Hello,
Subscribers to this mailing list have recently been introduced to the existence of a new "rival" mailing list [*] in a way that might well be regarded as being both ill-conceived and regrettable. There may be merits in conducting discussion on another list, but the apparent attempt to transfer subscribers to such a list without their agreement is counterproductive to put it mildly.
It would obviously have been far more appropriate for Daniel to merely advertise that another discussion venue has been set up and for him to invite those who are interested to sign up for themselves. As far as I know, no such invitation message has been propagated by this mailing list, but I do wonder whether it might have been propagated had it been received.
I sincerely hope that the different parties who are in apparent conflict in this and other matters are able to resolve their disagreements to an acceptable degree of satisfaction. Clearly, not all parties are under the impression that their past disputes have been settled and that all grievances have been acknowledged. Further escalation of this conflict is in nobody's best interest.
I would also encourage the FSFE leadership to use venues like this list to more fully engage with the community, even when this involves encountering dissent. Doing so might help to prevent any further degradation in trust and confidence between the leadership and the community that has arguably precipitated this incident.
Paul
[*] This "rival" list being the fsfellowship.eu list set up by Daniel Pocock, of course.
Hi, Paul!
Am 02.05.19 um 21:45 schrieb Paul Boddie:
It would obviously have been far more appropriate for Daniel to merely advertise that another discussion venue has been set up and for him to invite those who are interested to sign up for themselves. As far as I know, no such invitation message has been propagated by this mailing list, but I do wonder whether it might have been propagated had it been received.
From my experience with this mailing list (and others hosted by FSFE), I would absolutely have expected such an invitation to have been approved by the list moderators. I see that in the past, two kinds of messages have been rejected:
* Messages that contain offensive language, and * Messages that violate the privacy of others (e.g. forwarding priate emails).
I would also encourage the FSFE leadership to use venues like this list to more fully engage with the community, even when this involves encountering dissent.
I have actually experienced FSFE as an organisation that handles dissent in a very constructive manner. On the other hand, I see a fundamental difference between voicing dissent on one side and personal attacks, false claims, and conspiracy theories on the other.
Thanks,
On 03/05/2019 10:46, Reinhard Müller wrote:
Hi, Paul!
Am 02.05.19 um 21:45 schrieb Paul Boddie:
It would obviously have been far more appropriate for Daniel to merely advertise that another discussion venue has been set up and for him to invite those who are interested to sign up for themselves. As far as I know, no such invitation message has been propagated by this mailing list, but I do wonder whether it might have been propagated had it been received.
From my experience with this mailing list (and others hosted by FSFE), I would absolutely have expected such an invitation to have been approved by the list moderators. I see that in the past, two kinds of messages have been rejected:
- Messages that contain offensive language, and
- Messages that violate the privacy of others (e.g. forwarding priate
emails).
I would also encourage the FSFE leadership to use venues like this list to more fully engage with the community, even when this involves encountering dissent.
I agree with this. if even small initiatives have the backing of people like the FSFE then that is a good thing.
Paul
Hi Paul,
Thank you very much for your well thought out email (as always). I agree with you that we need to resolve this, but I have no idea how.
Daniel's grievances with the FSFE are largely based on what I would call a misunderstanding. Yet he reacted angrily to any attempt of clarification. He repeatedly told others what work they needed to do, but was never willing to participate himself. He told us we didn't engage with him in person when we had the chance and when some of us responded by telling him he hadn't even stopped by to say hello to anyone at events that we had hoped we could talk, he called those people bullies.
He repeatedly makes claims that he must know are not true, both about what he claims is going on within the FSFE and, more recently about who is in charge of unsubscribing people from his mailing list.
The problem with the whole thing is that when he lies about things, he does not mind publishing private information or redacting it in a misleading way. He also uses private information out of context to support false claims. When we respond to it, we stick to the rules, so we do not publish his countless hostile exchanges with the GA and we certainly do not publish more private information to refute his false statements.
If you're interested, perhaps have a look at the Debian mailing lists. There is more of a public record of bad behavior there and Daniel's mails to those public lists are very similar to what we received on internal lists.
I tried for a long time, but I don't know how to get through to Daniel and I have run out of new ideas to try. I thought he was nice and reasonable based on meeting him in person and based on his writing at the time, but he appears to have gone on a rampage and I have no way of communicating with him anymore. I regret that very much.
Happy hacking! Florian
Hi,
Is there a rival mailing list or a rival organization too? What is https://fsfellowship.eu/?
-- nnvc
Hi Novica,
On May 3, 2019 11:49:49 AM EDT, Novica Nakov nnovica@gmail.com wrote:
What is https://fsfellowship.eu/?
That is a very good question. I would urge Daniel Pocock, the webmaster, webhoster and ISP of that website to answer that question. It appears that he wants to receive funds of about 200,000 Euros so I would also ask him how he wants to handle taxes on those funds, how he wants to manage them exactly and so on.
Happy hacking! Florian
Hi Paul,
Am Donnerstag 02 Mai 2019 21:45:40 schrieb Paul Boddie:
I would also encourage the FSFE leadership to use venues like this list to more fully engage with the community, even when this involves encountering dissent.
doing a rough count on my personal archive which starts 2016: There are about 1500 posts in this discussion list and I count about 350 from people that are in the main e.V. which is the highst official organ in the FSFE. So I'll estimate 20% of posts here from the "leadership".
Personally I've encountered some criticism and I experience FSFE very open to finding ways of how to improve. To me some criticism was not constructive. Thus I think that FSFE must limit its time to deal with criticism that is repeating or non-constructive. We certainly have to respond to it from time to time so that others know that loud voices may not be right (as like in other part of the public life) and point to the information we already publish.
Also we shall spend more time on the topics were we can advance Free Software in society according to our constitution. Our newsletters and other articles are full of hints that we need to spread and explain to more people. I believe that most our supporters are supporting us because FSFE is pragmatic about what we can do (and this includes limiting the energy spending on "internal politics").
To make an example: I found some of your articles on mobile computing with Free Software helpful, we could see if we collect information about this more systematically. To include new "fair" approaches like the Shift-phones or LineageOS-MicroG on used phones. If some folks are interested in this a group of volunteers within FSFE can do a lot of useful things.
Best Regards, Bernhard
On Monday 6. May 2019 10.27.57 Bernhard E. Reiter wrote:
Hi Paul,
Am Donnerstag 02 Mai 2019 21:45:40 schrieb Paul Boddie:
I would also encourage the FSFE leadership to use venues like this list to more fully engage with the community, even when this involves encountering dissent.
doing a rough count on my personal archive which starts 2016: There are about 1500 posts in this discussion list and I count about 350 from people that are in the main e.V. which is the highst official organ in the FSFE. So I'll estimate 20% of posts here from the "leadership".
I can imagine that many of these posts are just distributing information that is not really meant to be discussed, like announcements or newsletters. So, the involvement of the leadership in discussions may be somewhat less than that.
[...]
Also we shall spend more time on the topics were we can advance Free Software in society according to our constitution. Our newsletters and other articles are full of hints that we need to spread and explain to more people. I believe that most our supporters are supporting us because FSFE is pragmatic about what we can do (and this includes limiting the energy spending on "internal politics").
I appreciate the newsletter, and it is interesting to see that there are plenty of things happening for it to report, but I really miss a sense of strategic purpose or direction. The most recent newsletter has a "Get Active" section, which should be welcomed, but there arguably isn't sufficient FSFE- oriented community activity for the suggested activities to be practical, although I imagine that some people will benefit from hearing about them.
To make an example: I found some of your articles on mobile computing with Free Software helpful, we could see if we collect information about this more systematically. To include new "fair" approaches like the Shift-phones or LineageOS-MicroG on used phones. If some folks are interested in this a group of volunteers within FSFE can do a lot of useful things.
Those articles were written by my brother, not me. The attribution has apparently been corrected in the Web version of the newsletter, but in my correspondence with the FSFE where I requested the correction, we also entered a discussion about mobile computing and where the FSFE could be more strategic.
I think I often make the point that advocacy has its place in encouraging Free Software adoption, but there also has to be viable Free Software to be adopted. Waiting for people to make Free Software solutions so that they may be promoted is a rather market-focused or consumerist way of working. That may work out fairly well for some things, but it rather fails for many others.
Free Software mobile solutions are a challenging area, not least because there needs to be software development at several levels. A practical user interface must be provided, which has been a particular challenge over the years, compounded further by rather impractical and bizarre decisions taken by the more established Free Software desktop projects whose code ends up being used.
Low-level software must be designed and implemented, with all the challenges of writing drivers for the perpetually moving target that is Linux (most commonly) combined with the usual matter of reconciling vendor documentation (if available) with reality. The "middleware" that plumbs everything together must be designed and implemented having had only rare outings in actual products, meaning that its maturity might not be so great.
And when one considers the actual hardware, if one considers that just waiting around for the software to come together is impractical, then given that hardware engineering also comes with unavoidable expenditure to even have anything to show at all, it becomes obvious that waiting around for the hardware to appear is going to be even less rewarding. Waiting for something approaching a complete solution to advocate is therefore likely to be very frustrating indeed.
Of course, there are still initiatives involving mobile hardware and software, but apart from those attempting to do it all themselves (and risking a suboptimal result), they arguably lack the support to be able to benefit from each other. The Replicant developers, for instance, would presumably benefit from a genuinely open device being developed. Would-be hardware makers would benefit from a version of Replicant (or something else) for their hardware.
But without sustained support for any collaboration, it is almost easier, particularly for the software developers, to look for opportunities elsewhere. People see new phones coming out all the time and hope that there is a quick fix to be had: that everything will line up just fine and that Replicant, or LineageOS, or whatever will just work miraculously, that the need to focus on hardware will disappear.
We are at the point where, unlike with desktop computers, we cannot simply wait for "the market" to solve the problems facing Free Software on mobile devices. Had a similar situation occurred with desktop computing, the FSFE would have been limited to "Free Your Windows" campaigns.
