The Quest to Build a Truly Free Version of Android
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I think this highlights the fact that it would be much easier to start with open hardware and install something intended to be fully open like Ubuntu Touch on it. Unless you do that, you're going to need to reverse engineer every device driver for every piece of phone hardware – you'll never finish and the user will always be cut off from some percent of their phones features and the rest might not work correctly.
I guess that a pleasurable user-experience might not be the end-goal and maybe this is fun because hacking.
The other reason I have hope for this is most of the non-FLOSS functionality is available at least in some form in web apps, or in a F-Droid application. Google Maps, Gmail, Twitter, Facebook, etc all have pretty good (capable, functional) mobile web applications, and all you need FLOSS for is the web browser.
You are not gaining anything from the change other than the inconvenience of "pretty good" web applications instead of local native applications: you still can't modify them or verify their behavior.
If you only want to interact with devices and services that are using open source software, then you're likely not to miss e.g. Google Maps application in the first place.
Nothing about releasing source or having a collaborative contribution model suggests the software can't be convenient. A better terminology is that security and convenience conflict one another, because to be secure requires you to sacrifice your own convenience to limit foreign entities convenience in accessing your data.
Free as in beer, free as in freedom, and free as in degrees of freedom. Too many degrees of freedom makes a system inconvenient to use.
An application like Transmission is great: libre software but constrained in the "degrees of freedom" department, so you don't have the "chooseaphone" effect.
Edit: Let me illustrate. If I gave you a bike for free, you'd have the freedom to get around on it, tinker with it, sell it to someone else, etc.
If it had more degrees of freedom, it would be a unicycle, and much, much harder to use. But more flexible!
1. Lean forward and backward 2. Lean side to side 3. Twist 4. Pedal
Bicycle
1. Lean side to side 2. Twist handlebars 3. Pedal
We humans are often aided by tools. So, we can also talk about the freedom to study and modify said tools.
What many FOSS advocates seem to miss is that the first freedom, that which comes from being able to fulfil your own goals, is the most important one for everybody.
To the point where freedom of the tools is only relevant for you if understanding said tools was your personal goal in the first place.
I'm in the Replicant market. I don't give a shit about convenience if I can find a free software version somewhere :)...
> You describe exactly how Linux became what it is.
The main server OS (UX not quite relevant for servers) or an OSS kernel primarily used by consumers with a semi-closed (Android) userspace?
Here's a talk by Aral Balkan (that I couldn't recommend more) that covers this topic amazingly (jump to about 32m30s for the meat):
I have been doing a self-experiment for the last few months to use FOSS app(lication)s as much as possible on my Note II running CyanogenMod 10.1 or instead use actual websites instead of apps. I am using F-Droid as a repo, it has been great.
To say it is really easy or convenient would be a lie though, I am also missing some (mostly cloud) features I really liked when I was inside the GOOG garden, but living without Google's and other closed-source apps has actually been relatively painless for me and my data is inside my own control.
Firefox, K-9, AntennaPod, Focal, RedReader, FeedEx are a few of the great FOSS apps (just need K-9 to get a decent icon).
This is roughly how it goes: If you want to use AOSP for anything, including competing with Google, go for it. Google won't sue you, and won't even FUD you the way Sun did and Oracle continues to do if you want to use an open source Java implementation.
If you make Android devices that use Google's logo and proprietary code and ecosystem, you can stuff Android full of crapware that your carrier partners want, and that your product managers delude themselves into thinking gives you "differentiation," even though Google really does not want that to happen. What you can't do is compete with Google, or take a cafeteria approach to using Google's apps and ecosystem. You are in or out. No in-between.
AOSP is Apache licensed and Google adheres to the letter and spirit of that license. Both B&N and Amazon compete with Google using AOSP code and there has never been a hint of FUD aimed at them for doing so.
Many China-market phones with China-based ecosystems are based on Android. Here is where the lines blur a bit: China-based Lenovo gets away with making AOSP-based products for the China market with non-Google ecosystems and they make Google-logo Android phones. Somewhat famously, Taiwan-based ASUS was slapped down by Google for trying to do, as far as I can tell, exactly the same thing. There are also Google OEMs who make OPhone handsets. So Google hasn't been 100% consistent regarding OEMs with one foot in the mainland China market and one foot in the Google ecosystem.
