is the openmoko freerunner phone libre???
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is the openmoko freerunner phone libre?
http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Main_Page
i noticed its default os qtmoko was not in gnu's
free distro page
but from the qtmoko sourceforge page
its looks like its under gpl v2
http://sourceforge.net/projects/qtmoko/
dose anyone know if it contians non-free blobs?
btw i know that phones are spying devices but
i am wanting to get a free phone for my parents
as they need a mobile phone to run there business
and there currently using ibads.
I'm pretty sure it is. The FSF offered it as an alternative to the iPhone 3 in their statement on it- they recommended Freerunner with Replicant.
It probably is much easier to find a second-hand Galaxy S2 or S3 and to install Replicant 4.2 on it. Not to mention a far better hardware performance-wise.
I've heard RMS mention that an OpenMoko phone was designed such that components running proprietary firmware couldn't act as a universal backdoor for the phone, something that certain required firmware in most phones can do. Is this true of all OpenMoko phones?
If it is, that's a significant advantage of them. If not, whatever phone does do that still does have that as a significant advantage.
were did you here rms mentions this?
I think it was something related to the 30th anniversary of GNU. Not entirely sure. All I remember for sure is that the video is zoomed such that RMS fills about half of the frame, and he's on the right side of it, behind a podium IIRC.
It is the most free software friendly smart phone on the planet nowadays, and if you are interested, the Neo900 is on development.
I think sebastian is on Trisquel's forum.
I use a Samsung Galaxy S3 with Replicant on it and can't complain so far. Just note that you won't be able to use wi-fi and GPS without proprietary drivers.
The OpenMoko phone is hard to obtain and I'm also waiting for the Neo900.
it makes me sad when i hear the words wifi or gpu and proprietary
dose anyone know how to make drivers???
for example my dell laptop's wifi card wont work with
libre software
were would i start if i wanted to make a driver for it??
and obviosly i would licenese under the gpl and put it on the internet
You would start by reverse-engineering the card to find out the specs. You can't write software that gives commands to the device without knowing how to give commands to the device!
If you manage that, it's just a matter of using this knowledge to write libre firmware for the device, and getting that firmware into upstream Linux. You might not even have to do it yourself; someone else might take up the task.
just incase you happen to know
how do you reverse engineer a wifi card
do i need to spend 5 years at universaty to do this or can it be done by
any programmer???
A first step would be to see what's going on in the driver. Drivers are written in C. You would probably also need to know how wifi works.
It would almost be worth while avoiding looking at the propitiatory drivers. From a practicality point of view in android for instance. The driver model can be a little complicated in some of these cases as they work across multiple layers of the OS, not because they have to but because the developers just choose to do it as quick as possible.
There is also the legal issues of using the original proprietary code as a basis to make these things work. Like the recent leak of the PowerVR source code, having new code based even off the concept of it's functionality can get you in potential legal troubles.
It is a really awful situation to be as it means the hardware vendors essentially are trying to push you onto proprietary software or at the very least force reverse engineers to build their software in an entirely different and potentially worse fashion.
I am a translator!
yes. you have to spend a lot of time. and by a lot I actually mean a shitload of time..
:)
p.s - I heard Stallman in various speeches address this problem - he keeps saying that if someone is a hacker and has a very advanced knowledge, then one of the greatest benefits he can bless the community with is reverse engineering hardware and make drivers for it..
It is a very hard task though!
well ill try and see how hard it is
if anyone is interested a found this pdf which looks good
http://beginners.re/RE_for_beginners-en.pdf
I haven't done reverse engineering, but as far as I know, it works at a much lower level of abstraction than programming. When programming, one has the source code available, which is supposed to be in an understandable and self-documenting form (Very often it's non documented and non-obvious, but it still has some meaningful structure). With reverse engineering you have assembly code from a disassembler or recreated higher-level code from a decompiler, but most information that normally gives you an idea of what the program does is already lost when compiling, so it's going to be significantly harder than programming and will require extensive experience with reverse engineering and the specific system you're handling (I.e: graphics drivers). There are other tools to do reverse engineering, such as seeing how the program executes under a debugger, and intercepting system calls (You can do this with strace for GNU/Linux user-level programs, for instance) and calls to dynamically loaded libraries, but it's still going to be hard and require extensive experience with the system in question.
There may also be legal problems. Proprietary software usually forbids reverse-engineering. Remember that proprietary software often comes with an EULA.
It's great that you have such a good enthusiasm for contributing to free software, but I don't think that reverse engineering is a good way. It may not be worth the effort to reverse engineer proprietary drivers. It would be full of obstacles and the drivers could become obsolete soon anyway. In some areas, we already have hardware that works with free software, so in those areas, people who really care about their computing freedom can just purchase that hardware instead.
Consider contributing in aspects in which you're involved already. For instance, if you know computer programming, you can contrite to free software as a programmer. You can give conferences in your local environment (City, workplace, school) about the problems of proprietary software and encourage using free software to avoid them[1]. You can offer to install fully free OSs such as Trisquel; and you can charge for it. It's still a contribution to free software whether you charge or not for providing services.
[1] If you give conferences about free software, it's even better to persuade people if you know some specific practical problems with common proprietary programs. E.g: “The X company's program has DRM which doesn't even allows you to back up your data or install Y program; Recently X blocked Z program from being published.“. The overall idea is: proprietary software serves the developer, while free software serves the user first, and by offering an product that will server their customers, the developer can benefit as well. If you demonstrate this idea with examples, your conference would be more effective, I think.
To anybody who uses it:
How is it? Good? no? How long is battery life? How does Replicant run on it?
i have one with the default os qtmoko
i got it for christmas/gravmas and havent had chance to run it untill the battery is flat but the openmoko website claims its max battery
life is 70 hours so quite good
http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Neo_FreeRunner_(GTA02)_Battery#Notes_about_expected_battery_life
the default os qt moko and everything on it runs fine and i found it mostly very easy
but the wifi is a pain to setup and i havent sucsessfully got it working yet
but that may or may not be a problem
but by the looks of this video:
youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1IM9Vd2_2s
if your running replicant its much easyer to setup
if you want a libre phone that gives you a huge amount of controll compared to most mainstream phones(it even gives you a root terminal)
i would reccomend it to you.
if you want to see shr and replicant running on the phone download this video with youtube-dl
sudo apt-get install youtube-dl
youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1IM9Vd2_2s
and a video of qtmoko:
youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgZzxmHzWtg
btw the phone in the qtmoko video is a custom made case
normally the case is build for you when you order it!!
also qtmase is a very fun game the phone has by default!
update:
i got the wifi to work and it was much easyer than i thought
if anyone want to know how to set it up just ask me!
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