excerpt from IRC freenode.net: #neo900



[2014-03-25 01:10:20] <dos1> https://www.privacyinternational.org...e-ubuntu-phone
[2014-03-25 01:12:05] <dos1> this article hurts :c and not because it's bad, I'd just ignore it then
[2014-03-25 01:12:17] <dos1> it's so right about the need, but at the same time so wrong about the facts
[2014-03-25 01:14:09] <bencoh> "It is disappointing that Ubuntu failed to provide an open baseband implementation that researchers could experiment with" huhu, yeah, sure
[2014-03-25 01:14:35] <bencoh> like "it's so damn simple, why didn't you come up with it ?!"
[2014-03-25 01:17:37] <dos1> "The choice of Canonical to use a binary only baseband is even more disappointing when Osmocom have already produced a functional open-source GSM baseband for the Calypso chipset. One must wonder why was this not adopted or improved upon by the talented individuals at Canonical, especially given the previous enthusiasm for open-source philosophy."
[2014-03-25 01:18:51] <dos1> yeah, one must wonder why haven't they wanted to put a 2G EDGE modem inside shiny-newest-ultrafast beast they were trying to raise runds for (Edge)
[2014-03-25 01:19:22] <dos1> but this one is more important:
[2014-03-25 01:19:23] <dos1> "That is why the Ubuntu Phone displayed so much promise. Since most phones are closed, or only their operating systems are open but not the baseband, it was hoped that Ubuntu Phone would be a first from a major mobile phone manufacturer. OpenMoko was an initial attempt but has since been discontinued."
[2014-03-25 01:20:08] <dos1> Ubuntu Phone hardly ever displayed such promise; neither Openmoko did in fact
[2014-03-25 01:20:42] <dos1> and we sitting in this room are the proof that Openmoko as an "attempt" is all but discontinued
[2014-03-25 01:22:14] <dos1> there are lots of people like that. they heard something about Openmoko, they heard that it was going to be open, then they heard that it failed and that's it
[2014-03-25 01:23:38] <dos1> but what they miss is that the Freerunner exists and still gets some basic community software support (it's more that enough if you plan to hack sw on your own)
[2014-03-25 01:24:29] <dos1> and that an upgrade in the form of GTA04 exists, so it's not "discontinued"
[2014-03-25 01:26:09] <dos1> and that it all transformed into Neo900 - a project that also already opens some opportunities on answering the "what's next?" question
[2014-03-25 01:26:51] <dos1> and that while people working on all of them would love to get free baseband, it's not going to happen to both legal and economical reasons
[2014-03-25 01:27:01] <dos1> it's just impossible
[2014-03-25 01:28:24] <dos1> ech, this is probably bad audience for such rant, most of you probably know most of it, if not all... just had to speak it out
[2014-03-25 01:29:29] <dos1> I'm getting tired of explaining the same all over again each time a topic about baseband openness comes up somewhere I wonder what could be more effective in "educating the masses"...
[2014-03-25 03:43:47] <-- dos1 has left this server (Ping timeout: 246 seconds).
[2014-03-25 04:44:09] <DocScrutinizer05> just to add: I'll copy this to tmo, to make it a tad more visible. Nothing else to add to his brilliant analysis... maybe one sidenote: open free GSM baseband is really severely overrated, it's basically irrelevant actually
[2014-03-25 04:45:53] <DocScrutinizer05> I for one don't mind what firmware is running on the modem. I assume it's doing nonsense over the air anyway, but then GSM is "nonsense" by definition and nothing you can do about it, since that's the way it works.
[2014-03-25 04:48:18] <DocScrutinizer05> what I worry about is whether the modem can do nonsense or rather rogue stuff to my *system*. Unlike recent shared-RAM designs of all modern smartphones, the modem CANNOT access the system on any openmoko-spirited phone, and Neo900 even implements tight monitoring of the modem so it can't even do anything sneaky without user noticing it. Apart from that I don't care what it actually does


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