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At 40 Years, Free Software Foundation Now Wants to 'Free Your Phone'
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a nonprofit that promotes computer user freedom through free and open source software. Founded in 1985 by Richard M. Stallman, it advocates for users' rights to use, study, modify, and redistribute software without restrictions.
The organization marked four decades of advocacy at its FSF40 celebration event in Boston. The milestone comes as the foundation continues pushing for software freedom in an increasingly digital world where proprietary systems dominate computing devices.
During this, Ian Kelling was named the new FSF president. Being a longtime board member and systems administrator, Ian plans to strengthen the organization's response to emerging problems while bringing more people into the free software movement.
The event also featured discussions with board members and prominent activists from the community. Speakers shared their experiences working on projects like GNU, Debian, Trisquel, and Emacs.
As for the LibreOffice Project, it was announced by Executive Director Zoë Kooyman in the afternoon. This new initiative aims to bring complete computing freedom to mobile devices, addressing a space where users currently have minimal control over their hardware and software (examples include Android and iOS-powered smartphones).
OpenSourceForU:
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FSF’s Librephone Targets Absolute Digital Autonomy In Mobile Tech - Open Source For You
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has announced a landmark open source initiative during its 40th anniversary celebration—the Librephone project, a mission to create a fully free and open source smartphone offering what it calls “full computing freedom.”
Unlike past attempts that relied on partial openness, the Librephone aims to eliminate every proprietary element, including firmware and drivers, by reverse engineering existing systems. Rather than building from scratch, developers plan to base it on an existing operating system such as Android, reworking it until no non-free code remains.
From Valnet:
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An Open Source Phone Is the Free Software Foundation's Next Project
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is starting a new project called LibrePhone. Announced during the FSF's 40th birthday celebration earlier this month, this initiative is to build a mobile platform starting right from the firmware all the way up to the operating system.
This isn't the first time an attempt has been made to create a fully open-source smartphone. Over the past decade, we've seen efforts with mobile Linux distributions on devices like the PinePhone and Librem 5, as well as de-Googled Android operating systems like GrapheneOS and /e/OS. However, the core problem with most of these is that they still have to rely on some proprietary drivers and code to talk to the hardware.
There are no concrete plans just yet, but the LibrePhone project is aiming to go further than anything we've seen before. The project is a partnership with veteran free software developer Rob Savoye, which is great news because this guy has serious credentials. Savoye has been a developer for the GNU Project since the 1980s. You might know his work from major projects like the GNU Compiler Collection, GNU Debugger, and even leading the effort to create Gnash, which was a fully free replacement for Adobe Flash.