Confirmation: Iridium is libre

They also added this to their FAQ page:

"Iridium Browser is fully open source and does not use any proprietary components. Check out the source code. [linked to their own Git repo]"
https://iridiumbrowser.de/faq

This meets FSF standards as long as all source code is available, under an FSF-approved license. On this topic, the FAQ states:

"As the Iridium Browser is based on Chromium, the same license applies. Chromium consists of many parts and each carries its own license. By entering chrome://credits/ into the address bar, all components are listed and their license can be viewed."

I guess Dave (or someone) will need to do this before the Iridium page can be approved on the FSD.

well my phone is 13 year old, maybe the modern ones have something related to FSF.

> What are the next steps in this investigation? Compile from source and

For the next steps, David already gave a lead. For a page which lists
software which deserves high scrutiny, see [1].

Also, in particular to Iridium, since it depends on Chromium, see the
talk page for Chromium in the FSD ([2]), try to do the same of what is
done there, but for Iridium, and then remove any false-positives ---
once the raw list is ready, and if it's more than 5 MiB, it's useful to
make a torrent file and always seed it so that others can help out on
removing the false-positives (keep in mind that to seed it you might
need to keep a "seeding" copy and also a "working" copy of the raw
list), or find at least two places in which the list can be put so that
you and the contributors don't depend on just one place.

As an improvement, instead of using licensecheck, make use of a tool
that attempts to catch most things which are similar to "legalese"
language (at the cost of more false-positives), such as the FSD
Participation/Script Aid ([3]). This one is being used to evaluate
Discourse ([4]).

> What are the next steps in this investigation? Compile from source and
> compare the resulting binary to the binary distributed by Iridium?
> Would this need to be done for each platform that Iridium distributes
> binaries for?

These steps for compilation checking, and binary and distribution
checking are a very helpful thing to do. For one, it could be a way to
see if potential users of Iridium are receiving the same freedoms of the
software, not depending on "opt-in" stuff such as those found *only when
building* Riot.im for Android ([5]).

There is more to this checking than the example I just described, of
course, as you have to pretend to be a naive new user to the software
and to free/libre software concept in order to simulate the act/bahavior
of the user when looking for directions on stuff such as if his/her
rights are explained, what's the license, how are the source files
offered (and if they match his/her version of the software, also in the
future when the local copy isn't updated compared to the master
repository), and perhaps other things I'm forgetting.

I hope this helps.

[1]
https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Free_Software_Directory:Free_software_evaluation
.

[2] https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Talk:Chromium .

[3] https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Free_Software_Directory:Participate/Script_aid .

[4] https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Talk:Discourse#Evaluation_using_FSD_Script.2FParticipation_Aid .

[5] https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Talk:Riot.im .

--
- https://libreplanet.org/wiki/User:Adfeno
- Palestrante e consultor sobre /software/ livre (não confundir com
gratis).
- "WhatsApp"? Ele não é livre. Por favor, veja formas de se comunicar
instantaneamente comigo no endereço abaixo.
- Contato: https://libreplanet.org/wiki/User:Adfeno#vCard
- Arquivos comuns aceitos (apenas sem DRM): Corel Draw, Microsoft
Office, MP3, MP4, WMA, WMV.
- Arquivos comuns aceitos e enviados: CSV, GNU Dia, GNU Emacs Org, GNU
GIMP, Inkscape SVG, JPG, LibreOffice (padrão ODF), OGG, OPUS, PDF
(apenas sem DRM), PNG, TXT, WEBM.

>but WebKit has security problems

What problems? Are you saying that my Qupzilla browser will burn my hard drive with hellish flames? :(

"WebKit has security problems"

Have those problems been fixed in the Blink engine that was forked from parts of WebKit, and is now used by Chromium and its derivatives (Chrome and I presume Iridium)? Otherwise it might be better to stick with a Firefox-based browser, or another free code browser that isn't a derivative of either Firefox or Chromium (are there any?).