Advocating that people buy an ancient Galaxy device that was presumably intercepted on its journey to being scrapped or sent to landfill, "while stocks last", is not a sustainable situation over time. And Free Software should be all about sustainability. This is where the FSFE and other organisations lack apparent strategic direction.
Paul
Hi Paul
Thanks for your mail, which raised some points that are very close to what I myself have been thinking for some time now, albeit I believe with a rather different backstory.
On 5/6/19 5:39 PM, Paul Boddie wrote:
[..]
I think I often make the point that advocacy has its place in encouraging Free Software adoption, but there also has to be viable Free Software to be adopted. Waiting for people to make Free Software solutions so that they may be promoted is a rather market-focused or consumerist way of working. That may work out fairly well for some things, but it rather fails for many others.
Free Software mobile solutions are a challenging area, not least because there needs to be software development at several levels. A practical user interface must be provided, which has been a particular challenge over the years, compounded further by rather impractical and bizarre decisions taken by the more established Free Software desktop projects whose code ends up being used.
Low-level software must be designed and implemented, with all the challenges of writing drivers for the perpetually moving target that is Linux (most commonly) combined with the usual matter of reconciling vendor documentation (if available) with reality. The "middleware" that plumbs everything together must be designed and implemented having had only rare outings in actual products, meaning that its maturity might not be so great.
This! Incidentally, today I attended a talk with RMS in Aalborg, here in Denmark. In the question time, I asked him if it wasn't a contradiction that he's talking a lot about free software as a thing for communities of people - also non-virtual - but that if you look at software for self-organizing communities, there's not a lot of it, and it's not without its problems; what there's *really* a lot of in the ecosystem is programming tools, with a disproportionate share funded by companies like Google and Facebook who may produce a lot of free software but aren't really friends of software freedom.
RMS answered that that's because that's what people are interested in; the FSF might want to make more software for ordinary people, but it doesn't really have the funding for such a thing, whereas the people who are active - i.e., to a wide extent those who *do* have funding - are making a lot of the infrastructure components and programming tools that I actually love to work with, but don't at the end of the day do a lot for the empowerment of more ordinary (less technical) communities.
So it's the same point as you make: One reason for the lack of adoption of free software may be a lack of awareness, but it's also to a wide extent a lack of *actual software* to fill people's needs. And this is indeed especially true of mobile devices, where people are depending on proprietary apps that often work well, but at the cost of freedom and privacy.
In the years I've been in contact with the FSFE, the organization has mainly been focusing on campaigns as well as on legal matters - patents and other, indeed very important, stuff.
But maybe the FSFE should, if it were possible, consider producing and funding free software itself, the way the FSF has been funding and spearheading the GNU project. An idea could be trying to create the necessary infrastructure for truly free mobile phones, to follow Paul's thoughts here.
This depends, of course, on the available budget, and development efforts are not cheap; however, I think an organization like the FSFE could make a real difference here. As with the GNU project, the desire to run valuable free software projects with (say) two to three paid developers and a community organizer to coordinate volunteers might attract more contributions by itself.
By this proposal, of course, I may be re-raising a point that has been discussed many times before and been decided against for good reasons, but Paul is right: In crucial areas, software freedom needs actual software more than advocacy; and "the market" won't solve this, because the large players in the mobile area simply have no interest in Freedom - and so, using some of the organization's funding to actually create this software could go a long way.
As someone who makes their living writing software, I'm all too conscious of financial limitations and used to be responsible about budgets, but within (once again, say) the mobile area it might be possible to start out with achievable goals in terms of usability and impact and take it "stepwise".
Best Carsten
Am Montag 06 Mai 2019 21:18:44 schrieb Carsten Agger:
But maybe the FSFE should, if it were possible, consider producing and funding free software itself, the way the FSF has been funding and spearheading the GNU project.
The GNU project was started in different times. To me it has reached its goals and should have been called concluded for good. (See comments to my article [1]).
FSFE did consider doing software development or running infrastructure, we even did something like this on a small scale in the past. However each times the limits were visible. It just does not work, as software development and innovation is not an expertise you can just buy. In addition FSFE would get into competition with many other good organisations (companies and others). That would not be a healthy separation of work.
This probably means more explanations, I am sure I've written a lot of stuff about this on mailinglists in the recent 18 years. Overall this is not just the FSFE: Centralized software development has a number of hard drawbacks.
Best Regards, Bernhard
[1] https://blogs.fsfe.org/bernhard/2012/03/lets-end-all-free-software-projects-...
On 5/8/19 9:12 AM, Bernhard E. Reiter wrote:
The GNU project was started in different times. To me it has reached its goals and should have been called concluded for good. (See comments to my article [1]).
It's my understanding that GNU considers itself to be a project for the creation and maintenance of a free operating system called GNU. As such, it is upstream to a lot of related GNU/Linux distributions, such as Debian, Fedora, etc.
And, again as such, it's hardly ended. There's still a need for someone to take ownership over and maintain the huge number of packages that constitute the GNU part of GNU/Linux. Also, I believe the struggle to have a free operating system is an ongoing one, as there's also forces who want to undermine the access to a free OS (giving us, e.g., all the proprietary Android flavors).
FSFE did consider doing software development or running infrastructure, we even did something like this on a small scale in the past. However each times the limits were visible. It just does not work, as software development and innovation is not an expertise you can just buy.
As someone who develops free software (and only free software) for a living, I'd like to qualify that observation. High-level competence in software development can indeed be difficult to find, but with access to a very interested, higly technical and also very idealistic community, the FSFE should be in a unique position with regards to access to highly talented professionals.
And on the other hand, in a pragmatic world, software development *is* something you hire. I know that many free software projects have a high level of volunteer participation, but high quality software is generally not made by volunteers. In order to really get the products over the usability and quality threshold, you need the kind of sustained effort that requires funding. Because even though programming and all sorts of tweaking or hacking may be a fun activity for many people, software development as a discipline is generally not about fun - it's work, because there's so much that needs to fall in place once you're done with the funny parts.
Thus, if software development is not "bought" by NGOs like the FSFE, it will be "bought" by proprietary software companies like Google or Microsoft - because it will almost always be paid for.
Now, the thing about developing free software for clients, as my company does, is that we're very focused on writing software that served the needs of these specific clients, as efficiently as possible. In the process, we build many things that can be reused by other clients or in future projects, thus helping our clients or other free software businesses deliver things faster and cheaper, but our main focus is that: Fulfilling the needs of our clients.
If organizations like the FSFE or the FSF were to produce free software, the situation would be the same - but the "client" would be the strategic necessities of the free software movement, filling the current gaps and clearing away hindrances for widespread adoption e.g. of free mobile devices. I think it makes sense.
In addition FSFE would get into competition with many other good organisations (companies and others). That would not be a healthy separation of work.
Like I said, the companies would be motivated by their clients' needs (small companies like their own) or their bottom line (Google), and while a company may be uncompromising about never doing anything proprietary, the focus is not improving free software *as such*. As such, the FSFE would not *compete* against e.g. Google or us, it would *supplement* and contribute to the ecosystem. I think that would be very healthy indeed.
This probably means more explanations, I am sure I've written a lot of stuff about this on mailinglists in the recent 18 years. Overall this is not just the FSFE: Centralized software development has a number of hard drawbacks.
How would a small organization as the FSFE getting involved in software development be any *more* centralized that what's currently going on, with very many projects being funded by really big players?
I do realize, however, that such a thing would require funding. For a start, however, it wouldn't have to be all that expensive. It's my understanding that the FSFE often hires young people from law and political science backgrounds - who are passionate about free software - as interns to help with the organizational work. Why not do something similar for computer science backgrounds? The passion alone would ensure passionate people working on it, as free software jobs are not easy to find.
Best Carsten
Am Mittwoch 08 Mai 2019 11:41:56 schrieb Carsten Agger:
To me it has reached its goals and should have been called concluded for good. (See comments to my article [1]).
I believe the struggle to have a free operating system is an ongoing on
[1]
https://blogs.fsfe.org/bernhard/2012/03/lets-end-all-free-software-projects-...
"I believe GNU turned into an initiative at some point, to the frustration of some GNU Hackers itself. While the fight for freedom is a neverending one, I believe the GNU Project should have celebrated its successful end some years ago!"
The question in relation to your post is: What are the precise goals of the GNU "initiativ" (my terminology, explained in [1]) and how can they be measured and reached? What is having a "free operating system"?
One that is is "available", or is "easily" availble, what does "easy" mean?
Best Regards, Bernhard
On 5/8/19 12:55 PM, Bernhard E. Reiter wrote:
The question in relation to your post is: What are the precise goals of the GNU "initiativ" (my terminology, explained in [1]) and how can they be measured and reached? What is having a "free operating system"?
One that is is "available", or is "easily" availble, what does "easy" mean?
As I wrote, GNU constitutes, as I see it, the components of a free operating system which is upstream to a lot of other great projects including, e.g., Debian.
So I suppose GNU is an "initiative", in your sense, in the same sense as Debian is - and it's "finished" in the same sense.
But that means that it's *not* finished, since OSs need to be maintained to stay alive.
As for the ultimate goals of something like the GNU project I can't speak for them, but I'd say a reasonable goal would be that it should be realistically feasible for *everybody* to choose to use only free software, on all kinds of software-equipped devices that people normally use.
Which would mean at least computers and mobile devices. If we look at computers, we're not quite there - people can, most of the time, opt to use free software in their private lives, but will often be forced to use proprietary software at work.
As for mobile devices, we're not there *at all*. It's definitely not realistically feasible for everybody to acquire devices with a free OS and run only free apps. That's part of the point Paul raised: We don't just need awareness about software freedom, we need actual software for people to use.
Best Carsten
Am Mittwoch 08 Mai 2019 14:41:59 schrieb Carsten Agger:
I'd say a reasonable goal would be that it should be realistically feasible for *everybody* to choose to use only free software, on all kinds of software-equipped devices that people normally use.
The challenge is that "realistically feasible" is different for everyone and each situation. This is why FSFE's approach is to make sure that people and organisation can take the next step from where they are.