It also appears that OEMs licensing other OSs, notablely Windows Phone, get no retaliation from Google.
I also dealt with Sun, trying to get a license to use Java in a VoIP-oriented OS. They were utterly opaque bastards about the licensing process, cost, etc. and about their position regarding Java patents and open source implementations. to the point where we concluded they could go to hell and we would use an open source Java implementation. Using AOSP is by contrast FUD-free.
1. Aliyun (Acer's partner in this) was distributed pirated apps via their app store, including pirated Google apps: http://www.androidpolice.com/2012/09/15/aliyun-app-store-con...
2. Google claimed that the Android-based OS that Acer and Aliyun had built did not pass the standard Android compatibility tests, in violation of Acer's agreements with the Open Handset Alliance (a prerequisite for their license for the various Google apps). I'm not sure if a third-party verified this claim before the project was killed, but it's plausible. And we do know that most of the non-Google products OHA members distribute in China should pass those same tests. They're usually the same as products the member is selling outside China with Google services, with the exception of China-specific radios.
If Aliyun does not pass CTS, it's good enough to run those stolen apps. Also, as I pointed out, other OEMs get away with having both Google logo phones and Aliyun phones. (Aliyun was the Alibaba OS, and has been "spun out" though it's hard to tell if that is a meaningful separation.)
Aliyun is certainly not the only app store selling apps that were never submitted by the developer for distribution. It's a commonplace form of sleaze.
I don't think we know that. Just because APKs were listed in a store doesn't mean they did anything useful when installed. I don't recall any evidence one way or the other about how well the various pirated apps actually ran on an Aliyun device. If you know of any, I'd appreciate a pointer.
Separately, I agree that Aliyun's sleaze is relatively common, but so what? I'm not suggesting Google should (or even can) proactively police every app store out there. I'm just saying Google is well within their rights to come down hard on one of their partners working with a store that pirates Google apps, wherever it happens to be. Honestly, I'm still puzzled about why Google leaned so much on compatibility in their response. I'd have thought that the issues with unauthorized distribution of Google apps were simpler and more clear-cut.
Google is free to allow or deny anyone access to their proprietary app suite for Google-logo Android handsets whether they are consistent or arbitrary about it. I'm merely pointing out that that some OEMs, like Huawei and Haier, get away with building both Google-logo Android handsets AND Aliyun handsets, while others do not.
Like many Linux-based products in China, there are other things that are wrong with Aliyun in addition to dubious app market practices. It doesn't observe open source licenses, for one thing. But Aliyun being "bad" isn't the point.
I am just pointing out that Google is usually, but not always, consistent about enforcing a policy that Android OEMs can't participate in AOSP-based products that compete with the Google ecosystem. In some cases the OEM relationship appears to be more important than a consistent policy, or perhaps licensing regulations differ in the PRC.
You can't build a Truly Free Version of Windows Phone. You can't build a Truly Free Version of iPhone.
But if Android doesn't do what you want, then you can fork it, tweak it, and turn it into something that does!
I think Google is doing what's best for Android, but Android is not open source anymore.
Firefox OS might be a better choice for open source comminity to spend time on. I haven't been following latest development, how's the hardware situation on FF OS?
I think it would make a lot of sense if the base Android OS (AOSP, as I understand it?) were only as functional as it needed to be for useful apps to run, and then the "Google app stack" or "Cyanogen app stack" or whoever else's, open source or closed source or anything in between, could be dropped in to provide the user-facing functionality.
The key seems to be getting to a point where important pieces of that underlying functionality aren't wrapped up in the "Google app stack".
I actually have an older phone (a first-gen Galaxy S) on which I installed Cyanogenmod without Google's services, which is basically stock Android. In spite of opinions to the contrary, the phone is quite usable without any of Google's services on it.
I've got Firefox for web browsing, OsmAnd for maps, Apollo for playing music. All 3 are open-source apps. At some point I even installed Amazon's App Store on it, to be able to get some proprietary apps, like Facebook, installed. But then I realized I don't need all that bloatware, as the web versions work fine.
