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

[Mychaela Falconia]

Josh Branning <lovell.joshyyy at gmail.com> wrote:

> The problem is, using the baseband software you provide could get me 
> arrested.
> [...]
> I dislike copyright as much as the next man, woman ... whatever, and 
> wish it didn't exist in law. But that's not going to help me if the 
> police come through my door to seize my equipment and arrest me.

If "they" are going to come after someone, don't you think (just be
rational for a moment, please) that they would come after *me* first,
as the project leader and prime instigator, before they go after every
little Joe and Jane (all thousands of them) who have downloaded the
files from my site?

As you know, I am transgender.  And in case you didn't know,
incarcerated trans women are typically kept in men's prisons, not
women's.  Being a woman in a men's prison is just about the worst fate
imaginable that can befall a person - just ask Chelsea Manning or
Ashley Diamond or Cece McDonald if you don't believe me.  Thus by the
combination of being a trans woman and being the leader of the
law-breaking project, rather than a mere lowly user, I have FAR more
to lose than you do.  Yet I am still taking the risk.  If you are not
willing to take the *tiny* (in your case) risk of a negative encounter
with law-enforcers when you have so much less at risk than I do, it
can only mean one thing: that you are a coward.  I have no respect for
cowards.

> The latter could be rectified by the creator of the modified works to 
> seek permission from the copyright owner (Texas Instruments) to allow 
> people to use the software, in chime with the freedoms set out by the FSF.

Why does it have to be "the creator of the modified works"?  You can
try asking TI yourself to give *you* explicit permission to use
derivative works based on their abandonware, if you feel that you need
such permission.

I am the wrong person to be asking them: because I absolutely do not
participate in the "permission culture" (Nina Paley's term) and I will
not change my course of action one bit whether they agree or refuse,
it would simply be impossible for me to make the request with any real
degree of sincerity, and making an utterly insincere request would be
worse than not making any at all.

Therefore, if anyone is going to ask TI for permission to use their
abandonware, it needs to be someone other than me - someone who
actually cares about such issues for real.

> And as Paul said, in the end, it means you are pushing proprietary 
> software onto other people.

Wrong in one fundamental way: the people who are my target audience
are *already* using proprietary software.  You said you own a C139 -
well, guess what, you already have a device running proprietary sw in
your hands - the one it came with.  Same for every other currently
existing cellphone, old or new, dumb or smart.  I am simply offering
the users of existing proprietary phones an alternative that is not
perfect in any absolute terms, but is closer to freedom in relative,
incremental terms.

We would not be having this discussion if there existed a practically
usable cellular baseband implementation that met your high criteria
for free software.  However, such a baseband implementation does not
exist, and I am convinced that it will not exist within my lifetime.
Therefore, I am doing the best thing I can to alleviate the suffering
of phone users that is actually feasible.

M~