So we cannot label a certain solution as 100% or bad as this is never the case, there is almost always a next step. And for some the next step is too hard for others it is feasible. Our practical advise to people should take this into account. This is why we produce informantion on many levels and help people to educate themselfs and see the possibilities.
Which would mean at least computers and mobile devices. If we look at computers, we're not quite there - people can, most of the time, opt to use free software in their private lives, but will often be forced to use proprietary software at work.
Even with the private life it can be very difficult (think official government interfaces or apps that have a huge advantage like flea markets or communication facilities).
For the work place: You could change the job where you do not need to work with computer or are allowed to only use Free Software.
As for mobile devices, we're not there *at all*. It's definitely not realistically feasible for everybody to acquire devices with a free OS and run only free apps.
Sure everybody could (in principle). It could be easier, but where to start? You can buy mobile phones, desktop and notebook computers that only come with Free Software (maybe make a concession for drivers).
That's part of the point Paul raised: We don't just need awareness about software freedom, we need actual software for people to use.
Agreed, the question is: How to get there? Just starting a development of a component won't help. We had to know: Which component? And then: what is it what people want? (As people cannot say, unless they have experiened the solution.)
I am open for ideas how to get there, and the current strategy of FSFE is to enable developments that are necessary for this to happen. This can be adapted and discussed, but it is a strategy and it works for the resources we have (and grows them).
Best Regards, Bernhard
On Friday 10. May 2019 10.11.40 Bernhard E. Reiter wrote:
Am Mittwoch 08 Mai 2019 14:41:59 schrieb Carsten Agger:
As for mobile devices, we're not there *at all*. It's definitely not realistically feasible for everybody to acquire devices with a free OS and run only free apps.
Sure everybody could (in principle). It could be easier, but where to start? You can buy mobile phones, desktop and notebook computers that only come with Free Software (maybe make a concession for drivers).
Right now, it is just not feasible (if not completely impossible) to go and buy a mobile phone running only Free Software, even if one tolerates things like proprietary firmware running on various parts of the hardware. Niche purchasing options (as mentioned below and previously) only make this assertion slightly less true.
Even if there is some Android-based phone out there that can actually be purchased and really does run only Free Software, it is probably not feasible (or even technically possible) for the customer to verify the status of the software and/or to deploy a clean build of the software that does originate from genuine Free Software sources.
In my survey of currently available devices that I found myself doing because I actually needed a new phone, I found myself entering the labyrinth that many others have probably encountered before, needing to consider issues like whether source code is conveniently obtained, what steps need to be taken to unlock the bootloader, whether the manufacturers are awkward about such things, what the different operating system distributions support. And so on.
In the end, even dedicated Free Software advocates are likely to just give up, buy something, and use the device subject to whatever terms and conditions are imposed on them just by powering it on. So, too bad that everyone has to agree to Google's terms - whatever they are, given that just viewing them requires the user to enable data and let the device have its way with the network - just to have a functioning mobile phone. And, of course, the device manufacturer also has some additional terms and conditions that they would like you to agree to.
If all of this isn't some kind of defeat for Free Software, then I don't know what is. That said, there are evidently sections of the Free Software community who live their lives on Facebook and Twitter, so what do I know?
That's part of the point Paul raised: We don't just need awareness about software freedom, we need actual software for people to use.
Agreed, the question is: How to get there?
So the following reminded me about this discussion:
"The FSFE urges users to use Free Software operating systems and applications on their computing devices. With proprietary software, they are on the receiving end only and vendors may deny them access to crucial security updates if the vendor or a government changes its strategy. Free Software enables control of technology, and the more important that technology becomes in our daily lives, the more relevant Free Software becomes for users. For Android, the FSFE helps users to regain more control with its Free Your Android initiative."
https://fsfe.org/news/2019/news-20190520-01.en.html
Well, good luck with that, FSFE! Free Your Android is largely a matter of closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. Regaining more control, as opposed to actually having control, is as good as it gets.
If it were possible to do what people used to do (and maybe still do) with other forms of computers, then you could power up a phone and boot straight into a Free Software installer, completely ignoring the preloaded proprietary software. But even if this were possible with a phone, the lack of appropriate Free Software support makes this a non-starter.
Even better would be the possibility of getting a phone with completely Free Software on it, but those old/refurbished Samsung models seem to be the only option. That isn't a sustainable solution, as I may have explained already.
There are a handful of devices that may ultimately make it to market that supposedly run Free Software. Even ignoring the unfavourable pricing of most of these, I have relatively little confidence in very many of them offering a convincing final product: there is still far too much "shopping around" by Free Software initiatives that fancy the idea that their software will "power" a Free Software phone.
Maybe the role of the FSFE is to go beyond advocacy and help knock some stubborn heads together, to eliminate people's parochial and needlessly competitive attitudes, to actually persuade people to commit to realising an actual vision in a genuinely serious way, perhaps to secure resources to allow this to happen. Urging people to use Free Software products that don't exist just won't do the job.
Because it is already a defeat that twenty years after installing a Free Software distribution on some general-purpose hardware and throwing proprietary software overboard, I find myself confronted with EULAs and other such nonsense on a new purchase, knowing that this was as close to the best I could achieve in the situation I was in.
Paul
Am Freitag 14 Juni 2019 17:39:18 schrieb Paul Boddie:
In the end, even dedicated Free Software advocates are likely to just give up, buy something, and use the device subject to whatever terms and conditions are imposed on them just by powering it on.
It makes sense to have a device that can just be turned on. And it makes sense for it to use as much Free Software as possible. More companies will provide this, if more people would buy it. So each decision which is taken in the direction of software freedom get us one step further. And each additional choice is helpful, too.
If all of this isn't some kind of defeat for Free Software, then I don't know what is.
To me this means new challenger, with more IT solutions permeating life and younger people that still have to make their experiences on grander things. (In Germany and some parts of Europe, many childrens and teenagers have just discovered that they can actually make a political difference by going to a demonstrations in the Friday4Future topic.)
Android success was only possible with Free Software. Personally I consider this progress, though of course we want more.
"For Android, the FSFE helps users to regain more control with its Free Your Android initiative."
Well, good luck with that, FSFE! Free Your Android is largely a matter of closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. Regaining more control, as opposed to actually having control, is as good as it gets.
Personally I've met non-IT-people considering other software on their phone and seen articles in special topic magazines and general publications that were picking this up. FSFE has helped to create another choice. Maybe that is just a small step that some people are taking, but even a demonstration that it is possible was valuable.
Even better would be the possibility of getting a phone with completely Free Software on it, but those old/refurbished Samsung models seem to be the only option.
The discussion already mentioned real live options like the Shiftphone and upcoming ones like the Cosmo and the libre purism. Yes, this coming with an extra price tag, but this is understandable as long as they are produced in smaller numbers. I am grateful for each additional choice people get to have more Free Software on their phone. F-droid for apps is getting better and offering more. I've hard of people that do LineageMicro-G and F-Droid only (Here is a popular blog article series (in German) to explain how to take back control on your phone, I've learned quite a lot from this which made it much easier for me to run Free Software on mobile devices: https://www.kuketz-blog.de/f-droid-freie-und-quelloffene-apps-take-back-cont... )
Maybe the role of the FSFE is to go beyond advocacy
In my view FSFE is doing a lot: We bring people together, we educate, we influence public policies, we help commercial and non-commercial parties to make offers with Free Software. We stay critically alert on public procurements to ensure that Free Software is getting the priority it should... Directly becoming a software or hardware-vendor would be less effective as far as I have experienced. (And we used to even be a small vendor for hardware crypto tokens, so we do have a little, little bit of experience. ;) )
Remember our router activities, now people can get the passwords for the internet connection to buy their own routers, so Free Software friendly router vendors stay in business there.
Seriously there are many more tasks ahead, and we can only do what the contributions of volunteers and supporters allow. This means looking for opportunities as well where a little action can make a large difference. Look at our Public Money Public Code campain, when its positive reception leads to ore purchases with Free Software as a strong plus for vendors we will get more vendors with Free Software friendly products. I hope we can do more of this.
Regards, Bernhard
On Wednesday 8. May 2019 11.41.56 Carsten Agger wrote:
On 5/8/19 9:12 AM, Bernhard E. Reiter wrote:
The GNU project was started in different times. To me it has reached its goals and should have been called concluded for good. (See comments to my article [1]).
It's my understanding that GNU considers itself to be a project for the creation and maintenance of a free operating system called GNU. As such, it is upstream to a lot of related GNU/Linux distributions, such as Debian, Fedora, etc.
And, again as such, it's hardly ended. There's still a need for someone to take ownership over and maintain the huge number of packages that constitute the GNU part of GNU/Linux. Also, I believe the struggle to have a free operating system is an ongoing one, as there's also forces who want to undermine the access to a free OS (giving us, e.g., all the proprietary Android flavors).
As I noted in another message just now, the virtues of persistence and vigilance are required in this area as in many others. Noting that the Linux kernel is out there and that there are a bunch of GNU packages which can work with it doesn't mean that the job is done and everyone can retire happy and/or wealthy. (Well, the top-tier of Linux kernel development could, I guess.)
Previously, I may have described an enquiry I made some time ago to the Hurd- on-L4 mailing list. Being generally interested in different operating system architectures, I had hoped to be engaged in enthusiastic discussion by a group of people who hadn't had much to discuss for some time. Instead, someone felt that they had to go and ask Richard Stallman whether people should be working on the Hurd or not, to which the reply was that GNU/Linux already exists and that there are other things that the FSF evidently cannot persuade people to work on.
The consequence of this is not that those "other things" get all the attention. Although I like to think that I can turn my attention to many different things, enthusiasm and motivation play a role. So, for the example given of CAD software, faced with the choice of continuing to look at operating system technologies or "digging deep" to tackle writing "a replacement" for some existing CAD solution, with no funding available for either, I would rather keep doing what I personally want to be doing.