You should try out this experiment if you've got an extra Android lying around. After you find apps suitable for whatever it is you want to do, it really is OK. The level of polish is not the same as with the Google-enabled Android, but it's still much, much better than the experience you get on low-budget non-Android smartphones.
People forget that Amazon already forked Android and that without Android they wouldn't have been able to deliver Kindle Fire. That's the power of open-source, even if you choose to deny it.
Your argument above is in the same line as people claiming that end-users do not benefit from open-source. In some sense it is correct, as end-users do not have the technical know-how to assemble their own operating system, to make changes to source-code, etc... But practically speaking, end-users don't have to do it by themselves just like they don't have to fix their cars by themselves (e.g. I helped friends install Cyanogenmod on their phones, which is a PITA to deal with, but once done, it's done).
The power of open-source is in the ability to fork it. Not all people or companies can do it, but if there's demand for it (e.g. Google's stewardship goes awry), then a successful fork will happen. Building an operating system from scratch is hard. Having stock Android available as a base for new operating systems is an incredible gift.
In the meantime, yes, forks of Android are only for hackers wanting to play around. But if this leads to the rise of alternative marketplaces, like F-droid, then this will benefit everybody. Not sure if you notice it, but the biggest problem that Android has in terms of openness and lock-in is Google Play. Fortunately Android allows installing software from third-party sources, but unfortunately there aren't many alternative marketplaces out there.
I'm actually curious as to why F/OSS applications that aren't extremely high profile or commercially backed (Firefox) seemingly tend to have UI/X as what is probably the last possible priority ever.
Yes, the renderer needs some work both in terms of prettiness and speed. It's not as polished as Google Maps, but it's definitely usable. That the map data is from OSM is a feature by itself, OSM maps are often more detailed than what you get from Google, and you can download all data, which is great for traveling. It even supports navigation.
"For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software."
This might be a fun experiment for a developer. But for the broad user perspective even replacing launcher is a big deal.
The point is, Android is currently the go-to mobile OS for anyone who wants to scratch their itch. like Linux has been on the desktop. And there have been plenty who have taken up this offer (e.g Amazon, Chinese & Indian manufacturers, Android console makers), except they aren't end-users.
One example is the location stack. They have moved into it play services and added a few features, but the open source one is now going to bitrot. 4.4 has now a new closed source launcher, and I'm sure the old GoogleHome.apk will go bitrot in a couple years.
If you get AOSP today is quite far from an Android device. Surely it's better than nothing but the distance is widening every month as Google keeps going down to this closed source way. In another couple of years AOSP would probably be irrelevant if you also don't subscribe for the Google apps when you build your device.
Look just what a big upgrade the photo editor in the open source gallery received:
http://www.engadget.com/2013/11/03/android-4-4-kitkat-comes-...
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/11/google-just-pulled-a-...
This leaves it unclear what you get for a launcher with an AOSP build of KitKat, but it certainly is drifting farther from the official Android experience.
You can (and I have) fetch the new Launcher from AOSP, compile it and run it very easily as a separate application. The Google Experience Launcher is a closed source Google app based on this which integrates Google Now.
https://android.googlesource.com/platform/packages/apps/Laun...
I now know which app I'm ditching once I get a 4.4 device.
I'm a huge fan of Google Now so hopefully I can continue to use it if I decide to switch to a custom launcher.
The location stack has not moved into Google Play. The location sensor APIs are still AOSP code. Address resolution and other things have always been tied to Google services, so that geofencing and Google Maps specific APIs are in Google Play Services is not surprising nor unexpected.
> 4.4 has now a new closed source launcher, and I'm sure the old GoogleHome.apk will go bitrot in a couple years.
The previous launcher from 4.3 is still available in AOSP. The new Google launcher has high integration with Google Now, but we've already seen that the launcher space has a thriving amount of competition and an open source launcher is totally do-able.
> If you get AOSP today is quite far from an Android device. Surely it's better than nothing but the distance is widening every month as Google keeps going down to this closed source way. In another couple of years AOSP would probably be irrelevant if you also don't subscribe for the Google apps when you build your device.
