LibrePlanet: Conference/2010/Hacking/Free phones workshop

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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:

General overview of free / partially free smartphones available in the US market

List of free/mostly-free phones:

Note: On some phones, Android can be replaced by Replicant:

See Talk:Future Phone Freedom Workshop#Are they trying to screw you? for why this might be a good thing to do.

Moral Abstraction Devices[1]:

  • Novatel's MiFi 2200 portable EV-DO router

To be released soon:

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:

  1. can be used as a phone reliably (includes address book)
  2. can be used for common smartphone tasks, such as calendaring and web browsing
  3. can synchronize with external services
  4. ...

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
US Carriers AT&T, T-Mobile AT&T, T-Mobile Sprint AT&T, T-Mobile AT&T, T-Mobile
Usability (ugh, meh, woo, yay!) meh woo woo unk yay!
License Free software proprietary and apache2 for userland; GPLv2 for kenrel proprietary and various free for userland; GPLv2 for kenrel unk all proprietary
Base applications free (varied) calendar mixed unk nonfree
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 Firmwares(GPS, GSM, Wifi) All nonfree All nonfree[3] All nonfree unk All nonfree
OS GNU/Linux Android/Linux GNU/Linux GNU/Linux nonfree
GUI layer free (varied) free (Android) nonfree (WebOS)[4] free (Maemo) nonfree
SDK free mix[5] nonfree unk nonfree
SDK runs 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 nonfree

See also

References

  1. ↑ nonfree but lets you use non-phone mobile devices as phones via voip
  2. ↑ Should be possible - custom linux already compiled and works - installed OS is OpenEmbedded variant
  3. ↑ There are 4 CPU,The Arm9 CPU controls the modem+gps(mDSP),the audio(aDSP),and the mDSP and the aDSP are all non-free,the application CPU is an arm9,not much is known about the msm architecture
  4. ↑ Can also run directfb GUI without WebOS GUI, however no one has written tslib module for touchscreen yet so limited usefullness
  5. ↑ Official SDK requires nonfree Sun Java,can be liberated if you compile your own and use a patch
  6. ↑ You do not need to access the Linux command line or "root your Pre" to install or use Preware (which is the GPLv2 app store client). 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]
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