(If I were someone involved with the FSF, I would find it depressing that the FSF or GNU, or whoever, isn't interested in pursuing new technological avenues. For a long time, proprietary software apologists claimed that Free Software was merely copying existing products, never mind that *people* are responsible for creating these things, and they can make whichever licensing choice they like. But what such a lack of interest means is that other kinds of organisations are exploring new areas and opportunities, leaving the Free Software realm to belatedly react to such exploration afterwards.)
And the point about "the struggle" is absolutely correct. Not only are there forces at work who wish to dilute GNU/Linux with proprietary software, but the viability of the Linux kernel ecosystem should be reviewed with continual vigilance. Considerable effort is needed to "upstream" code so that the development process may hopefully carry it along before its inevitable ejection. The social dynamics involved can be rather unpleasant, as anyone who has scratched the surface of kernel development can attest. And end-users still seem to end up with obsolete software on abandoned hardware.
(One might argue that the kernel development project only survives thanks to the sheer volume of manual effort involved and some rather fortuitous technological circumstances. It somehow survives despite contradicting all those things that are taught about software engineering, and yet it has the arrogance to believe that its good fortune disproves those things.)
There is absolutely a need for a diversity of solutions and directions. And if we needed another example where calling a victory and failing to remain vigilant has punished Free Software, we could very well consider various groupware projects with which Bernhard has had familiarity in the past. Where we once saw Free Software being deployed widely and with fanfare, within a decade we then had people struggling to justify the procurement of Free Software solutions, even those descended in some way from the ones that supposedly "solved" the original problems.
Paul
Hi Bernhard,
"Bernhard E. Reiter" bernhard@fsfe.org writes:
The GNU project was started in different times. To me it has reached its goals and should have been called concluded for good.
GNU has not ended. See https://www.gnu.org for what's going on.
Thanks,
On 08/05/2019 10:12, Bernhard E. Reiter wrote:
This probably means more explanations, I am sure I've written a lot of stuff about this on mailinglists in the recent 18 years. Overall this is not just the FSFE: Centralized software development has a number of hard drawbacks.
I don't see how software development funded and organized by non-profits is centralized, especially compared to software development by the "market" (in some cases behind closed doors).
~nikos
Hi Carsten,
Carsten Agger agger@modspil.dk writes:
But maybe the FSFE should, if it were possible, consider producing and funding free software itself, the way the FSF has been funding and spearheading the GNU project.
Agreed. It would balance the lobbying activities of the FSFE in a sane way.
It is always easier to be right than to convince people.
You got better at convincing them when you understand their problems. Developing free software is a good way to understand the problems of both free software developers and consumers.
2 cts,
Hi Paul,
Op 06-05-19 om 17:39 schreef Paul Boddie:
But without sustained support for any collaboration, it is almost easier, particularly for the software developers, to look for opportunities elsewhere. People see new phones coming out all the time and hope that there is a quick fix to be had: that everything will line up just fine and that Replicant, or LineageOS, or whatever will just work miraculously, that the need to focus on hardware will disappear.
We are at the point where, unlike with desktop computers, we cannot simply wait for "the market" to solve the problems facing Free Software on mobile devices. Had a similar situation occurred with desktop computing, the FSFE would have been limited to "Free Your Windows" campaigns.
Advocating that people buy an ancient Galaxy device that was presumably intercepted on its journey to being scrapped or sent to landfill, "while stocks last", is not a sustainable situation over time. And Free Software should be all about sustainability. This is where the FSFE and other organisations lack apparent strategic direction.
I'm thankfull that the community has provided Replicant, which I use daily.
Could Samsung create legal and/or technical problems if the Replicant project would become "too succesfull"?
Best regards,
Am Montag 06 Mai 2019 17:39:09 schrieb Paul Boddie: [..]
While I agree that newsletter, discussion involvement and communication can be improved, I also think that it is already at school grade B (British System). So it it is happening, functioning and it leads to distribution of information and opinion building. Anybody can judge this for themselfs, but my point is that I do not want a list where a constructive, respectful discussion is possible. This is not the only place where discussions happen and if we voice criticism it should be kept in perspectice.
Let me focus on the mobile strategy questions you raise:
On Monday 6. May 2019 10.27.57 Bernhard E. Reiter wrote:
To make an example: I found some of your articles on mobile computing with Free Software helpful, we could see if we collect information about this more systematically. To include new "fair" approaches like the Shift-phones or LineageOS-MicroG on used phones. If some folks are interested in this a group of volunteers within FSFE can do a lot of useful things.
Those articles were written by my brother, not me.
Actually I am referring to the history section "For the Long Term" of https://blogs.fsfe.org/pboddie/?p=2386 which I believe was written by yourself.
The writeup is interesting and may help to shape a better tactis and strategy if it picks up some more initiatives like * https://www.shiftphones.com/en/ * https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/ * The advances with chipset for MediaTek and other main SOC producers * SailfishOS(X)
I think I often make the point that advocacy has its place in encouraging Free Software adoption, but there also has to be viable Free Software to be adopted.
Agreed. Additionally, financial means are needed for developing Free Software solutions offering, especially if they need more investment to complete user experience. So it can be considered a system where if you get more money into procurement of Free Software, you'll end up having more Free Software. And if you have more Free Software solutions, more people will "buy" into it.
We are at the point where, unlike with desktop computers, we cannot simply wait for "the market" to solve the problems facing Free Software on mobile devices.
This is why we don't just wait for "the market", we have to enable it. But for all actions of FSFE, the important point is that they can only be effective if we have volunteers working on it. So unlesss there are volunteers it is hard to do something. Most of these topics need to be followed up over many years and our strategy is to first keep open possibilities or prevent major problems for initiatives. One example: The fight against software patents. Another one: the push towards open standards (which enable competition which means people can still use a different software or hardware to participate in private or public processes).
Advocating that people buy an ancient Galaxy device that was presumably intercepted on its journey to being scrapped or sent to landfill, "while stocks last", is not a sustainable situation over time. And Free Software should be all about sustainability. This is where the FSFE and other organisations lack apparent strategic direction.
To me a strategy is visible, but I also hope we get more people to work on it to make it more explicit. (As said above our resources are limited.)
Best Regards, Bernhard
Am Mittwoch 08 Mai 2019 09:03:48 schrieb Bernhard E. Reiter:
my point is that I do not want a list where a constructive, respectful discussion is possible.
.. that I want a list where constructive and respectul discussion is possible.
[This is what I've meant to write, but managed to change part of the phrasing into being positive without updating the other part. Sorry for the noise.]
Bernhard
On Wednesday 8. May 2019 09.03.48 Bernhard E. Reiter wrote:
Actually I am referring to the history section "For the Long Term" of https://blogs.fsfe.org/pboddie/?p=2386 which I believe was written by yourself.
Yes, this was written by me. However, I still wanted to clarify that a lot of output on this topic that was thought to be mine was actually my brother's. For an insight into the specifics of developing for Android, I can recommend various articles of his, such as...
"Publishing Applications via F-Droid" http://www.boddie.org.uk/david/www-repo/Personal/Updates/2018/2018-11-11.htm...
"The Android Learning Curve" http://www.boddie.org.uk/david/www-repo/Personal/Updates/2016/2016-06-21.htm...
"Language Reflections" http://www.boddie.org.uk/david/www-repo/Personal/Updates/2016/2016-06-08.htm...
The writeup is interesting and may help to shape a better tactis and strategy if it picks up some more initiatives like
You may have to provide a little more context about this for those of us who do not readily read German and who are unfamiliar with this initiative. (Since various correspondents of mine who are native German speakers never mentioned this initiative, I feel that the origins of the initiative are not the principal obstacle hindering any wider awareness of it.)
For instance, with an emphasis on conflict mineral avoidance, how does it differ from Fairphone? And has the initiative learned the lessons that Fairphone needed to learn?
- https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/
- The advances with chipset for MediaTek and other main SOC producers
- SailfishOS(X)
I actually posted a summary of visible and/or viable projects on the Tinkerphones mailing list a while ago:
http://lists.goldelico.com/pipermail/community/2019-February/001964.html
That thread brought up some other projects, too. As far as Sailfish is concerned, I haven't seen any indication of it being completely Free Software. I know that there is an enthusiastic community who would pretty much buy anything with Sailfish on it, but to me it rather seems like a continuation of aspects of Nokia's dubious policies with regards to keeping some software proprietary for "competitive advantage".
Nor, for that matter, have I seen indications of MediaTek SoCs being any better than they were for supporting completely Free Software at the system level, with original design manufacturers wedded to MediaTek being notorious for throwing potentially licence-violating bundles of code over the wall to hapless phone vendors. Interestingly, there are MIPS-based MediaTek products, presumably originating from companies acquired by MediaTek, which do seem to be more friendly to Free Software.
Consequently, initiatives wanting to have any hope of shipping entirely Free Software seem to have coalesced around the iMX family of SoCs, including the Purism Librem 5 and the Necunos NC_1, with other initiatives like Neo900 stating that this would be the viable choice if starting again today. A lot of this is probably due to Freescale's corporate culture.
[...]
This is why we don't just wait for "the market", we have to enable it. But for all actions of FSFE, the important point is that they can only be effective if we have volunteers working on it. So unlesss there are volunteers it is hard to do something. Most of these topics need to be followed up over many years and our strategy is to first keep open possibilities or prevent major problems for initiatives. One example: The fight against software patents. Another one: the push towards open standards (which enable competition which means people can still use a different software or hardware to participate in private or public processes).
The fight against software patents has been largely successful, but it illustrates that vigilance and persistence must be elements of any long-term strategy. In that case, persistence meant countering apologists who employed lazy cultural and economic arguments about cultivating "knowledge economy" jobs where patents were supposedly needed. Eventually, such people were no longer able to make their case without being called out, and they could therefore no longer rely on support from ignorant and easily-pleased audiences.
But vigilance is required to notice the areas of conflict that emerge when easier monopolisation opportunities are sought, so it should be worth mentioning that machine learning techniques have become a hot area for patenting. Some might see this as a relief (that "traditional" software is no longer targeted by patent opportunism), but knowing that contagion is always a risk (that software might once again be targeted) and having some kind of solidarity with practitioners in such closely-related fields (and even in our own field), we must not be so easily convinced that we have settled any particular argument in our favour.