This is the core point. Its not that AOSP gets less free over time, its that Google-specific code and services get more functional over time compared to AOSP components. Since Google controls code commits for the main Android project, it means people have to fork and generate alternatives like Replicant is trying to do.
Not correct. Launcher3 is open source.
There's something deeply hypocritical about complaining Android is not open source on the basis that Google is not working on the components themselves anymore, giving you free updates. If you actually sincerely care about open source your concern is exactly the opposite of that: the community must be able to take the source and build upon it. Google has brought us light years, billions of dollars of investment along the road to where we have a beautiful, highly optimized, slick operating system available completely for free, even to Google's direct competitors. And your complaint is now that you're not getting fed free updates to all the exact components of the OS at the rate you want? And therefore all that was given to you is worthless, "rotten", not even worthy of the name open source?
This just sounds so entitled to me.
Of course the entitlement is theres because they convinced OSS devs to write code for them for free under the "do no evil" moniker.
So now if they want to keep their toolchains, they have to continue maintaining the oss-side google service apps to regain access to the tools they help built.
I think this is called bait and switch, and it's probably the #1 pattern used by big technology firms today. It's so easy to "switch" with IT. Carrot-stick pattern worked well for Microsoft, because they owned the only stick and most the bait, but no longer. I guess without a monopoly, the only way to secure customers is to fool them.
But notice that the problem is not "the rate of free updates", but rather the fact that Google is moving more and more development into the closed-source part of the operating system, while still trying to maintain the market line that the "operating system is free". But which operating system is free? If you install AOSP on your phone (assuming you can and manage to go through the hurdles) you end up with a phone which is completely different from stock Android. That is my complaint: the difference between AOSP and the so-called "pure Android experience" (as on a Nexus) is widening more and more.
You say Android is available for free to "competitors". But as a matter of fact, AOSP (not Android) is available to competitors, and only those that are not part of the OHA. If you are a member of the OHA (so if you are an Android vendor of any significance), your contract says that you cannot fork Android; not only that, but you cannot even produce/manufacture a forked Android device as a supplier for an unrelated company outside the OHA (which is why Amazon has problems producing Kindle Fires, since all major manufacturers are also trying to sell consumer devices based on Android).
Moreover, if you fork AOSP, not only you don't have access to the Play Store, but many (most?) .apk won't even work on your device, since they rely on the proprietary Google APIs which are not part of AOSP. And this, again, is a widening ongoing process, so more and more (rather than less and less) existing .apk found on Play Store are incompatible with AOSP.
I think the way Google cleverly designed the whole "AOSP vs Android" licensing is way more than a standard freemium model; it's a model in which nobody pays, a part is open-source, and still it's close to impossible to create a forked consumer device that uses AOSP and benefits from the existing ecosystem.
The markets in which AOSP is really making a different (in my experience) is the B2B embedded device market, which is not in direct competition with Android devices, and where AOSP is quickly moving to become the de-facto Linux embedded distro. I work in that field, and I'm grateful to Google for AOSP, as it's really making the whole market progress faster than ever.
It honestly sounds like you have never installed AOSP yourself. I do it all the time and quite often use the device for a bit without any "Google". The experience of running barebones AOSP is way, way closer to stock Android than anything you will buy from an OEM. I even sometimes do it and forget to install the Google apps because it is so similar you cannot actually tell the difference until you try to use something like Gmail or Google Now. The idea that consumers buying branded phones are somehow being deceived because they think they are getting stock Android but Google has somehow slipped proprietary code in is laughable when you look at what the OEMs do in comparison.
I would challenge you to get hold of a Nexus and flash plain vanilla stock Android (to make things easy, use CM 10.2 and don't put Gapps on there). These are built from source directly derived from the AOSP, by people who are NOT members of the OHA and have no special relationships with Google, manufacturers or anyone else. You will find you can set up your email, calendar, pretty much everything you need, with the exception of Maps is available. It may make you feel better about things.
