[Arm-netbook] "smarter" phone

[Troy Benjegerdes]

On Tue, May 28, 2013 at 01:09:49PM +0200, Oliver Schinagl wrote:
> On 28-05-13 11:33, Philip Hands wrote:
> >Vladimir Pantelic <vladoman at gmail.com> writes:
> >
> >>Philip Hands wrote:
> >>>"luke.leighton" <luke.leighton at gmail.com> writes:
> >>>
> >>>>http://www.c2mtl.com/eye50/ideas/smarter-phone/
> >>>>
> >>>>wooow.  i love it.
> >>>
> >>>Nice.
> >>>
> >>>Not _very_ related, but another phone that someone mentioned on Planet
> >>>Debian recently, that might pique interest here:
> >>>
> >>>    http://www.fairphone.com/
> >>>
> >>>in particular their attempts to find manufacturer's that don't rub their
> >>>ethics up the wrong way.
> >>
> >>given the very closed and protective nature of MTK, I fail to see how
> >>a phone using their SoC can be "fair"...
> >
> >Ah, I suppose they were concentrating on fairness to the workers in the
> >supply chain for the hardware -- I'm not sure.  I only glanced at their
> >site really. I suppose they might appreciate a heads up about the
> >non-freeness of the hardware, and how that might cause them grief down
> >the line.
> On the FAQ it states they are looking for ubuntu/mozilla open-source
> developers and that it comes pre-rooted.
> 
> It doesn't mention if they are GPL violating, use closed blobs etc etc.

I'm going to guess they may not even know if they are GPL violating, because
they have to start *somewhere*, and they started by using an existing phone
design.

So unless someone's got a 'gpl-violations-scanner' android app that can 
easily be installed, it's a non-trivial effort to figure out what's a binary
blob and what's not when you are dealing with large hardware manufacturers.

>From my conversations with the fairphone folks, they seem to get it, but 
part of the issue is **marketing** to consumers WHY a Libre-software phone
is a good idea.

You can talk about GPL-violations all day, and it's a great stick to get
manufacturers to move,  but if you don't have the carrot of sales, nothing
is really going to change.

Fairphone is using marketing and sales to change the market. OpenMoko was
a great technical and software effort, but it never had the sales or market
size necessary to make a Libre-software phone market.

So, how many of you will put down pre-orders for:
1) full-open software fairphone (pre-rooted, no blobs, full function)
2) open-source PCB fairphone
3) phone with open source software, PCB, AND silicon layout

Number 2 could almost be done today.

If there were 100,000 down-payments of $5USD for number 3, I would start
negotiations with fabs for (3) and we'd probably have silicon in about 
3-5 years.