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

Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli GNUtoo at no-log.org
Mon Dec 14 22:58:34 UTC 2015


On Mon, 14 Dec 2015 05:54:56 GMT
falcon at ivan.Harhan.ORG (Mychaela Falconia) wrote:

> 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,
If they can catch you, that's why I assume that you use a pseudonym.
They can also go after people they can catch, or use that excuse to put
some political opponent in jail. I'm thinking of users but also
developers that already are involved in projects that improve freedom
and/or privacy.

When your work is already annoying many powerful (physical or moral)
people, you have a responsibility not to put you at even greater risk.

At that point, what use would be such software that puts its users or
developers at risk, the risk would of course depend on how much they
annoy the powerful.

Isn't such software supposed to protect such people in the first place?

What would happen if people like journalists, political opponents with
no clue about the legality issues start using your project? I'd expect
the powerful or people working for them to be aware of the legal
status of such project. Given what happened to Aaron Swartz, you can
bet on that.

> 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 issue is that you put many other people at risk while doing it,
assuming they use your software. Such people have a right to know the
risk.

That's why I propose to make it crystal clear, and not to call it "free
software", but instead "leaked source".
You should also explain that your project violates the copyright laws.

It's really sad to learn that such amount of courage is wasted on this
FreeCalypso project.

> > 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.
Do you have any hints on how to start doing that?

> > 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.
Given the fatal flaw regarding the legality of such project, even if
it's closer in some sense, it's bounded by that legality.

This is my point with regard to having a real free software project.
You're not bounded by legality issues anymore and it would gives real
freedom to everyone, not just people that can afford to take the risk,
which at the end have less freedom than with a real free software
project.

> 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 [...]
Indeed, that's the issue that lead to all this mess.
And this is because I stopped working on it and/or didn't make it work
fast enough.

I had to find a paid work, I already sacrificed a lot for software
freedom.
I made the wrong choice thinking I could continue to work on free
software while also having a paid job.
I instead ended with even more personal issues that I could deal with.
That prevented me to continue to contribute. All I managed to do was to
help creating libreboot.

Given that the:
-> we have all the building blocks to have such free software and
   usable feature phone
-> The code from theses building blocks is produced by the free and
   open source community. Unlike some TI code never audited/appropriated
   by the community.

Why not at least try. It's not that hard. It however requires people
with some free time.

Denis.
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