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Comment by mortenjorck | Hacker News Reader

It's honestly very difficult to imagine how a small group, no matter how talented and driven, can possibly succeed where open source giants Canonical and Mozilla couldn't.

The only possibility I can imagine is that by leaning into a niche market, embracing low-volume but also the community that goes with it, rather than engaging in a quixotic quest to become a viable competitor to the established duopoly, Librem can become sustainable along the lines of niche laptop manufacturer System76. That doesn't seem entirely unreasonable, and it would be pretty cool.

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If the goals are relatively modest (e.g. a low bar of selling ~10K handsets), and the project is well scoped (e.g. don't try to be a me-too Android & iOS alternative, but focus purely on secure communication & web browsing), and if it builds on the better bits of FOSS that came from previous projects (Maemo, Meego, Sailfish, FFOS, Ubuntu Touch, etc)... I think this one stands a chance. (disclaimer: I'm working on the Matrix side of it).

also, a really exciting thing here is proving that it is viable to build a FOSS-friendly hardware supply chain.

I am excited for the phone but I don't get having matrix as the messaging app. I don't see the value in matrix. Encryption is not on by default, which is unacceptable in a modern messaging app. It leaks metadata like a seive. None of my friends or co-workers on it. It isn't decentralized enough.

They should just use briar. It hides metadata, it's encrypted, it's peer to peer. It's biggest downsides are no file transfer, no iOS client, no offline messaging.

Or better yet someone should develop an app based on one of the newer concepts like vuvuzela/alpenhorn or loopix.

Why not port signal?

Because OWS explicitly don't want third party clients. It's a controversial decision, but IMO they have good reasons for it. This said, if there's a client that works on Debian, it should work on the Librem (perhaps with some UX work). Currently on desktop, Signal is an Electron app.

Encryption is only not on by default because it is still in (late) beta. Obviously by the time the Librem5 ships this will be on by default.

You’re right that metadata isn’t protected serverside: so use servers you trust. In future the plan is to move to a hybrid p2p approach to fix this, but usability and features are more important given you can pick the servers to trust. https://matrix.org/~matthew/2016-12-22%20Matrix%20Balancing%... has more details on the tradeoff.

I’d be shocked if your friends and coworkers aren’t accessible via Matrix, given bridges through to Gitter, IRC, Slack etc. And if you want them to be native Matrix users, just invite them :)

In terms of “not decentralised enough”... the only bits which aren’t decentralised are the node which hosts your account, and (currently) the mapping DB of email/msisdn to matrix IDs. The latter is being fixed by the community currently; the former is harder but due to be worked on next year (hopefully solved by the time the Librem5 ships).

In terms of briar: it’s a great project, and perhaps it will surpass Matrix in time. But right now the battery and bandwidth requirements of running a full p2p stack on the client - as well as all the missing features you list, are a showstopper. It’s also not really set up as an open protocol/specification; just a library and app.

So, Matrix is probably the best bet for now. And we’re counting on evolving at the current rate or faster over the next year in the lead up to the Librem5 shipping.

I'm a Matrix patreon supporter because I see it as one of the most important OSS projects currently and I have my entire extended family using it via a self-hosted server.

Push notifications via GCM or APN all also centralized, correct?

What do you see as taking the place of GCM or APN on the Librem 5 phone? I currently use Riot on a device with neither (5 minute polling) and the experience as an instant messaging application isn't as good as an Android/iOS device.

Thanks for the PDF :)

If matrix moved toward pond style metadata protection I would make the effort to move my social graph on to it and probably support it financially.

As is, I don't see the value proposition of matrix. I am genuinely curious what it is. An update to xmpp? Is it that it is going to be encrypted AND federated? Many popular apps now support default encryption so that isn't much of a selling point. Conversations is federated and is not getting traction the way signal has. Being federated has benefits but they are sort of theoretical and aren't high on most people's list of concerns. Further the value proposition of federated systems is attenuated by it's downsides (slow evolution).

Meanwhile people get killed based on metadata. Seems like a more urgent problem to tackle.

An easy way to describe Matrix is as a decentralised database of realtime conversations, which are signed and replicated over the participating servers. The main novelty over XMPP MUCs is that conversations are replicated equally over the servers so there's no single point of control - it's really more a decentralised than federated model. And yes, it has (beta) E2E crypto too - albeit trying to take the best aspects of Signal (the double ratchet) whilst also making it usable for sharing conversation history when desired between devices, and actually clearly tracking which devices are participating in the conversation. The "slow evolution" criticism of federation/decentralisation is empirically fairly bogus, as long as you structure the layers of the protocol so they can all evolve independently without cross-cutting concerns.