It is interesting that you raise the topic of interoperability. My own path into involvement with the FSFE was via the FFII whose focus was/is interoperability. But this topic naturally spans several different realms, and this is why it can often seem almost futile to further the cause of open standards and fair procurement. It is not possible to argue for these things without considering things like vested interests, corruption, and political ideology.
This is why the FSFE must be a faithful partner to other organisations who have the same fundamental ethical foundations. An organisation that promotes something like Free Software for more than mere convenience must have something in common with organisations that advocate privacy, uphold public sector transparency, resist corruption, fight climate change, advocate for sustainability, and so on.
The topic of volunteering has come up before and is worth its own treatment. I believe that a survey of Free Software volunteering was conducted a while ago, and I imagine that its findings will be worth examining when they are published.
Paul
Paul,
your posts contain many thoughts. For me to respond in a useful way, I'll try to split up topics. There are lessons to be found in the overall picture of course, but it will depend on the detailed chain of arguments. When exploring some parts first, this is because I feel I can contribute to this part faster now.
Am Mittwoch 08 Mai 2019 15:05:53 schrieb Paul Boddie:
On Wednesday 8. May 2019 09.03.48 Bernhard E. Reiter wrote:
You may have to provide a little more context about this for those of us who do not readily read German and who are unfamiliar with this initiative.
[..]
Best for me could be to collect information somewhere on the current state and history of mobile devices and Free Software. Like a wiki page, which we can update with several people. I think it would be helpful if we can point people to this place and say: if you want to know what is possible with mobile devices and Free Software, go to this place.
I'll see information here and there, because I am doing research for my own needed or for being a consultant for others. But there is no central place I know.
Such an updated state of the art, could be the basis for two things: a) what can I as a person or organisation do, if I want to go to the next step from where I am standing. b) an analysis that if someone wanted to change the situation, what could be done.
Best Regards, Bernhard
Am Mittwoch 08 Mai 2019 15:05:53 schrieb Paul Boddie:
You may have to provide a little more context about this for those of us who do not readily read German and who are unfamiliar with this initiative.
It got on my radar when I was looking for an environment friendly and fairly traded phone as a replacement for an FP1 (Fairphone 1, first generation, 2013) FP1 that is showing its age for someone.
(Since various correspondents of mine who are native German speakers never mentioned this initiative, I feel that the origins of the initiative are not the principal obstacle hindering any wider awareness of it.)
My information come from reading their pages and some reports in German press. They do have Enligsh pages, but I don't know which information is missing from them. If you'll find something in German that you would want to be translated or summarized, let us know (I think there are many German speakers on this list.)
https://de.shiftphones.com/wiki/SHIFT_Story says it started as a crowdfunding project in April 2014 and delivered first phones in February 2015. It seems to be a small family owned and run business near Kassel in Germany, about 7 employees. Their idea is to be fair and environmental friendly.
A first report about their "fairness" was published 2016-11 https://www.shiftphones.com/downloads/SHIFT-report-v9.pdf They claim: * Production in China in small companies (>300 people) * Employees in China get a good/ very good salary (double or triple of what is custom). Have limited working hours. Have health care, food and more. They visited them and work with NGO "TAOS". * They use ceramic micro-capacitors without Tantalum (from "conflict material" Coltan) * They plan to get "fair gold, though just 100g has been used in 30k phones produces until 2016-11. * Thy use fair tin for soldering from (https://fairloetet.de/) * They cooperate with a a number of partners, e.g. https://www.nager-it.de/en * They want recycle and have deposit for all phones, which you get back when you send it back (no matter in what state) for recycling.
For instance, with an emphasis on conflict mineral avoidance, how does it differ from Fairphone?
Firt note that they are much smaller than the Fairphone org, they have a section about their view on them in the above report.
I think their approach is almost the same, in some regards they are not as good, like in the transparency for the delivery chain, in others they are better like the cooperation with well though out initiative for the soldering-tin and NagerIT. Their deposit idea in my opinion is a step forward toward more recycling.
And has the initiative learned the lessons that Fairphone needed to learn?
Seems they were starting almost at the same time (2013/2014). As someone who supported fairphone 1 and fairphone 2 users, I know a lot about the good and bad decisions from Fairphone first hand. I don't about Shiftphone so I don't know. In some things they seem to have been better than Fairphone from the beginning for use cases I was looking for.
I'm slightly sensitive about how you have phrased the question, though, as I believe any organisation has to learn and I consider Fairphone a huge success that has advanced the state of the art significantly.
But back to Shiftphones: Because they are around for a number of years, with a production >30.000 (as claimed in 2016-11) they seem to actually produce working phones.
To the question of how friendly they are towards running your own software: There seem to be a light version that you can get (if you sign up for beta) without Google apps. And recently there is an experimental LineagesOS port for their 5me and 6m models with Mediatek SOCs.) So they are not much better than Fairphone in this regard. A little bit, because their upcoming models will be based on Snapdragon SOCs from Qualcomm which are traditionally more friendly towards Free Software drivers.
My botton line is: With Fairphone currently not having a current model on sale, Shiftphones has interesting offers and certainly helps to push forward ethical phones (environment, fairness, freedom).
Best Regards, Bernhard
On Friday 10. May 2019 09.35.28 Bernhard E. Reiter wrote:
Seems they were starting almost at the same time (2013/2014). As someone who supported fairphone 1 and fairphone 2 users, I know a lot about the good and bad decisions from Fairphone first hand. I don't about Shiftphone so I don't know. In some things they seem to have been better than Fairphone from the beginning for use cases I was looking for.
Thanks for the overview in your previous message. It all sounds rather similar to Fairphone, and it surprises me that they have not managed to attract broader publicity.
I'm slightly sensitive about how you have phrased the question, though, as I believe any organisation has to learn and I consider Fairphone a huge success that has advanced the state of the art significantly.
I have noted previously that my concerns with Fairphone came about because the organisation largely ignored the issues of how software for phones is produced. I seem to remember that they even used a Windows Phone screenshot on the publicity images for their first product.
So this meant that they did a substantial amount of good work dealing with the horrific problems around the mining and sourcing of materials, presumably going to some quite unpleasant places and maybe even having to deal with some rather unpleasant people, and yet a simple e-mail conversation with any number of knowledgeable and even friendly people within Free Software could have alerted them to the sustainability issues with the software they were going to use.
Of course, there is no real comparison in terms of the treatment of the average Free Software developer and people working in factories producing phones or components, let alone those who work in the mining activities that produce the basic materials required. But since software developers are increasingly treated as interchangeable commodities, people are too tempted to regard software procurement like a consumer transaction for a throwaway item, believing that the only differentiation between the people offering to do the work is how much money they are asking to do it.
My understanding (and recollection) is that Fairphone fell into the same "original design manufacturer" trap that lots of people do. Now, most vendors do not care about the lack of longevity of the thing that they have procured: they can always sell or give an unhappy customer the next thing coming out of the factory. But when Free Software initiatives experienced such issues, and when those issues were even publicised (with much embarrassment), the lessons were freely available for the taking.
So, because of a difference in perspective and priorities, it seems that Fairphone fell at the last hurdle, whereas a Free Software initiative would have encountered software sustainability issues at the first hurdle, giving them the opportunity to back up and choose a different approach. Naturally, one could easily criticise initiatives focusing on Free Software that they do not care enough about conflict minerals, which would be a fair point, even though some initiatives have tried to source "responsible" components.
I am actually favourable to Fairphone and their products, even though they might not regard me as acting in such way with what I write, but I have only written what I have because it is so clearly regrettable that an initiative that seeks to make durable, sustainable, low-impact, "fair" products managed to undermine its own work by neglecting a critical component of those products' sustainability and longevity.
Naturally, the whole mobile industry suffers from these issues, too: it is like the Wintel upgrade treadmill turbo-upgraded for the 21st century. As software practitioners, we should be looking to offer real solutions for this. Why shouldn't my next phone be usable, even in a modest sense, for as long as my current one, which is actually fifteen years old?
But back to Shiftphones: Because they are around for a number of years, with a production >30.000 (as claimed in 2016-11) they seem to actually produce working phones.
It must be noted that getting phones made to import and sell is easy enough if you are willing to go with some existing design and relinquish substantial control over what gets produced. Scratch the surface and you will find plenty of companies importing minor brand phones, for instance.
The reasons why people have struggled to make open hardware phones (supportable by Free Software) are most likely to be those related to product- specific design and production, where the people trying to make such phones are outsiders and are not part of the manufacturer ecosystem, with its convenient and cheap access to knowledge and technical resources, and so on. And getting access to the right people to solve problems is difficult given the low volumes and outsider status of such initiatives.
It is not even the case, or not always, that those wishing to make open phones have little or no prior experience with the engineering: it is just that some processes when extracted from a single, all-encompassing entity become costly in terms of time and money. And with potential customers being conditioned to think like simple discount shoppers, they are too easily aghast at the resulting price needed to cover those costs, neglecting the differentiating aspects of the product as they compare it unfavourably to some one-season wonder device from a multinational corporation.
To the question of how friendly they are towards running your own software: There seem to be a light version that you can get (if you sign up for beta) without Google apps. And recently there is an experimental LineagesOS port for their 5me and 6m models with Mediatek SOCs.) So they are not much better than Fairphone in this regard. A little bit, because their upcoming models will be based on Snapdragon SOCs from Qualcomm which are traditionally more friendly towards Free Software drivers.
I had a look at LineageOS recently and was rather frustrated by the fact that a lot of the listed devices do not have current support. Although the LineageOS materials could be much clearer, the initiative cannot really be criticised for what are effectively structural issues with the Android ecosystem.
My botton line is: With Fairphone currently not having a current model on sale, Shiftphones has interesting offers and certainly helps to push forward ethical phones (environment, fairness, freedom).
