Great ideas, Akira! It would also be wonderful to see this idea of
supporting old hardware progress from supporting old laptops and old
desktops (where free software generally works well) to supporting old
phones without current vendor support (which are problematical to
continue to use with an unsupported vendor-supplied OS given security
issues, but it is hard to get a newer OS on most of them).
==== More details
In hindsight, a major tactical mistake for Mozilla's now-defunct phone
initiative with "Firefox OS" was thinking in terms of supporting *new*
hardware with a new free OS. But it is the users of old
no-longer-supported phones who have the most motivation to switch to a
new OS to avoid buying a new phone and creating more e-waste disposing
of their old phone. There must be billions of old vendor-unsupported
smartphones out there by now -- and each in theory could become a "free"
phone.
So, maybe reducing e-waste could become an emphasis of the new FSF
Librephone project -- by focusing at first on supporting popular phones
from the last five-to-ten years which the original vendor no longer
suports with OS updates, and which otherwise might get disposed of after
replacement?
https://www.fsf.org/news/fsf-turns-forty-with-a-new-president-and-a-new-campaign
https://www.fsf.org/news/librephone-project
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_mobile_phones
Beyond Librephone supporting old phones as cell-radio-using *phones*,
that support could also perhaps include repurposing old phones (or old
tablets) in various creative ways. For example, old phones could become
dedicated convenient displays (like displaying upcoming weather by the
door, or displaying an outdoor networked camera's or old smartphone's
video feed as a virtual window, or displaying a new joke of the day in
the kitchen, or displaying news headlines from Wikipedia's home page, or
displaying a todo list, or playing music). Or old phones could be used
as networked sensors (like using the phone camera to monitor a
temperature gauge, or using the phone usb port to connect to a
hydrometer for a houseplant's soil, or using the phone to monitor a
pet's activities). Or old phones could be used as networked controllers
(like to raise or lower thermal curtains connected to the phone via
motors, to do other "smart" home things in a free way, or as part of
personal robotics projects). You could also network a dozen repurposed
phones for gaming to make a "simpit" for an aircraft simulator or
spaceship/shuttlecraft simulator with various controls and displays.
These are things people might otherwise use an Arduino or Raspberry Pi
to do -- but since you already have the old phone (maybe with a
problematical battery and needing to be plugged in all the time), you
could use your old phone instead of buy new Arduinos and displays and
cameras and so save money on hardware. Also, such projects could be made
to work even if the cell-phone-service part of the phone was not working
yet in a free way but the WiFi hardware or USB hardware and display
hardware was now freed. Search on "uses for old smartphones" for more ideas.
--Paul Fernhout (pdfernhout.net)
"The biggest challenge of the 21st century is the irony of technologies
of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity."
On 10/12/25 20:19, Akira Urushibata wrote:
Official support for Windows 10 will end on October 14. People
are complaining that they are being forced to switch to the newer
Windows 11 which has controversial features including Recall.
In addition the step often requires buying a new computer because
Windows 11 requires more computing power to run.
Coincidentally October 14 is International E-Waste Day. The fact that
many Windows computers will be discarded is generating criticism from
environmentalists. For them, garbage is one issue. The need to extract
more rare elements, a process which is often ecologically taxing, is
another.
International E-Waste Day | WEEE Forum
https://weee-forum.org/iewd-about/
Recycle your e-waste - it's critical! International E-Waste Day 2025
to focus on Critical Raw Materials | WEEE Forum
https://weee-forum.org/ws_news/international-e-waste-day-2025-to-focus-on-critical-raw-materials/
International E-waste Day 2025 - Geneva Environment Network
https://www.genevaenvironmentnetwork.org/events/international-e-waste-day-2025/
Why the end of support for Windows 10 is uniquely troubling
https://pirg.org/articles/why-the-end-of-support-for-windows-10-is-uniquely-troubling/
We should tell people that the older computers are not useless. All they
need to do is to install GNU/Linux.
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