> I disagree in the case of phones: smartphones with separate application > and baseband processors (like Openmoko) did not exist until 2007 or so, > back in the late 1990s and early 2000s we all happily used dumbphones > which had just one processor inside (very similar to our beloved Calypso) > and which performed just basic telephony functions (make and receive > calls, send and receive SMS) without any smarts. I simply continue to > live my life the same way how everyone else lived 15 y ago or so, using > dumbphones instead of smartphones, and will continue living this way until > the day I die.
It is unrealistic to expect everyone to go back 15y ago phone-wise, I respect it that you do but "smart" phones are a thing now and smartphone users should demand free basebands and further generation G's to be free so this isn't a problem. We however don't live in such a society and everyone just accepts everything without thinking. > The Pirelli DP-L10 phone which I use currently is proprietary indeed, > but: > > > 1) It has the exact same Calypso chipset inside as my desired but not > yet built dream phone, so I *can* run my own code on this phone to a > limited extent, I can backup and restore its flash etc. > > 2) Pirelli's proprietary fw is based on the same TCS211 starting point > from TI as Openmoko and FreeCalypso, thus wherever they left things > unchanged from TI, we have the freedom to hack. Pirelli's fw still uses > TI's RVTMUX interface and freely exposes it on the phone's > built-in USB-serial port, so we can connect to it, Pirelli's debug trace > output is unchanged from TI, so we can parse and read it, their flash file > system format is unchanged from TI, so we can parse and understand flash > dumps, and they even support TI's TMFFS2 protocol over their exposed > RVTMUX, so we can manipulate their file system > "in vivo" with our fc-fsio tool. All of these qualities are the > reasons why I use this Pirelli DP-L10 as opposed to any random proprietary > phone. So in your eyes is the gta02 proprietary because you can't do those things on it? > What makes you think that it no longer applies? The first sentence > which says that moko13 was made in order to bring OM devices up to date > with recent FC developments is a historical fact: the year was 2017, we > had successfully built our own FreeCalypso modem hw product (FCDEV3B), we > had our current FC Magnetite fw built for the fcdev3b target, but the > latest fw for the gtamodem target was still the ancient-by-then > leo2moko-r1 aka moko12 from 2013 - hence the moko13 release was made to > bring the gtamodem target up to date. > > The second sentence in that change log entry refers to the other > historical fact that back when Openmoko-Inc existed, they treated their > modem fw as proprietary, zealously guarded their source, and did not allow > people like me anywhere near. The people whom they did hire to work on > their firmware behind NDA castle walls were nowhere near as good as me, > hence their firmware sucked. The liberation of the formerly proprietary > Calypso modem fw happened in 2013, by that time > Om-Inc no longer existed, and their last fw release from 2009 (moko11) > had been aged 4 y with no maintenance or support. > > Right at the time of the liberation back in 2013, I made the > leo2moko-r1 aka moko12 release which was basically a clean recompilation > (moko11 was miscompiled in that it contained some stale > objects which didn't get recompiled to account for shifted enum constants - > they changed a header file, but there was no make depend and they forgot > to recompile some objects) with just two of the worst bogons (the rfcap > bogosity and AT@SC) removed. Then it took me another 3 y period from 2013 > till 2016 during which I tried some failed approaches before I finally > came up with what I named FC Magnetite, which is our current unified > source tree in which all development happens and from which we make builds > for different targets. What I was basically saying in that change log > entry is that our current development model based on the FC Magnetite Hg > repository and multi-target build system is a far cry from the proprietary > development model employed by Om-Inc when that company existed. I was confused there because the fw source was released by you and technically OM wasn't proprietary (secret) anymore because you released the source they withheld. > * Moko13 was the last release built with the legacy 2007 blob version > of the G23M protocol stack. When OM got their firmware baseline delivery > from TI, they got this G23M PS component in binary-only form, and at the > present time there exists no surviving copy of the corresponding source > for that 2007 G23M PS version, so it is binary sans source. Around 2018 > we made the switch to the new hybrid config in FreeCalypso, and this > hybrid config is built using a newer 2009 version of the G23M PS (a > version which OM never got - we got it from a different source), and this > newer version came as 100% genuine C source from the beginning. It took > us till 2018 before we could switch our production fw to this new version > because hybridizing this newer PS version with the solid TCS211 chipsetsw > foundation was a very non-trivial accomplishment, and it took us that long > to shake the bugs out. Is something proprietary if it's compiled using binary-only compiler even if it's released as free software? > It basically comes down to which version you would rather run: a > version built by IP zealots who cared more about copyright and NDA > compliance than about technical quality, or a version built by a > professional GSM engineer who works transparently in the open. Is there any IP left in OM's last release which wasn't published by you? > Hmm, I suppose I could buy a small batch of cables from Sysmocom and > then resell them in a non-Paypal-requiring way. Would you be willing to > give me your snail mail address so I could send you a cable? Would you be > able and willing to reimburse me for it via Bitcoin? I'll consider it. > Also if you send me anything off-list using one of your anonymous Tor > email providers, I may not receive it - right now all I have is Gmail, I do > NOT have the energy at the moment to set up a better email system > (if you wanna change this situation, you would need to make a big > donation toward the cost of my SRS - that would be the only thing that can > sufficiently motivate me in my present circumstances), and Gmail seems to > seriously dislike your current elude.in setup - your post to which I am > replying never showed up in my inbox, I can only see it via the Pipermail > archive on the freecalypso.org mailing list server. I'll send you something with different providers, reply if receive anything. > I am deeply philosophically against distro packagers, and I only > support people who compile and install FC host tools directly from the > official source tarball, not via any third-party packages. If you use a > version that has been messed with by those people whom I don't approve of, > you are on your own and I won't provide any support as a matter of > principle. Why can't you just download the official source tarball, cd > into it, run 'make' and then 'make install' like we all used to do for > many decades before those gawddamn packaging things were invented? That's the thing with Guix, they compile directly from source, no traditional package maintainers needed. See here for fc-host-tools: https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix.git/tree/gnu/packages/embedded.scm#n978 It is unrealistic to expect everyone to go back 25y ago distro-wise and compile everything from source, I respect it that you do but distro packagers are a thing now and distro users should demand a single package solution across all distros so fragmentation isn't a problem. Guix is the closest solution we have right now. _______________________________________________ Community mailing list Community@freecalypso.org https://www.freecalypso.org/mailman/listinfo/community