I was actually surprised in my review of available phones that Fairphone 2 is now no longer available, although factory-refurbished ones can be obtained for a discount. What might have been interesting is if the modular technology had been popularised, shared, standardised, and so on, so that others could have made upgrades and continued the general availability of the product.
Paul
Am Freitag 10 Mai 2019 17:06:40 schrieb Paul Boddie:
it surprises me that they have not managed to attract broader publicity.
Shiftphones seem to focus on Germany (or German speaking companies). It is a significant invest to create text and give support in a second language.
My understanding (and recollection) is that Fairphone fell into the same "original design manufacturer" trap that lots of people do. Now, most vendors do not care about the lack of longevity of the thing that they have procured: they can always sell or give an unhappy customer the next thing coming out of the factory.
In my perception Fairphone aimed for an improvement in longevity of their product and were successful. The Fairphone 2 was produced and on sale for about 30 something month.
a Free Software initiative would have encountered software sustainability issues at the first hurdle, giving them the opportunity to back up and choose a different approach.
When trying to get a product out of the doors, you face a large number of small and larger decisions. First of all, the product has to "work" for the expected usage. Fairphone 1 was good in this regard, but Fairphone 2 a bit less so. Backing up and taking more time may have not been possible, without risking to not have a product at all. Which would have been the worst result. So to me your criticism is too harsh. After all they produced two phones that were significant steps forward.
If we had more manufactures trying to go in the Fairphone direction, it would foster much more Free Software usages on mobile devices. It is fine to point out how they could do better, but I think we should even more applaude them for the advances.
Naturally, the whole mobile industry suffers from these issues, too: it is like the Wintel upgrade treadmill turbo-upgraded for the 21st century. As software practitioners, we should be looking to offer real solutions for this.
I agree, thought we first must understand the real reasons behind fast upgrades. Some customers are very happy about a new model each year and they'll buy it.
Why shouldn't my next phone be usable, even in a modest sense, for as long as my current one, which is actually fifteen years old?
One thing is technical progress, there is 5G coming and at some point you'll may need a phone that uses the standard. Another example there are websites or services that you would want to use, that only run with hardware and software that is newer.
where the people trying to make such phones are outsiders and are not part of the manufacturer ecosystem, with its convenient and cheap access to knowledge and technical resources, and so on. And getting access to the right people to solve problems is difficult given the low volumes and outsider status of such initiatives.
What I've heard from the OpenMoko project and others is that you cannot get the top line of SOCs from manufactures in small numbers. Something like you'll have to buy 10.000 at least and then put the money down up-front. Knownn the right people won't help with that.
I was actually surprised in my review of available phones that Fairphone 2 is now no longer available, although factory-refurbished ones can be obtained for a discount.
This is a recent development (in the last weeks). Probably a good one, a Fairphone 3 is needed for a while now.
What might have been interesting is if the modular technology had been popularised, shared, standardised, and so on, so that others could have made upgrades and continued the general availability of the product.
You know that all this would have meant significant efforts and Fairphone is a small company (in a growth phase, with all the pain coming with it). At least they have shown that it works and there is a market for it (even when small). This is a large archievement.
Best Regards, Bernhard
On Tuesday 14. May 2019 08.52.29 Bernhard E. Reiter wrote:
Am Freitag 10 Mai 2019 17:06:40 schrieb Paul Boddie:
it surprises me that they have not managed to attract broader publicity.
Shiftphones seem to focus on Germany (or German speaking companies). It is a significant invest to create text and give support in a second language.
Agreed. But it still surprises me that a wider audience were not aware of it, not through any efforts of the company targeting other countries and audiences (or not doing so), but simply because word does get around.
My understanding (and recollection) is that Fairphone fell into the same "original design manufacturer" trap that lots of people do. Now, most vendors do not care about the lack of longevity of the thing that they have procured: they can always sell or give an unhappy customer the next thing coming out of the factory.
In my perception Fairphone aimed for an improvement in longevity of their product and were successful. The Fairphone 2 was produced and on sale for about 30 something month.
Fairphone 2 is still supported with software updates, as I understand it. This is obviously a good thing and it may even be a notable thing in the mobile industry and in consumer electronics where the manufacturers have an incentive to sell customers a new model rather than support existing ones.
I was looking at update and source code availability for certain phone manufacturers only yesterday, and despite various practical challenges, it did seem to be possible to get updates for older models from certain manufacturers. For example, bq models seem to have relatively recent source code and firmware updates.
However, the aim should be for indefinite support: that is, support for the software should continue until nobody is practically able or willing to produce updates. Economic factors play a part here, clearly, because if there is continual churn in the code, lots of work is needed to prepare, test and deploy updates. Here, something could very easily be said about software engineering (or lack of it) causing such labour-intensive processes and discouraging sustained support of deployed software.
But other aspects, like a lack of standardisation of the hardware (with a tendency for each new product to be different and special and thus merit a completely new software effort) and proprietary/secretive hardware that only the manufacturer is able to support (with no incentive to do so once newer products are available), undermine or defeat any independent efforts to support software. Despite Free Software being used, end-users are being denied control by selfish interests.
And let us not forget that some manufacturers simply deny end-users the right to exercise the privileges granted in the Free Software licensing used in those manufacturers' products. Such behaviour is an affront to our principles and what organisations like the FSFE stand for, and yet such behaviour was practically excused within the Linux kernel development community, especially in the upper levels of it, because we should supposedly be happy that Free Software is being widely used. Again, what good is Free Software if the end- user never gets all the promised benefits?
a Free Software initiative would have encountered software sustainability issues at the first hurdle, giving them the opportunity to back up and choose a different approach.
When trying to get a product out of the doors, you face a large number of small and larger decisions. First of all, the product has to "work" for the expected usage. Fairphone 1 was good in this regard, but Fairphone 2 a bit less so. Backing up and taking more time may have not been possible, without risking to not have a product at all. Which would have been the worst result. So to me your criticism is too harsh. After all they produced two phones that were significant steps forward.
I think my criticism is harsh, but it demonstrates that Fairphone were not "a Free Software initiative" because they did not give the issue of the software the priority it deserved, at least for the first product. And due to the way software and services are being developed and delivered nowadays, software viability has probably become the primary limit to product longevity (perhaps alongside battery degradation and other "repairability" issues that Fairphone have also confronted, to their credit).
If we had more manufactures trying to go in the Fairphone direction, it would foster much more Free Software usages on mobile devices. It is fine to point out how they could do better, but I think we should even more applaude them for the advances.
Yes, I recognise their achievements. And they have improved with regard to the software, meaning that I look forward to what they produce next.
Naturally, the whole mobile industry suffers from these issues, too: it is like the Wintel upgrade treadmill turbo-upgraded for the 21st century. As software practitioners, we should be looking to offer real solutions for this.
I agree, thought we first must understand the real reasons behind fast upgrades. Some customers are very happy about a new model each year and they'll buy it.
I am sure they are. These are presumably the same apologists for phone manufacturers trying to cut warranty terms where I live: people who openly said that they bought a new phone every six months, that longer warranties would make phones more expensive, and that nobody needed them anyway (presumably because at six months, they would sell their phone to some hapless buyer or fake up some kind of insurance claim).
The problem is that we have to share a planet with idiots like this, with their behaviour validating the destructive and wasteful actions of corporations who are not being held responsible for the consequences of their "need" to make money. With many other technological phenomena, the functional reasons for upgrading diminish over time as everything becomes "good enough". Sadly, in the spirit of the Wintel upgrade treadmill, the need to upgrade is seemingly driven by wasteful software and services.
So, we just have a bunch of different people enabling each other's destructive behaviour while everyone else is made to think that the problem is too complicated to be solved. I don't think any of us with a conscience should allow this situation to persist, particularly as we are fully aware of things that can be components in an eventual solution.
Why shouldn't my next phone be usable, even in a modest sense, for as long as my current one, which is actually fifteen years old?
One thing is technical progress, there is 5G coming and at some point you'll may need a phone that uses the standard. Another example there are websites or services that you would want to use, that only run with hardware and software that is newer.
Well, my current phone is only capable of 2G, and although that may go away in some places - probably the US with its own peculiar heritage - it will probably remain viable for a few more years. But technical progress is not really any justification. As I have noted above and elsewhere, many services do not need even more bandwidth and even more performance.
It is the same mutually destructive reinforcement seen in the prime of the Wintel relationship, where people make elaborate but flawed software to use up the extra performance which then drives hardware development to compensate for things getting slower and slower. This might be great if we were talking about immersive holographic environments or something exotic, but when it comes to putting a few things into text fields, pressing a button, and seeing a list of things to buy, it just drives obsolescence and waste.
where the people trying to make such phones are outsiders and are not part of the manufacturer ecosystem, with its convenient and cheap access to knowledge and technical resources, and so on. And getting access to the right people to solve problems is difficult given the low volumes and outsider status of such initiatives.
What I've heard from the OpenMoko project and others is that you cannot get the top line of SOCs from manufactures in small numbers. Something like you'll have to buy 10.000 at least and then put the money down up-front. Knownn the right people won't help with that.
True. So as I noted there are numerous obstacles. Independent initiatives are locked out in purchasing terms (prohibitive minimum order quantities), logistical terms (they do not have convenient, insider access to production facilities), and collaborative terms (they do not have in-house access to the designers and people who can make up for incomplete documentation and provide useful, informal knowledge).
I was actually surprised in my review of available phones that Fairphone 2 is now no longer available, although factory-refurbished ones can be obtained for a discount.
This is a recent development (in the last weeks). Probably a good one, a Fairphone 3 is needed for a while now.
What might have been interesting is if the modular technology had been popularised, shared, standardised, and so on, so that others could have made upgrades and continued the general availability of the product.
You know that all this would have meant significant efforts and Fairphone is a small company (in a growth phase, with all the pain coming with it). At least they have shown that it works and there is a market for it (even when small). This is a large archievement.
I agree. I hope they can demonstrate collaboration with others with aligned interests precisely because addressing all of the different issues is really too challenging for a small organisation.
