Someone claiming to be "Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli" <gnu...@no-log.org> wrote:
> There is a way to make it really free software, but "Mychaela Falconia" > systematically refuses to do it citing very unconvincing excuses. While it is entirely your business and yours alone how you go about recruiting people into your project, let me simply point out that putting quotes around people's names is not going to endear them to you. Particularly us transgender folks. Your choice to put quotes around the names of people as a way of indicating that the names they go by are somehow invalid in your eyes, because you don't see our post-transition names and gender as valid, simply highlights you as a closed-minded bigot. As for me "systematically refusing" to work with OsmocomBB, that is their fault, not mine. They had a chance to draw me into their project, but they blew it. If you want to draw people into your project, you need to start by giving them access to the same starting- point materials which you are sitting on yourself. As you should remember full well, that is the one thing they systematically refused to do. Telling someone "I will never let you have a copy of the source I'm sitting on, but why don't you go contribute to that feeble reimplementation attempt over there" is NOT the way to endear someone to you or to your project. The people in the inner circle of Openmoko/OsmocomBB (no need for names, you know full well who they are) had a chance to bring me in as a developer. If they had willingly granted me access to the "dirty" source they were sitting on and *then* started persuading me to work on OsmocomBB instead of TI-based firmwares, I would have listened to them, and they would have had a fair chance of convincing me. But they weren't willing to do that, hence by their own choices they have permanently driven away a most talented potential contributor to their project. Now they (and you) have to reap what they (and you) have sown. Two years later, I did obtain a copy of that same source they wouldn't share with me willingly - I wouldn't be alive today if I hadn't. But the social damage was already done by then, and this damage is irreparable. I will never, ever, ever contribute to OsmocomBB, not because of some "unconvincing excuses", but because of the way they treated me when it mattered the most. You can't just rape a woman and then expect her to forgive it all and join your project as an eager contributor - it doesn't work that way. As I said, you now have to reap what you have sown. Because OsmocomBB is not an option for me (that bridge is burned to ashes - by them, not by me - and can never be rebuilt), if I want a libre phone in my purse, I have to lead my own project entirely independent of them. At this point my choices are: 1. Develop it completely from scratch entirely on my own, *without* using any code from OsmocomBB, or at least without cooperating with OsmocomBB in any way; or 2. Use the available TI's code as my baseline. Option 1 is far beyond my capabilities, hence I have chosen and continue to choose Option 2. > OsmocomBB is free software, but it's not practical at all to use at > all: Thank you for acknowledging that it is absolutely not practical to use at all. But the remaining question is: just what are you going to accomplish by telling people not to use FreeCalypso (which is very close to practically usable on the C139) and directing them to use a piece of software, however wondrous and holy and free, that IS NOT "practical at all to use at all"? > -> Or you have an Openmoko phone, and you cannot put the main CPU into > suspend, because part of the GSM stack runs on it. So you get a very > poor battery life. And just how would an average Joe or Jane go about obtaining an Openmoko phone, given that some mogul has bought up all remaining surplus for some "vertical market" application, leaving none for Joe and Jane, while every last remaining unit is being gutted and Qualcommized? You are not seriously expecting to be able to run OsmocomBB on Dr. GTA04's Qualcomm modem, are you? > I think this should rather be done properly, even if it takes more time. Then YOU do it. Meanwhile, I will do what is within my abilities to relieve the suffering of phone users *within my lifetime*. While we are having this debate, users of basic non-smart phones are suffering from flawed UI designs which we can't improve and other bugs we can't fix (some of which might be bugs in the spying sense) because we are forced to use devices that run firmware for which we have no source whatsoever, not even partial source - forced to use them because *as of today*, these non-user-improvable phones are all that exists in terms of a practically usable non-smart phone. I am one of these suffering users (but not the only one: I know several others who see the situation the same way I do), and I have resolved to relieve the suffering of my people by replacing improvement-resistant, sans-source firmware in our phones with one which we *are* empowered to debug, troubleshoot, improve and maintain through the availability of full source, regardless of your high-horse arguments about silly legalese. I have committed myself to this path, and nothing that you say or do will stop me. > OsmocomBB supports several phones. FreeCalypso supports (or can easily be made to support) everything that OsmocomBB supports. > On some flashing the bootloader is more risky than on other. The way I've implemented flashing in FreeCalypso loadtools (my own implementation, as I never got any source for TI's FLUID flashing tool) reduces the bricking vulnerability window to almost none, at least if the operator uses the tools correctly - they are about as forgiving as rm -rf / as root. :) OTOH, OsmocomBB's flashing implementation is a recipe for making bricks out of phones. Paul Kocialkowski <cont...@paulk.fr> wrote: > Well, I guess "not approved" is a bit far fetched here. International > versions are still approved by all regulatory standards required for > sale and use with public mobile telephony networks in the US. I don't give a damn about regulatory approval. They are not *socially* approved, which is what matters. > Please stop saying that your modem firmware is free software. No, I will not stop. > It is not, by the very definition of free software. By *your* definition of free sw. But you are not the exclusive owner of the English language with an exclusive franchise on defining the meaning of terms. You and RMS/FSF have chosen to define "free sw" in a very hypocritical way, and I reject your definition. I shall continue using my own definition instead. M~ _______________________________________________ Replicant mailing list Replicant@lists.osuosl.org http://lists.osuosl.org/mailman/listinfo/replicant
