Comment by kuhsaft
1 day ago
People forget how much the mobile hardware industry relies on non-free infrastructure. Infrastructure developed by companies that make the standards. You really can't make a good open-source phone because you, pretty much, have to play by the rules of the companies in these consortiums.
Except Librem 5 has been created and is usable by the HN people.
Does the Librem 5 not rely on any non-free code or infrastructure?
It does. They obscure the usage of non-free hardware/firmware by not shipping it as part of the OS, but as a bundle on separate flash storage that is loaded into the OS by initrd. That blob is updatable as "firmware". The 100% free open-source is just marketing. It's just for the OS. A lot of the hardware and firmware is proprietary.
https://github.com/linuxboot/heads/blob/c859c28b88b7bc197c16...
https://forums.puri.sm/t/the-librem-5-blob-list/28815/26
5 replies →
Depends where you draw the line. There is not a single non-free blob in the OS that runs there once the bootloader is up (unless you put some there by yourself, which you're of course free to do).
21 replies →
No true Scotsman would ever use binary blobs.