Paul
Hi Paul,
Am Dienstag 14 Mai 2019 13:24:28 schrieb Paul Boddie:
I think my criticism is harsh,
If we had more manufactures trying to go in the Fairphone direction, it would foster much more Free Software usages on mobile devices. It is fine to point out how they could do better, but I think we should even more applaude them for the advances.
Yes, I recognise their achievements. And they have improved with regard to the software, meaning that I look forward to what they produce next.
the way you wrote about them had be left with a different impression.
To change the world, what someone can do is to change their own behaviour or to convince others to behave differently. In this light: Wouldn't it make sense to promote phones by Fairphone even with all the still existing drawbacks, just because the vast majority of other manufacturer are significantly worse?
It seems many more people can be convinced to buy their phones compared to one with replicant for example from https://tehnoetic.com/ as it stands today. Of course I could point people to https://tehnoetic.com/tehnoetic-s3-phone-replicant, but just the drawbacks like wifi not working will be an unstandable no-buy for many. Of course I do all people to replicant and companies supporting it, because we need even more of their work financed.
These are presumably the same apologists for phone manufacturers trying to cut warranty terms where I live: people who openly said that they bought a new phone every six months, that longer warranties would make phones more expensive, and that nobody needed them anyway (presumably because at six months, they would sell their phone to some hapless buyer or fake up some kind of insurance claim).
The problem is that we have to share a planet with idiots like this,
There are many reasons why using Free Software with phone hardware last lasts longer is an advantage. I believe that some of those people can be convinced or persuaded to buy more Free Software and open hardware based products. However calling or thinking about them as "idiots" won't help with this. I can understand if this comes out of frustration, though. From my point of view a guiding principle should be to explain better if not enough people seem to understand.
with their behaviour validating the destructive and wasteful actions of corporations who are not being held responsible for the consequences of their "need" to make money.
Note that this is a common missunderstanding: Organisations (like companies and even charities) have to be economically viable to be able to persist and fullfil their "tasks". Just "making money" (or a profit) is **not the purpose** of most organisations in the narrower sense. Income maybe a necessity, though. Owners, customers, employees and other stakeholders all have an influence on how a company acts.
So if we want other companies, we have to found them, buy from them, work for them. And convince others to do so. If we happen to get a majority, we can additionally make common rules.
Best Regards, Bernhard
On Wednesday 15. May 2019 12.51.36 Bernhard E. Reiter wrote:
Am Dienstag 14 Mai 2019 13:24:28 schrieb Paul Boddie:
These are presumably the same apologists for phone manufacturers trying to cut warranty terms where I live: people who openly said that they bought a new phone every six months, that longer warranties would make phones more expensive, and that nobody needed them anyway (presumably because at six months, they would sell their phone to some hapless buyer or fake up some kind of insurance claim).
Just to give some more context here, the argument went that phones should have a substantially shorter warranty than household appliances like washing machines (which I think was, maybe still is, five years) despite being more expensive in many cases. One can argue that washing machines and other appliances undergo substantially more physical stress than phones, which was usually the reason for failure and warranty claims.
The problem is that we have to share a planet with idiots like this,
There are many reasons why using Free Software with phone hardware last lasts longer is an advantage. I believe that some of those people can be convinced or persuaded to buy more Free Software and open hardware based products. However calling or thinking about them as "idiots" won't help with this. I can understand if this comes out of frustration, though.
Of course it comes out of frustration because we literally have to share a planet with this kind of behaviour. If such behaviour isn't idiocy then what is it? Selfish, destructive, wasteful, anti-social?
What happens to all the stuff that isn't sold? Does it make its way back for re-manufacturing or does it wander off into secondary markets where people might get a chance to buy it for less (because people in those markets are poorer)?
What if the units aren't sold then? Are they dismantled or recycled there or elsewhere? What environmental protections are there for the people doing such work? Does everything end up in landfill?
People who don't have time to think about such issues may not be "idiots", although one has to wonder what they do think about if they are buying a new phone every six months. But I think it is fair comment to call people doing so *and* actively lobbying against more responsible behaviour "idiots".
They perpetuate a system in which things are produced at incredible cost (beyond the price tag) for someone to be distracted with for a short while, if they even get into a customer's hands. And the cost of recovering the needless waste from this exercise is largely pushed onto others to bear, just so that the producers can ready yet another set of single-season products to shower the market with.
[...]
with their behaviour validating the destructive and wasteful actions of corporations who are not being held responsible for the consequences of their "need" to make money.
Note that this is a common missunderstanding: Organisations (like companies and even charities) have to be economically viable to be able to persist and fullfil their "tasks". Just "making money" (or a profit) is **not the purpose** of most organisations in the narrower sense. Income maybe a necessity, though. Owners, customers, employees and other stakeholders all have an influence on how a company acts.
In various cases, companies use the existence of the other groups as an excuse for their own behaviour. They claim that shareholders demand the maximum returns or that customers demand the cheapest possible products. It is true that some shareholders and customers, particularly the former, do not care about anything other than their own interests. But it can be very convenient to point the finger at others in order to justify "business as usual".
Again, I think it is refreshing that organisations like Fairphone act in ways to promote more responsible production of phones, largely by prioritising instead of neglecting genuine concerns around the entire product lifecycle. And Fairphone may be a lot better than other vendors in this regard.
But given that I know relatively little about the other lifecycle issues but a bit more about Free Software and software maintenance issues, why should I not highlight areas of concern about decisions made by Fairphone? I may feel bad doing so (and be made to feel bad about it, too), but what if Fairphone had put Windows Mobile on their products instead?
Some people might then have regarded the "fair" aspects of their products as mere box-ticking elements in an otherwise undesirable package. And there are people who are annoyed at Fairphone for providing a product that runs Google products and accesses Google services, arguably being built for surveillance. What should we say to them? That their concerns are not valid or are unfair to the company?
I think that encouragement or advocacy is just not enough: it has to be accompanied with constructive criticism to let people know about deficiencies they may have overlooked. Otherwise, you get complacency, regressions, a general sense that user needs are being ignored, often in favour of some kind of "vision". We've seen that quite a bit in Free Software, unfortunately.
And for all the concerns about criticising organisations and a lack of encouragement or support, where exactly is the encouragement for initiatives that try and build sustainable hardware platforms for Free Software? These being driven by people who try and build communities around their work, who don't take unsustainable short-cuts just to get something into the hands of easily-distracted consumers, whose projects are readily overlooked because some big name launches some placebo initiative or vapourware and various Free Software advocates decide that "the market has delivered".
If we applied the same rules to our own engagement with Free Software as many people seem to do to related areas of concern, we would all be having to use proprietary software by now. Because everyone would be waiting for someone else to actually write the software, applauding anything that happened to come our way.
Paul
Am Donnerstag, 16. Mai 2019, 14:29:28 CEST schrieb Paul Boddie:
On Wednesday 15. May 2019 12.51.36 Bernhard E. Reiter wrote:
Am Dienstag 14 Mai 2019 13:24:28 schrieb Paul Boddie:
These are presumably the same apologists for phone manufacturers trying to cut warranty terms where I live: people who openly said that they bought a new phone every six months, that longer warranties would make phones more expensive, and that nobody needed them anyway (presumably because at six months, they would sell their phone to some hapless buyer or fake up some kind of insurance claim).
Just to give some more context here, the argument went that phones should have a substantially shorter warranty than household appliances like washing machines (which I think was, maybe still is, five years) despite being more expensive in many cases. One can argue that washing machines and other appliances undergo substantially more physical stress than phones, which was usually the reason for failure and warranty claims.
While I think that warranties for electronics could and should be longer, I think the comparison to household appliances is unfair.
Mobile phones may undergo less physical stress than washing mashines in absolute terms, but operate withing much tighter tolerances. In other words, there are plenty of places on my washing machine where hitting it with a hammer would do minimal damage. The same is not true for a mobile phone, and simply cannot be true due to physical constraints...
Cheers, Johannes
On Friday 17. May 2019 12.19.36 Johannes Zarl-Zierl wrote:
While I think that warranties for electronics could and should be longer, I think the comparison to household appliances is unfair.
Mobile phones may undergo less physical stress than washing mashines in absolute terms, but operate withing much tighter tolerances. In other words, there are plenty of places on my washing machine where hitting it with a hammer would do minimal damage. The same is not true for a mobile phone, and simply cannot be true due to physical constraints...
It is true that washing machines can be overengineered by a greater margin and not change the nature of the product. However, they are still susceptible to failure through improper use, lack of maintenance and care, and so on. One might also argue that the economics do not favour their repair, either, and that many people would simply replace a failing appliance than spend comparable amounts on repairing it.
However, what led to the dispute about warranties was the continual refusal of manufacturers (particularly Nokia if I recall correctly) to honour warranties because of moisture damage supposedly due to improper use. This raises genuine questions about what conditions such products should be reasonably be operated under, alongside issues of appropriate design and manufacturer responsibility.
I don't think it is unreasonable for people to expect their phones to last at least five years. The argument that phones get better all the time and that people "need" to upgrade constantly is even weaker now than it was, partly because (like with other products) the customer discovers that what they have already is "good enough", that upgrading delivers fewer new benefits than the last upgrade did, and partly because the upgrade treadmill was shamefully exploited with personal computers and that this is just another outing for it.
Paul
On 5/14/19 8:52 AM, Bernhard E. Reiter wrote:
When trying to get a product out of the doors, you face a large number of small and larger decisions. First of all, the product has to "work" for the expected usage. Fairphone 1 was good in this regard, but Fairphone 2 a bit less so. Backing up and taking more time may have not been possible, without risking to not have a product at all. Which would have been the worst result. So to me your criticism is too harsh. After all they produced two phones that were significant steps forward.
If we had more manufactures trying to go in the Fairphone direction, it would foster much more Free Software usages on mobile devices. It is fine to point out how they could do better, but I think we should even more applaude them for the advances.
Actually, from a free software perspective I was disappointed with the Fairphone 2. Fairphone 1 came with almost entirely free software, with the OS based on AOSP and no Google apps in its default configuration. Fairphone 2 came with proprietary Android and Google Apps and no way to get rid of them without reflashing your phone (something I haven't gotten around to yet, in part because of a perception of risk in doing so).
