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FSF announces Librephone project
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) today announced its project to bring mobile phone freedom to users. "Librephone" is an initiative to reverse-engineer obstacles preventing mobile phone freedom until its goal is achieved.
Librephone is a new initiative by the FSF with the goal of bringing full freedom to the mobile computing environment. The vast majority of software users around the world use a mobile phone as their primary computing device. After forty years of advocacy for computing freedom, the FSF will now work to bring the right to study, change, share, and modify the programs users depend on in their daily lives to mobile phones.
"Forty years ago, when the FSF was founded, our focus was on providing an operating system people could use on desktop and server computers in freedom. Times have changed, technology has progressed, but our commitment to freedom hasn't," said Zoë Kooyman, executive director of the FSF. "A lot of work has been done in mobile phone freedom over the years that we'll be building on. The FSF is now ready to do what is necessary to bring freedom to cell phone users. Given the complexity of the devices, this work will take time, but we're used to playing the long game."
Librephone | librephone Project
LWN:
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The FSF's Librephone project
The Free Software Foundation has announced the launch of the Librephone project, which is aimed at the creation of a fully-free operating system for mobile devices.
The Register:
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Librephone battles the proprietary binary blob
To bridge the gap between Android distributions and true mobile phone freedom, the Free Software Foundation (FSF) has launched an initiative called Librephone.
It's not an attempt to build yet another mobile operating system. Rather, the goal is to develop replacements for proprietary blobs – binaries without associated source code – in Android device firmware that limit software freedom technically or legally.
Google's Android operating system and Apple's iOS both limit that freedom through contractual rules and intellectual property rights. While alternative mobile operating systems exist, often distributions based on the Android Open Source Project (e.g., LineageOS), they may contain proprietary blobs related to specific vendors (e.g., Qualcomm). Such blobs, which often handle functions related to networking and wireless communication, are governed by software licenses that limit the sharing or modification of code.
Linuxiac:
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FSF Gives More Details About Its New Librephone Project
According to the FSF, modern phones are built around deeply closed hardware and firmware components, often referred to as “blobs.” These binary-only components are required for basic functions like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and even booting the device, making them a significant obstacle to user freedom.
In this respect, Librephone’s long-term plan is to research and replace as many of these nonfree components as possible with open, verifiable alternatives.
Also in It's FOSS again:
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Free Software Foundation Is Serious About The Librephone Project [To Bring Mobile Freedom To The Masses]
Not just another Android fork, this project aims to liberate mobile computing at its core.