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Comment by avar | Hacker News Reader

   > [...]and install a 3rd party ROM free
   > of any closed-source software.

No you can't. I'm not aware of any commercial Android phone that doesn't need binary firmware blobs running in kernel space to work, e.g. for display drivers, WiFi, the radio stack etc.

   > Hardware backdoors are a separate issue.

You don't need a hardware backdoor when you can just put a backdoor in the binary blob your users run along with some open source software they download along with it.

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> No you can't. I'm not aware of any commercial Android phone that doesn't need binary firmware blobs running in kernel space to work, i.e. for display drivers, WiFi, the radio stack etc.

Using an open source operating system is a step towards a fully transparent phone, even if it doesn't solve all the problems at once. It opens a market space for a company to release a phone with open-source drivers. Consumers need to force companies step-by-step towards the solutions we want, not just expect them to be delivered in a gift-wrapped package.

So do we believe the new Firefox OS will be the way forward, as a good alternative open source OS? I haven't looked into it much yet, and the hardware of the ZTE is severely underpowered at the moment for my needs, but if this is truly open then I can see myself getting on board, even flashing an Android device with it (if the hardware allows).

Didn't know about F-Droid, that's the kind of marketplace I think that is the best of both worlds, open source but verified by community members.

After all of these NSA scandals, we really need to be pushing more for open source firmware from all companies.

I don't even think firmware is what's maintaining their "competitive advantage". That firmware needs to be matched with the hardware anyway, and it's really the hardware that offers the competitive advantage. So I think the "competitive advantage" they get from closed firmware is mostly imaginary for most companies. We should push them to "think different".

Better yet, we should demand to open source their firmware if they want our trust, after all of this.

One of the things I hope I can do with my hardware startup is release all the firmware, boot loader and bios related code.

I'd like to think that's something people could value, but I always hear there's no market?

I wonder if it exists at all now?

i think you could find a niche, specialized market.. like the geek and hacker people.. and start from there.. than you can make bigger moves..

i think of course only by being open source, maybe its not enough.. dont know how your project is of course.. but its good to have something that distinguish from the other stuff around.. but it can attrack attention from the geek market.. thats what firefox-os are doing after getting late in this crowded party that is the smartphone industry..

I'd like to make a device that is the anti-thesis of what hacker products are expected to look like.

But I definitely agree that early adopters will be hackers, developer and tech people.

If I were to have a mantra it would be: "Get everyone who is a Linux developer/user and their moms' to buy this laptop."

My mom is probably my first sale, she already uses Elementary OS(Ubuntu based) and she loves it, she's never going back to Windows.

Better yet, we should demand to open source their firmware if they want our trust, after all of this.

If Apple open-sourced their code, how long do you think it will take before a dozen cheap chinese knock-offs appear with an almost exact replica of iOS? Thus killing off a huge market share for them. At least at the moment, the user experience of those cheap knock-offs is vastly inferior.

Although a nice sentiment, but too far fetch from reality.

I believe that the Replicant Android project is fully open-source.

http://replicant.us/

Most radio functionality still requires closed-source binary blobs, almost certainly containing backdoors. There's no such thing as open source CDMA drivers and the only open source GSM driver (OsmocomBB) is basically abandon-ware at this point. 4G and LTE are simply not going to happen.

Would be really awesome to see more support for OsmocomBB and similar projects though.

Here are some neat slides from a presentation on OsmocomBB from last year for anyone interested: http://elinux.org/images/9/9a/Getting_the_First_Open_Source_...

plus: There's software on your baseband processor (and afaik on your simcard) which you can't control.

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