In my view, what is happening lately is that Google is drawing a sharper boundary around what is open source Android and what are proprietary Google services. The OS is remaining open source, as a hard condition. Things that belong in the OS are staying there and staying open source. But the layers above that - things that are rightly and properly user space apps - are only delivered as part of the OS as a convenience. Making better versions of those - possibly better versions than can ever be made open source, either because they depend on proprietary / live Google services (eg: maps) or because they use licensed or patent encumbered code - is fair game.
In theory you can, in practice 99.99% of the people won't be in a reasonable position to even try it.
By the way 99.99% of all android users is quite a crowd, it could fill a few cities, so if they do check the code it can and will influence other android user, if only by adding pressure on Google. You see, adding a backdoor to android is really much harder for Google than it would have been with closed source, maybe 99 times harder?
So no, you absolutely cannot do this with what almost everyone thinks of as 'Android'.
You can do it with a different thing that also has the name 'Android', but isn't the same.
I assume you haven't noticed this, because otherwise you would be deliberately trying to spread a misleading view.
Regardless of what Mozilla does, the manufacturers are not going to sell non-differentiated phones for very long. They are going to keep that differentiation closed source, as they do now.
If one of them becomes very popular (say, Samsung), the Firefox OS you can do things with will be nothing like the Firefox OS on consumer's phones.
This is the way of the world, not just the way of Android.
I note that you are implicitly conceding that what is commonly considered to be Android is indeed not open.
No, instead it's licensed in a way that lets the rest of the world decide what they want to do with it, and the complaint is "we don't like what the world is doing with it". You must also realize if android was GPL'd, nobody would have used it, right[1] ?
" and Google itself builds its most significant end-user functionality as closed components."
I don't agree this is true, but even if i did, if you want to compete, compete. If you don't, don't. Essentially this whole complaint boils down to "i have to do my own work in order to compete seriously, i don't get to freeride anymore after x number of years".
I'll point out the mariadb folks did this, rather than simply complain.
In any case, the fact that someone may build closed source stuff on top of an open platform does not make that open platform less open. It may make that platform less useful as time goes on, but not less open.
"I note that you are implicitly conceding that what is commonly considered to be Android is indeed not open."
I haven't conceded anything, actually.
It's just not a point worth arguing with someone who holds a position that clearly conflicts with mine and is highly unlikely to change it.
[1] I wouldn't try arguing with this, this is a case where i was there, and I literally know the answers and positions of the phone makers, which was essentially 'never ever ever'.
DannyBee - have you read Moral Mazes by Robert Jackall (http://www.amazon.com/Moral-Mazes-World-Corporate-Managers/d...)? It was one of Aaron Swartz's favorite books.
It's an excellent, and fair to all sides, dissection of morality in corporate management. It explains how and why managers rehearse to explain actions their company's have taken.
In this particular comment of yours, you say lots of true things. However, you are not acting in a straightforward "hacker" way, as befits this site, telling the truth how it is.
Google can continue to behave in this way as a company, but it will alas find it harder and harder to hire good geeks.
For the record, I'm specifically not accusing DannyBee of dishonesty. The reason I mentioned Moral Mazes as a book is because it explains what happens from the point of view of the managers, and why it comes across to outsiders as dishonest.
This stuff is subtle and systemic.
Fair point about speaking for the site.
I'm not even sure where to start with your comment, because it implies so much, and has so little to offer.
Rather than address it point by point, i'll just say things:
When i'm speaking for the company I work for, you'll know it, because it'll be a press release that says Google on it. Maybe you are unable to separate your personal and professional lives, and hold opinions separate from your corporations. For me, Google is a company I work for. While I love my job, Google certainly does things i don't always agree with. When it does, i'm certainly not going to avoid saying something because i am "rehearsing to explain the actions my company has taken".
There are a lot of things Android could do better. But in the end, what I see over the years is a lot of whining that it's never enough. From where I sit, Google has taken a lot of flack for actually pushing the ball forward, because it doesn't always go as far as the open source community wants. First they wanted Google to beat up the carriers (without understanding why this is pretty much impossible). Then they complain when we don't. Heck, some people complain android is "too open", because we can't force carriers to give people what they want. I could go on here for hours. Look at the complaints of a lack of a nexus 4 and nexus 5 on certain carriers . Google releases an entire platform, on which other open platforms are now based, and people complain that they have value-added apps that provide a lot of functionality, and haven't opened them. Well great, good for them. This is supposed to be an innovative community. Create your own. Do it better. Do it open, and win. Prove that they made the wrong choice.
