LibrePlanet: Conference/2010/Hacking/Free phones workshop
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Revision as of 14:52, 19 September 2009
This workshop will be held at Boston_Software_Freedom_Day.
This document is in-progress and is being discussed via IRC in #futurephonefreedom on OFTC.
We will go over the following:
Contents
General overview of free / partially free smartphones available in the US market
List of free/mostly-free phones:
- OpenMoko
- Prē (on freesmartphone.org) (webos-internals)
- G1, MyTouch (Android)
- ADP (Android)
Note: On some phones, Android can be replaced by Replicant:
- Replicant: http://trac.osuosl.org/trac/replicant/wiki
- http://groups.fsf.org/wiki/LibrePlanet:LibrePlanetItalia/replicant
- First Replicant libre firmware image for HTC Dream: http://gnutoo.homelinux.org/android/images/
Moral Abstraction Devices[1]:
- Novatel's MiFi 2200 portable EV-DO router
To be released soon:
- N900 (Maemo 5) http://wiki.maemo.org/Mer
- HandyPC S101 (Not DRMed, choice of Android or QT Embedded) http://road.de
Criteria to be counted:
- available for purchase
- ability to make phone calls
- ability to let users develop software for it
- not required to void phone warranty to benefit (in some way) from freedoms provided. Eg. sure you can install Debian on an iPhone, but that doesn't mean the iPhone counts.
Usability vs. Freedom
OpenMoko is completely free, but not really usable. Usability should be graded as follows:
- can be used as a phone reliably (includes address book)
- can be used for common smartphone tasks, such as calendaring and web browsing
- can synchronize with external services
- ...
Developer freedom
Ability to develop on the phone using a free development environment. (I think all of them can be developed using only free software. [look into Android]).
Stack freedom
Go over, for each phone, what parts of the phone stack are [not] free. Maybe a chart to show all of the phones in comparison (there's bound to be something online that compares this already; if not, let's make it).
Hackability freedom
Ok, so you want to "root" your phone (if it is not already rooted). What can you do with that power? How hard is it to gain this access?
What cool things has this given to users? (I suspect there are a lot of interesting hacks in the OpenMoko world)
Community
Is there a community around the phone? How healthy / vibrant is it?
https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Noisedroid
Carrier freedom
If the phone is locked to a carrier, what is that carrier's attitude toward exercising your SW freedom and what are the potential repercussions of going against their stated desires?
Going forward toward a usable, free phone
What parts of the SW stack are missing to make each platform entirely free and usable?
Comparison Table
| Freerunner (Openmoko) |
G1, G1 ADP, MyTouch (Android) |
Prē (WebOS) |
N900 (Maemo 5) |
iPhone | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Usability (ugh, meh, woo, yay!) | meh | woo | woo | unk | yay! |
| Base applications | free (varied) | calendar | mixed | unk | non-free |
| Purchasable | yes | yes (contract subsidy) | yes (contract subsidy) | pre-order | yes (contract subsidy) |
| Ability to install custom OS | yes | yes (exploit or downgrade) | unknown[2] | unk | maybe (exploit only; actively discouraged) |
| Radio (GPS, GSM, Wifi) | All nonfree | GPS, GSM nonfree; Wifi free[3] | All nonfree | unk | All nonfree |
| OS | GNU/Linux | Android/Linux | GNU/Linux | GNU/Linux | non-free |
| GUI layer | free (varied) | free (Android) | nonfree (WebOS)[4] | free (Maemo) | non-free |
| SDK | free | mix[5] | nonfree | unk | nonfree |
| SDK running on Free Software | yes | yes | yes | yes | no |
| Hacking voids warranty? | no | yes | unk | unk | yes |
| App store | none | nonfree | nonfree by default; free version available[6] | unk | non-free |
See also
Freest_hardware_comparisons#Mobile_Phones_and_PDA.2FTablets
References
- ↑ nonfree but lets you use non-phone mobile devices as phones via voip
- ↑ Should be possible - custom linux already compiled and works - installed OS is OpenEmbedded variant
- ↑ ath6k, GPL with no binary blobs, but source code is only documentation which pisses of *BSD people
- ↑ Can also run directfb GUI without WebOS GUI, however no one has written tslib module for touchscreen yet so limited usefullness
- ↑ Official SDK requires nonfree Sun Java
- ↑ You do not need to access the Linux command line or "root your Pre" to install or use Preware. However you install it with "WebOS Quick Install", which is nonfree software, under a provision that allows "WebOS applications that are in-testing, which under section 4.2 of the Palm SDK License Agreement allows for such unapproved applications to be installed on Palm devices" [1]
