[Replicant] basic phone with 100% free software to use on Verizon?

Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli GNUtoo at no-log.org
Fri Dec 11 12:30:05 UTC 2015


On Fri, 11 Dec 2015 10:06:16 +0100
Paul Kocialkowski <contact at paulk.fr> wrote:
> Please stop saying that your modem firmware is free software.
[...]
> > P.S. See www.freecalypso.org for more info regarding libre phones
> > for GSM that work with T-Mobile 2G.  
> 
> Well, you get the idea, it's not libre as in what the FSF means by
> free/libre.
There is a way to make it really free software, but "Mychaela Falconia"
systematically refuses to do it citing very unconvincing excuses.

OsmocomBB is free software, but it's not practical at all to use at
all:
-> Either you have a feature phone and you need to connect it to a
   computer running GNU/Linux, which runs part of the GSM stack.
-> Or you have an Openmoko phone, and you cannot put the main CPU into
   suspend, because part of the GSM stack runs on it. So you get a very
   poor battery life.

So some years ago, me and Alan Carvalho de Assis worked on fixing that,
by adding the support for some osmocomBB supported phones into Nuttx.

Once that would have been completed, we'd have to start porting the
osmocomBB layer1 on Nuttx, then the layer 2 and 3.

I did a quick and dirty port of the layer1, but it's too dirty.
It also blocked when scanning the networks. OsmocomBB had a similar
issue when using the same toolchain that I used. The issue is now fixed
in osmocomBB.

I think this should rather be done properly, even if it takes more time.

Once the 3 layers would have been ported on the phones, we would
only need to write an user interface for feature phones(or a
protocol handler for the Openmoko phones).

OsmocomBB supports several phones. On some flashing the bootloader is
more risky than on other. Some also are not fully supported by
osmocomBB, support for stuff like the flash or the battery charging is
sometime lacking. This is a minor issue given the use case of osmocomBB
as-is.

Denis.
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