Let's stop and be honest for a second. Do you really think something like Firefox OS would even exist (not even just because it is/was based on Android at the lower levels, like Gonk) in the market today if Android had not pushed the ball forward?
When Android was first released, one of my good friends told me no matter what Google did, people would never see it as enough, no matter how open it was. The saddest part to me of all this is that he was right.
Android was never meant to be the end solution, it was meant to be the beginning.
But.. You have certainly claimed to have authority to speak about parts of Google's strategy because you were in certain meetings.
These are very different things, and you should not confuse them.
As i've said before, everything i've stated about these strategies is public knowledge, and often stated by Andy Rubin himself, just not always believed :)
All i've done is basically say "believe it".
You seem to be trying to wriggle out of this by saying that what people mean by Android today has moved past the 'open beginning' that is all that was ever meant to be open, and that's not Google's fault.
I agree that this isn't Google's fault. But let's speak plainly. Android began as open and that was all that Google intended. Things have changed since then and only a part of Android is open anymore.
Why try to claim otherwise?
This is why I said that. You have your belief. You are clearly unlikely to change it no matter what I say. Your goal in this is not to possibly change your belief, but to find a way to confirm it in what i'm saying. This is what people do in these situations.
That does not often generate useful discussion, and it hasn't really here.
Realistically, I haven't tried to wiggle out of anything. It just turns out, as I suggested, we strongly disagree over whether Android is open, whether it was meant to be, and whether it still is.
Rather than continue this unproductive debate, i'm just going to go back to hacking some code on this fine sunday :)
All the hard work on Android is much appreciated - I'm really glad Apple didn't gain a monopoly.
But the mobile web is inevitable. Eventually there will be parity in performance between web apps and native apps. (And Android is on the wrong side of that divide, and Dalvik doesn't exactly help.) Even if Firefox OS isn't doing what it is now, someone would have tried to push for a mobile OS focused on web apps. Perhaps even Samsung.
Your comment about 'You don't get to freeride after X years' is perfectly reasonable if google's goal is to stop contributing to the open parts of android.
I am not disputing Google's right to do whatever it takes to compete, or that there is somehow something morally wrong about that.
I am disputing the canard that 'Android is open' when really only a part of it is, and that part is not what most people think of as Android.
I do thing there is something morally wrong with perpetuating this misleading idea, even though it furthers Google's PR goals.
I know that corporations mislead us all the time with communications that are technically true but pragmatically false. I realize it may be naive to expect different behavior, but it's certainly not going to stop if it isn't called out.
This is because of what you define Android as.
Of course, the humorous part is that when all of this first started, Google tried very hard to make sure Android was defined in terms of what the Android Open Source Project was and had, but failed miserably here, so they gave up.
If as you say, Google intended to have 'Android' mean the AOSP at one point, and it has stopped trying for that definition now because it failed to make the distinction to the public, then that only strengthens the point that Google (and you) know that what people think of as 'Android' is not open, and so are knowingly exploiting the ambiguity between 'Android' and the AOSP when you perpetuate that idea.
How much time did using this port from BSD take over shipping with a GPLv2/LGPLv2.1 version of libc and coreutils?
(Note, I'm explicitly referring to the Unix base operating system, not drivers, audio or video codecs or libraries or anything else, only Bionic and the core Unix utilities)
They don't describe how they're doing the reverse-engineering though.
[1] http://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki/Libsamsu...
I don't like it when threads end up as list of lists but some recommendations that might not be well known:
Aard is a offline wiki(pedia and others) reader. AFWall+ is a firewall to give/revoke internet access to apps. It is a fork of DroidWall which went inactive. Document Viewer is the best PDF reader I know and it's free software, hooray. It can automatically cut off white margins, you can set your own touch controls etc. Gibberbot is a great XMPP client. I tested many but this one did not randomly stop receiving messages like all the others did. GnuCash for keeping track of finances. Mirakel is a Todo app which I switched from Astrid to. Astrid is free software too but relies on several non-free libraries from what I know. Mirakel seems more concerned with privacy. OsmAnd for offline maps. And of course you can get APG, AdAway, ConnectBot, FBReader, K-9 Mail, ScummVM, Terminal Emulator etc. from F-Droid.
http://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki/TargetsE...
