← Back to context

Comment by charcircuit

4 months ago

>Librephone aims to close the last gaps between existing distributions of the Android operating system and software freedom

I am so happy they are focusing on Android, one of the most popular operating systems widely used by every day people. This is important work for providing user friendly, free software to users.

Let's just hope they don't fall into the trap of disqualifying binary blobs sent as part of drivers vs opting for hardware that harcodes the blob.

14 comments

charcircuit

Reply
tmtvl  4 months ago

Are you hoping the Free Software Foundation _doesn't_ prioritize Free Software? For people who are okay with random bits of proprietary software doing who-knows-what on their devices there are various alternatives already.

  • charcircuit  4 months ago

    To me:

    Open Source Firmware signed by OS > Firmware blob signed by device manufacturer > Firmware blob hardcoded by device Manufacturer

    The FSF treats hardcoded firmware blobs as "free" and updatable firmware blobs as nonfree despite there not being a big difference between them in practice. And practical differences like being able to fix security issues benefits users.

  • degamad  4 months ago

    I initially made the same misread that you did...

    The OP's point is, having the firmware permanently burnt-in on a ROM chip vs loaded as a binary blob via a driver doesn't change the "non-free"-ness of the firmware itself.

    So opting for hardware which has a "fully-open-source" driver, but runs a binary blob encoded into the hardware, doesn't make the system fully open.

    It's a take for a more Free system, not for accepting binary blobs.

    (Or I guess for acknowledging that if you're willing to allow binary blobs stored in hardware, then dynamically-loaded binary blobs doesn't change the "free"-ness.)

  • Dylan16807  4 months ago

    That's not even close to what they said.

    They're saying approval of any who-knows-what code shouldn't be decided based on how it's loaded.