Comment by leidenfrost
1 year ago
That's because you treat a FOSS project with a commercial mentality.
Remember the first post Torvalds made for the kernel?
He didn't say "I'm doing a project to compete as fast as I can with commercial UNIX machine so please help"
He sid this: "I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu)"
And it became huge. By chance.
A FOSS phone doesn't have to support Whatsapp. It should be open, fun to tinker with, modular and, maybe, with enough logic to handle carrier signal and SMS.
Even if it's not successful, the code and schematics will still live somewhere on the Internet, ready for anyone to create a weird steampunk phone.
Most people that want a Linux phone don't care about freedom of tech. They just want some portable Unix workstation with all the comfort of a commercial phone.
Which it's not wrong by itself. But demanding Open Source to create another "commercial-like but gratis" it's already a bad attitude to start with
> A FOSS phone doesn't have to support Whatsapp.
What apps does it have to support, in your opinion? A computer in my pocket is useful for a lot of things, but central to its usefulness is communication. it can choose to not support all possible modes of communication, but it needs to at least support some of them, in order for there to be any adoption.
A browser that provides PWAs if you are looking for a smart phone. An opensource app store alternative. That's how I imagine the bare minimum, but I'm not the biggest smart phone user.
Matrix. Then you can have a Raspberry Pi homeserver that bridges to Whatsapp and other things.
I mean, you can already run the Linux kernel on a phone and shell in, which is why I think of a “Linux phone” as meaning a Linux based phone that’s actually usable, as opposed to a fringe hobby device…
I think you are missing the point.
It will support whatever forms of communication the author wants it to. I know it’s hard to believe, but mass adoption isn’t the end goal of many FOSS projects.
You are commenting in a thread titled "We need a real GNU/Linux (not Android) smartphone ecosystem", mass adoption is the foremost goal.
First of all I really wish people would stop conflating nonfree open source and free software. They are as different as night and day.
Second of all, you are agreeing with me that independent software can’t compete with massive corpo sponsored projects.
All I’m saying is an indie phone isn’t going to be able to compete on the same level as devices that have billions of dollars of R&D poured into them, and people have this fantasy where the socialism of the commons will give them magic toys (after all look how successful open source projects have been!) without thinking about how all the expert hours are going to get devoted to these things, of even throwing a couple of bucks anyone’s way themselves to fund it.
Crowdsourcing can work (Ubuntu phone got $12.7 million public commitment but fell short of the goal so got nothing) but even then it’s on a whole other scale.
[flagged]
Which is also why VMs on macOS, Windows and ChromeOS are the closest mainstream users will ever get from Year of Desktop GNU/Linux.
> You (and people like you) need to realize what makes Windows, Android, and iOS/MacOS successful: It's because they enable users to use computers as practical tools.
What makes this cancer “successful” is the insane consumer exploitation that it enables, which motivates unfathomable amounts of money to be thrown at it to establish the monopolies. There’s no way out anymore and the entire society is suffering, except the venture capitalists who created this hell with cheap money due to decades of quantitative easing. Open your eyes at the tragedy around you instead of being so absorbed in your tech bro saviour complex.
>What makes this cancer “successful” is the insane consumer exploitation that it enables
>Open your eyes at the tragedy around you instead of being so absorbed in your tech bro saviour complex.
I'll fire those words right back at you, particularly the bit about being a tech bro saviour.
Computers are tools, tools that are practical will win mass adoption. FOSS as far as the zealots are concerned aren't even tools let alone practical, which is why they never win the mainstream audience.
Do you know why the Steam Deck has been successful where everything else prior to it failed? Because it is a practical tool, specifically to play games. Most of the customers buying it don't care what it runs so long as it plays games.
Concern yourself with making a better screwdriver, not whether the screwdriver is made from the finest libre materials.
1 reply →