I simply want some basic privacy and phone which lasts more than 2 years. Commercial vendors failed here, perhaps OSS will deliver.
No solution is perfect, but if you read the trail of Snowden-branded leaks and the opinions of security experts, the greatest weapon that the NSA possess are the vulnerabilities and backdoors planted on people's own devices. Plus, NSA is not the only enemy, or the enemy most of us should fear, but rather organized crime syndicates or business competitors, which for many of us are much more immediate threats.
You're making the mistake of thinking that just because all security solutions are imperfect, they are somehow equal. You're wrong!
But proper OSS phone could give answer to GSM location as well. Imagine network similar to Tor, where SIM would be emulated on phone and shared among community members. Phone would automatically rotate SIM and network IDs every hour. The actual voice call would be over encrypted VOIP.
I am not saying it would be practical (or even legal), but OSS could solve technical part of it.
There was news a few days back of irons from a certain company having spyware! Imagine what could be put in the firmware of a mobile device!
I can't help but feel that the folks adopting this path will always be a couple of generation behind.
I have an extensive Steam library and while most of the Linux games work fine with proprietary, they are unplayable with Nouveau. I really hope Valve's commitment to Linux motivates Nvidia to put some resources into their open source drivers like AMD and Intel have done. If Nouveau was my only option under Linux, I'd switch to Windows.
Even for non-gammers, how can you seriously recommend laptop drivers that don't offer critical features like power management and video out?
Do they?
My understanding was, that they come with some stuff that's released by google as closed source + the gapps package.
As for Android, I don't think the chip vendors are too interesting in opening up their drivers, and it's not like Google will ever open up their services (and why would they?). Pretty much everything in Android that doesn't hook up directly to Google is already open anyway...
And while we still need the occasional closed source firmware blob or driver, there are now also systems where we can replace every little bit from the BIOS upwards with open alternatives.
In the mobile space, RockChip has released sufficient source to allow Ubuntu to be ported to the RK3188 CPU's (quad core Cortex A9), so there's movement. Given that RockChip is one of 3 CPU providers dominating the Chinese Android devices, if this helps their market share you can expect MTK and AllWinner (the two other main CPU providers) to be more open too.
That does not mean these systems are open - a lot of pieces still will be locked down often because they license GPU's etc. and don't have the rights to open up everything, but several of the Chinese/Taiwanese manufacturers in fact do seem to want to make custom builds available (not least because a lot of these devices ship as XBMC devices - many distributors now ship with XBMC by default, and at least one offers to flash their Android sticks with plain Linux + Linux version of XBMC instead of Android)
With current Linux distros, you have 3 major roots: Debian, Slackware and Redhat. From those, 100's of children have spawned which fragments the community, creates factions, divides, conquers and creates this "crab in a bucket" mentality. Meanwhile Microsoft or Apple come along with one vision and just clean up the market. What I want to see, and what I think would work, is Google championing this effort in trying to make a truly free version of Android.
Ignoring the fact that most devices I'd like to put this on (I have some old handsets, I'd like to put this on my wife's phone etc.) aren't supported - that's fixable - I'm unable to accept a mobile OS without Wifi support.
And I have a hard time thinking of a solution to this problem. I'd love to hear something different, would be grateful if someone could prove me wrong, but I'm really pessimistic that this will change..
All the other tradeoffs are fine. Camera, GPS - not an issue. But data connectivity and Wifi are the basic requirements to use my devices.
The main problem with Replicant is that it's solving a problem that users don't have. Ask any phone user (any, not just Android) if they care whether their phone is running on free software and either they will have no idea what you're talking about or they will tell you "Not really, I just want my phone to work".
The Replicant team (like the FSF) is trying to solve a problem that only they have.
Naïveté about how the world works is only cute for so long.