FSF Librephone update: Ensuring freedom, one blob at a time

(fsf.org)

69 points | by g-b-r 14 hours ago ago

5 comments

  • floxy 13 hours ago ago

    Decompiling binary blobs is a strong suit for LLM AI, right? Maybe progress on this will be faster than I expect? Does the FSF spend money on non-free AI services? That is, do they have ethical issues with that? Or do they only use AGPL licensed services (or similar)?

    • g-b-r 12 hours ago ago

      I imagine that they're wildly less effective at reverse engineering firmware for random chips than software for common platforms

  • fsflover 13 hours ago ago

    I don't understand why they wouldn't try to further liberate the phone that already runs an FSF-endorsed operating system, Librem 5. Perhaps one argument is to support more phones - but instead they could demonstrate a proof of concept for the most free phone, which is what I would expect from the FSF.

    Also, AOSP obeys Google's development strategy, so even though it's free software, it is not a good bet long term.

    • RunningDroid 13 hours ago ago

      > I don't understand why they wouldn't try to further liberate the phone that already runs an FSF-endorsed operating system, Librem 5. Perhaps one argument is to support more phones - but instead they could demonstrate a proof of concept for the most free phone, which is what I would expect from the FSF.

      A cynical take would be that they're trying to sabotage the concept so it's unusable for non-techies.

      A slightly more realistic take is that having their own phone is better PR than supporting someone else's, even if it is just a custom Android ROM instead of an actual Linux distro.

    • g-b-r 12 hours ago ago

      > Also, AOSP obeys Google's development strategy, so even though it's free software, it is not a good bet long term.

      Check https://librephone.fsf.org :

      «This is not another Android distribution, but a long-term effort to understand and reverse-engineer the nonfree components used in nearly all SoCs today»