. As long as facts
> are easily available for people looking for them, that shall be enough. Why
> try and force people to change their mind?
>
> > Don't you want to get out there and spread the word, so we can change
> the world?
>
> I don't aim to change the world. I am to provide the tools to make it
> possible for people to change the world, if they feel like it.
>
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-- 
bob at summerwill.net
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