This also goes to show that the Fairphone project doesn't seem to focus a lot on the free software issue, or even understand it very well. I suspect that the Fairphone 1 had AOSP not because of a preference for free software, but because they didn't have a deal with Google for proprietary Android yet.
And that's not what I would expect, or at least want, from a fair phone. Regarding sourcing, working conditions and repairability, I find the project quite admirable in its goals.
Best Carsten
Am Mittwoch 08 Mai 2019 15:05:53 schrieb Paul Boddie:
* https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/ * The advances with chipset for MediaTek and other main SOC producers * SailfishOS(X)
I actually posted a summary of visible and/or viable projects on the Tinkerphones mailing list a while ago:
http://lists.goldelico.com/pipermail/community/2019-February/001964.html
Thanks for the link. There is much information out there, it stresses my point from my other post that it would be cool to have an overview from the perspective of Free Software that is kept current.
As far as Sailfish is concerned, I haven't seen any indication of it being completely Free Software.
No, it isn't. But this is not the main question, the question is does it help to promote more software freedom? And in my bottom line, it is. I also know several people with Sailfish OS devices. Most of them work well and the main point is diversity. Apart from Google's GNU/Linux distribution called "Android", there is almost no other one people could by if they wanted to. Actually "Android" is a big success for Free Software as most consumer devices now come with a Free Software operating system by default. :) But we all know that there are drawbacks if one company dominates this and this is why it is important to have viable competition. Sailfish is a viable competition and comes with more Free Software by default than most Android phones (I'D guess. ;)) Note that Sailfish X can only work on devices that can be unlocked, and if Sailfish X works on them, then chances are high other operating systems will, too.
Back to Sailfish OS, yes they are treating the community not as good as they could, but technically with their rpm based system, they offer much more possibilities what to do with the phone as you can use other Free Software products more easily. I know there is documentation about the various parts which a Free Software and which are not - yet. I don't have the link at hand, but one starting point is https://sailfishos.org/wiki/Open_Source
like a continuation of aspects of Nokia's dubious policies with regards to keeping some software proprietary for "competitive advantage".
Yes, this is a business decision that I don't fully like. Still I'd rather have them around as a company than losing their progress for diversity and parts of the phone stack. You'll have to accept that they need to gain income somewhere and probably don't see other approaches.
[SOCs]
Nor, for that matter, have I seen indications of MediaTek SoCs being any better than they were for supporting completely Free Software at the system level,
Not being an expert, I've spoked to people I'll regards as knowledable and heard credible reports that MediaTek has improved and is further improving. It makes sense on a number of levels. Companies like Qualcomm also had to learn that maintaining drivers as Free Software in the mainline Linux is better for them in the long run. They all want mindshare of developers. MediaTek seems to be getting this message as well, but I don't know details. It is credible to me, because there are apprearing LineageOS ports for newer MediaTek SOCs. The old MediaTek which was used in the Fairphone 1 certainly will never get the drivers, but newer ones may. (Again it would be cool to have a nice overview with links to the original information.)
Best Regards, Bernhard
On Friday 10. May 2019 09.58.09 Bernhard E. Reiter wrote:
Am Mittwoch 08 Mai 2019 15:05:53 schrieb Paul Boddie:
- https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/
- The advances with chipset for MediaTek and other main SOC producers
- SailfishOS(X)
I actually posted a summary of visible and/or viable projects on the Tinkerphones mailing list a while ago:
http://lists.goldelico.com/pipermail/community/2019-February/001964.html
Thanks for the link. There is much information out there, it stresses my point from my other post that it would be cool to have an overview from the perspective of Free Software that is kept current.
I agree. Maybe the FSFE Wiki could host such information, particularly if the adminstrators reinstalled a half-decent way of formatting tables.
As far as Sailfish is concerned, I haven't seen any indication of it being completely Free Software.
No, it isn't. But this is not the main question, the question is does it help to promote more software freedom? And in my bottom line, it is. I also know several people with Sailfish OS devices.
I didn't even think there were very many available Sailfish devices these days, at least given the apparent frenzy at even the briefest mention of Sailfish-based vapourware products in one Sailfish-friendly online forum I can think of.
Most of them work well and the main point is diversity. Apart from Google's GNU/Linux distribution called "Android", there is almost no other one people could by if they wanted to. Actually "Android" is a big success for Free Software as most consumer devices now come with a Free Software operating system by default. :)
I don't share your enthusiasm, really. If people give me Free Software and yet deny me the benefits that it should bring, they might as well not be giving me Free Software to begin with. And these systems are rather good at denying the users control over their systems, making it impractical to demand full access to the system or its hardware, or to ensure licence compliance.
I don't deny that there are practical benefits even with things like Android, but the thing that hurt Fairphone is the same thing that still applies to all of these devices: the longevity of the device will be severely curtailed by a lack of software sustainability. Later Android versions will come along, and no-one will be able to get them to work because of long-abandoned binary blobs from the SoC vendors and their partners.
What use is Free Software if it cannot support and uphold other desirable outcomes? Or if the use of Free Software just gives software freedom in a purely hypothetical sense (if you do not work at the manufacturer under a non- disclosure agreement)?
But we all know that there are drawbacks if one company dominates this and this is why it is important to have viable competition. Sailfish is a viable competition and comes with more Free Software by default than most Android phones (I'D guess. ;)) Note that Sailfish X can only work on devices that can be unlocked, and if Sailfish X works on them, then chances are high other operating systems will, too.
I don't follow Sailfish, but I didn't think that the company was particularly viable. There are other systems, of course, like Maemo-Leste which are not dependent on the viability of a company that apparently needed refinancing to keep going. But then these other systems need sustaining in their own ways.
[...]
Not being an expert, I've spoked to people I'll regards as knowledable and heard credible reports that MediaTek has improved and is further improving. It makes sense on a number of levels. Companies like Qualcomm also had to learn that maintaining drivers as Free Software in the mainline Linux is better for them in the long run. They all want mindshare of developers. MediaTek seems to be getting this message as well, but I don't know details. It is credible to me, because there are apprearing LineageOS ports for newer MediaTek SOCs. The old MediaTek which was used in the Fairphone 1 certainly will never get the drivers, but newer ones may. (Again it would be cool to have a nice overview with links to the original information.)
I won't trust SoC vendors with regard to their promises or plans, or those made on their behalf, until people can independently maintain the relevant software distribution running on the affected devices in its entirety. Just like I don't trust various top-tier Linux kernel developers who claim that we should not hold these companies to account for their licence violations on the basis that one day their future products will be supported in the mainline kernel.
Paul
Am Freitag 10 Mai 2019 17:37:19 schrieb Paul Boddie:
Maybe the FSFE Wiki could host such information, particularly if the adminstrators reinstalled a half-decent way of formatting tables.
Personally I think that the main work is in keeping the info maintained. (Independently from the technology.)
I didn't even think there were very many available Sailfish devices these days,
The've changed strategy to port to devices from other hardware vendors. In my view for the better.
So currently available are The Sony Xperia™ XA2 product range and Sony Xperia™ X Gemini PDA. and upcoming is Cosmo. See https://jolla.com/sailfishx/ (except for infos about Cosmo)
Most of them work well and the main point is diversity. Apart from Google's GNU/Linux distribution called "Android", there is almost no other one people could by if they wanted to. Actually "Android" is a big success for Free Software as most consumer devices now come with a Free Software operating system by default. :)
I don't share your enthusiasm, really. If people give me Free Software and yet deny me the benefits that it should bring, they might as well not be giving me Free Software to begin with.
Here I disagree, I think each step forward is good. While of course it maybe two steps forward and one back, including new challenges. And I do remember other times, so I know the progress regarding Free Software in the last 30 years.
Best Regards, Bernhard
I’ve heard some unbelievable claims of seniority before (using Free Software before the invention of electricity), but for whatever reason this seems credible. Would love to hear more details about the early-days. What Free Software projects where you following in 1989?
I first heard about Free Software in 1992 and sent a bug report for Slackware Linux in 1994 when my area received dial-up internet access.
On Thu, May 16, 2019 at 4:44 AM Bernhard E. Reiter bernhard@fsfe.org wrote:
Am Freitag 10 Mai 2019 17:37:19 schrieb Paul Boddie:
Maybe the FSFE Wiki could host such information, particularly if the adminstrators reinstalled a half-decent way of formatting tables.
Personally I think that the main work is in keeping the info maintained. (Independently from the technology.)
I didn't even think there were very many available Sailfish devices these days,
The've changed strategy to port to devices from other hardware vendors. In my view for the better.
So currently available are The Sony Xperia™ XA2 product range and Sony Xperia™ X Gemini PDA. and upcoming is Cosmo. See https://jolla.com/sailfishx/ (except for infos about Cosmo)
Most of them work well and the main point is diversity. Apart from Google's GNU/Linux distribution called "Android", there is almost no other one people could by if they wanted to. Actually "Android" is a
big
success for Free Software as most consumer devices now come with a Free Software operating system by default. :)
I don't share your enthusiasm, really. If people give me Free Software
and
yet deny me the benefits that it should bring, they might as well not be giving me Free Software to begin with.
Here I disagree, I think each step forward is good. While of course it maybe two steps forward and one back, including new challenges. And I do remember other times, so I know the progress regarding Free Software in the last 30 years.
Best Regards, Bernhard
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Am Donnerstag 16 Mai 2019 13:38:20 schrieb Joe Awni:
Would love to hear more details about the early-days. What Free Software projects where you following in 1989?
My main computer these days were an Amiga 500 and the main source of Free Software the Fred Fish disks. There were Matt Dillons editor DME and various small tools, hack, a vi clone (which I did't like), terminal software and so on. I don't remember precisely in which year gnuplot was included first, but it was on there as well. (gnuplot is not related to GNU, but Free Software.)
Matt later wrote his own compiler DICE. My understanding of Free Software concepts was not very explicit, this changed in the early nineties.
Cheers, Bernhard