You're right that people get killed based on metadata, which is why it's in our sights in the longer term. But our focus is first on features that make the system actually compete effectively with its centralised counterparts (encrypted decentralised Slack or WhatsApp style use cases), otherwise in practice nobody's seriously going to use it. And secondarily on protecting metadata, especially given there's stuff like Ricochet & Briar that you can use today if you're doing something where you really need the metadata protection today.

This. Free Software doesn't need to be ubiquitous or even dominant. Most end-users don't want Free Software right now. As long as the Librem 5 becomes feasible, we can worry about market share later.

Isn't market share part of making the phone feasible? Economies of scale and all that.

The costs of developing and commercializing the components in smartphones are borne by the Android, automotive, and other high performance embedded markets. They just need to make it viable enough to assemble the components and put them in an enclosure.

So it's perfectly feasible to have a small market device like this if the market price covers the cost of buying chipsets off the shelf, and assembling them.

Yes. However, we need to have a modest definition of "success".

When I looked back when Linux was something only enthusiasts used back 15 years ago, it does seem like so too. We never thought one day Linux would be dominant and people would go through great lengths to deal with GNU software, Firefox or OpenOffice. We counted Firefox market share when it was 1%, then 5% then 10%. Time changes and if a project actually is good, I believe the general attitude will change.

It is anything but dominant on the desktop space, that ship has long gone.

And on Android and ChromeOS, it isn't exposed to user space, so kind of irrelevant and can be changed at any moment, e.g. Fuchsia.

The only place where Linux really made it, was replacing expensive proprietary UNIX servers with free (gratis) clone.

Yep, but it doesn't matter what it technically is, the underlying principle is the same. We'd have a more secure, more understandable, more open system that replaces the proprietary ones. I have my Chromebook which runs Linux and GNU software. I have my cell phone which runs Linux and I can rebuild whatever part I desire. I have my server which runs Linux.

A man can dream one day we'll have a phone with a baseband chip we can control, a RISC-V core we can program, no?

Surely, but as history proves since OpenMoko, that dream requires the buy-in of an OEM willing to keep the ship going, even when there is no wind to push the sails.

The desktop ship certainly has sailed - it's lost the home market as people use phones and tablets now.

> And on Android and ChromeOS, it isn't exposed to user space, so kind of irrelevant

Sure, and I can run Windows applications on Wine, so Windows is kind of irrelevant. Don't be silly.

> The only place where Linux really made it, was replacing expensive proprietary UNIX servers with free (gratis) clone.

Except you're forgetting that these expensive UNIX servers were supposed to be replaced by Windows NT (later Windows Server) machines. So you'd have Windows at every level and could hire a point-and-grunt "sysadmin" to run it all at a much lower TCO. That's the grand vision that we've been spared.

And you forgot about the embedded market. Hell, my TV runs Linux and I didn't even know (my wife chose it) until I was poking about in the menus and found a copy of the GPL. And you also omitted Cloud Servers, where Linux is hugely dominant. Oh, and Supercomputing where 499 of the Top500 Supercomputer run Linux.

But yeah, apart from embedded, phones, tablets, laptops, servers, cloud servers and supercomputers...what has Linux ever done for us?

Linux was only adopted by being a gratis UNIX clone, with licenses that forced people to contribute back.

Talk to me in a couple of years, now that everyone is migrating to BSD style licenses, while trying to replace the whole stack (clang, Fuchsia, ...).

Had the *BSDs won against GNU/Linux, and I bet all proprietary UNIXes would still be around.

A TV running Linux is worthless if there isn't a way to update the firmware, how do update yours?

I've no idea where you're going with the TV thing; it's a TV. It was just an example of how Linux is everywhere. It has as much worth as any other TV. The firmware updates are via Internet or OTA, like, you know, a TV.

>Talk to me in a couple of years, now that everyone is migrating to BSD style licenses

Nonsense, Linux is more popular and more widely used than ever. You were saying the same things two years ago, right? I suppose you'll still be saying the same two years from now.

> Had the BSDs won against GNU/Linux*

The BSDs aren't against Linux (except in the minds of some overly zealous BSD fanboys). The popularity of Linux has increased the popularity of the BSDs. They've helped each other.

EDIT: Oh yes, Containers! How could I forget containers! Just add it to the list...

> I've no idea where you're going with the TV thing; it's a TV. It was just an example of how Linux is everywhere. It has as much worth as any other TV. The firmware updates are via Internet or OTA, like, you know, a TV.

Ah the Pyrrhic victory, it is there but out of reach!

> Nonsense, Linux is more popular and more widely used than ever. You were saying the same things two years ago, right? I suppose you'll still be saying the same two years from now.

Yep, and if Google does release Fuchsia, lets see who is right.

A "success" for this group might look something like "5k devices sold", compared to a "success" for Canonical or Mozilla being larger, like "5+% of the market" or something similar.

Every year it gets easier. Barring bizarre regulatory hurdles it seems almost inevitable. With carriers like freedompop coming onto the scene, its starting to get pretty easy to pop a speaker, a mic, and a sim-slot onto a raspi and having a "phone".

>It's honestly very difficult to imagine how a small group, no matter how talented and driven, can possibly succeed where open source giants Canonical and Mozilla couldn't.

How many people worked on Xerox Alto? They had to do everything from scratch, including bootstrapping their own tools and they had far worse computing capabilities/hardware available to them at the time.

> It's honestly very difficult to imagine how a small group, no matter how talented and driven, can possibly succeed where open source giants Canonical and Mozilla couldn't.

For one thing, it looks like they are leaving much of the development up to the wider community. Gnome/Plasma will handle the UI for instance. Mozilla and Canonical tried to experiment to much with the interface and build too much of it from scratch. Even MS was to "innovative", the had all the parts in place to build a better android but they wanted to put tiles in.

Success in this case means having a choice to buy such device and run a free OS on it.

"The choice to buy such device" seems to be the hard part for every previous attempt at an open source OS. Almost all of them have been "buy a Nexus/OnePlus/etc. and flash it yourself" or have had limited models that are nearly impossible to get a hold of.

In my case, the problem actually doubles, because I'm on Verizon. Verizon IS required to support any compatible device, but few niche developers are willing to submit their devices for certification. :/ I suspect there would be a significant value if someone could get a free software-based module submitted to https://opendevelopment.verizonwireless.com/design-and-build...

> "The choice to buy such device" seems to be the hard part for every previous attempt

Yes, it is very hard, and I hope they'll succeed this time.

> In my case, the problem actually doubles, because I'm on Verizon.

Can you ditch Verizon for T-Mobile? They are more flexible.

T-Mobile is extremely adept at misleading advertising and it has left a very bad taste in my mouth. Beyond that, I have Verizon and AT&T towers at work, so it would be silly to not get one of them.

I think out of these three, T-Mobile is the best. Your own example demonstrates it. Anyway, it was always the only sensible option for users of N900, N9 and so on.

On the contrary, my example, that I have AT&T and Verizon towers at work, is that T-Mobile has less coverage.

They also started the entire anti-net neutral trend with throttling video, zero rating content from specific providers, etc. Which the others carriers were unfortunately all too willing to copy.

It is hard to see from either a technical or ethical standpoint how T-Mobile is better.

Verizon and AT&T were anti-net neutrality long before T-Mobile were. I'm not defending what they are doing wrong. Just pointing out, that you if you want to have your own unlocked device, they are the best option.

Respectfully, success isn't about technical ability alone in the mobile, timing is a big factor.

Palm's webOS is an html/js based mobile phone OS that predated the JS based excitement.

For example, if there was a device that focused on running progressive web apps well, there would be a market today than compared to the past when horsepower wasn't at the level it is at now.

The flip side is also being able to run these sorts of operating systems on more devices.

I use my phone more and more for computer replacement tasks on Android. Would be neat to be able to run the odd android app in a container, etc.

> For example, if there was a device that focused on running progressive web apps well, there would be a market today than compared to the past when horsepower wasn't at the level it is at now.

How does that explain the failure of FirefoxOS?

FirefoxOS lacked official support from key apps (eg. Whatsapp), and then lacked support from Mozilla leadership.

With today's PWAs it would be a wonderful OS.

I keep seeing webapps failing since Nokia introduced Web Runtime for Symbian.....

Chrome OS has proven the viability of an HTML5-based OS.

In Mozilla's case it was an inability to define a market more than the technology stack. I had a Flame. While the OS started a little rough around the edges, by Firefox OS 2.5 it was perfectly usable as a daily driver with modest specs by 2017 standards.

Only in the US school system, because it isn't used anywhere else.

Even here, most people buy Chromebooks to replace ChromeOS with an usable version of GNU/Linux, just like we used to do with Windows 95/98 back in the day.

PWA's weren't ready 2 years ago when FirefoxOS was being pushed, they're probably still not ready but there is major progress. It's mostly about scale and ecosystem now, development of well designed touch-friendly web components, iOS implementing Service Workers as is currently underway, and so on. That's not to say they can or will replace native apps, but there will be a growing overlap.

I dunno about Canonical, but i suspect Mozilla would have had better luck had their aimed their products towards other markets than they did.

Canonical and Mozilla are too busy virtue signaling and selling their users out for profit.

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