In all fairness, probably nothing short of an Openmoko Neo would satisfy him; he's a "core" community member for Openmoko (appearing regularly on the planet.Openmoko feeds), and is driven by the need for freedom in all electronics.
I can't say I blame him though; I bought a Neo myself purely because it's the only freedoms-oriented, commercially-available smart phone that comes out of the box with the ability to flash system images over USB, and will run just about anything that can boot on an ARM processor.
When you believe deeply in free and open source software and hardware, anything that restricts your freedoms is just unacceptable.
That's why I haven't purchased a G1 myself, even though I already have service through T-Mobile: it's not an open hardware platform, and you can't do whatever you want to it; you're stuck in Google's sandbox, and you can only play with the toys they put in the box next to you.
Yet on my FreeRunner, I have the choice between many different distributions of Linux, including Android, and everything is open source and at my finger tips. I can write system programs in C, Python, Perl, Ruby, Java, or whatever someone can manage to get compiled. And I don't need anyone to tell me that my system image is "acceptable", or what system devices I can and cannot access.
it wasn't yet capable to do things like make phone calls
This is overstated, but close to the truth.
I care about technological freedom and openness, and I'm willing to endure some early-adopter pain in order to get it. So I tried the Freerunner a few months ago.
Unfortunately, the device I received had no practical use as a day-to-day phone. And, yes, I tried many different software images. The Qtopia image came the closest to providing something usable, but still never came close to the functionality or usability of my 3+ year old Motorola RAZR. I ended up returning the phone, minus a 20% restocking fee. Ouch.
I support Openmoko. I hope they succeed. I will continue to monitor their progress, and may buy their next device. But I wanted to warn those looking at purchasing the current Freerunner to set your expectations appropriately. In my opinion, this is not yet a phone that can serve as your everyday communication device; it is rather a cool prototype that freedom-loving mobile hackers may enjoy experimenting with while keeping some other device on hand for everyday use.
Talking with some of the Moko folks at MobileCampLondon last year they were telling me about the issues with truly open mobile devices.
Even Moko has a couple of closed components, namely the radio. The carriers and the FCC seem to be pretty against open source software radios for the sake of the networks.
Remember the same networks that carry commercial traffic have priority bands for Police/Fire/Ambulance/Military. Cheap consumer available devices with patchable software radios devices could be a very bad thing for that.
He couldn't buy one when he wrote that, but it's also sort of beside the point. Software freedom is about other people having the ability to modify the software they depend on, not about me having the ability (if I spend enough money and time) having that ability.
A developer G1 may allow you to flash any Android image you want onto the phone, but the hardware is still not "open" or "free", in that the drivers are not (afaik) open sourced in any method. However, it is still a step forward, yes, but it's still not as big of a step as the phones on offer from Openmoko, for example.
Can you give me a source for the hardware not having drivers? That makes no sense to me, how are you supposed to be able to reflash a phone in any meaningful sense without drivers so the phone, er, works.
RIL, audio, wifi and accelerometer, to name a few. Additionaly, the entire radio stack is also closed source (it is outside the OS - it runs on separate CPU, is stored separately in ROM and RIL communicates with it using shared memory).
I agree with his points, but even so, surely Android is a good step toward more openness. Plus, isn't the G1 more open than many (most?) phones? I don't own one, but the impression I get is that it's fairly open.
The software is open (Android), but the hardware is not, or at least no more open than any other GSM phone with a SIM card. There is a big difference: consumer G1's still require Google/T-Mobile signed system images to boot up, meaning you can't reflash it with your own images, unless you want to risk bricking it by hacking the bootloader...
The URL has "GNU" in it, I knew better than to click.
Respectfully, waaaahhh.
From the article:
I still think it's extremely weird that you actually buy a device, and then don't own it. I would have no problem if the device is rented from the manufacturer or the mobile network operator. Sure, then in this rented device, only they control what kind of software you use. But this is not the case. People buy it, pay money, legally own the device but technically don't.
You absolutely do own the device. You're just not capable of getting the software you want onto it. I own my house, even though I have no idea how to move walls and put up new drywall (in my case, I did but it didn't work out as well as I'd hoped).
If you really can't live without the kernel of your choice, perhaps you should desolder the IC that contains the crypto keys and install one that has keys you created. Worst probable case is that you're out an integrated CPU/EPROM device. As mentioned by sayrer elsewhere in this thread, the route this guy would be better off taking is to get a Developer one.
I'm sure the GNU "I hold my nose at your lack of freedom" attitude provides many mutual high-fiving opportunities for The Free. Unfortunately the real world, particularly as it concerns security, is made up of endless compromises and trade-offs. Practically speaking, the decision to outsource security of the device to a group of people who are paid full time to do it makes the devices safer for the five orders of magnitude of people who are unable to or unwilling to understand the decisions they'd otherwise be asked to make.
Sorry to get lathered up about this, but statements of this nature sway uninformed geeks in dangerous ways. There's a ton of legitimate value to having a solid crypto foundation within devices, and one man's open certificate authority access to the device's firmware is ten million men's malware attack vector.
I agree with the guy in some aspects, in that I'd like to be able to control the boot loader and other fundamental aspects of a mobile device. At one time I had an idea to create a micro/mini-payment application that would live within your telephone. With the computing resources of even a free-with-contract phone you could greatly reduce the risks that credit cards are increasingly facing. This could prove a very lucrative business for someone who could out-efficient Visa. Unfortunately, as noted in the article, the keys to the device are held by the carrier, and this, for me, would be insufficient to trust my banking information with, so I never pursued the idea.
I own my house, even though I have no idea how to move walls and put up new drywall (in my case, I did but it didn't work out as well as I'd hoped).
You can hire someone else to put up new drywall. If you can't, you don't own the house; you're just renting.
Outsourcing your security to a group of people makes you vulnerable to that group of people, and anybody who can lean on them. As you point out yourself, mobile phone carriers have not proven trustworthy in that way. The guy who buys the phone has the right to choose who they want to trust; mobile carriers blackmailing phone manufacturers into giving them backdoors into this most personal of devices is a violation of that right, and it imperils us all.
I can't say I blame him though; I bought a Neo myself purely because it's the only freedoms-oriented, commercially-available smart phone that comes out of the box with the ability to flash system images over USB, and will run just about anything that can boot on an ARM processor.
When you believe deeply in free and open source software and hardware, anything that restricts your freedoms is just unacceptable.
That's why I haven't purchased a G1 myself, even though I already have service through T-Mobile: it's not an open hardware platform, and you can't do whatever you want to it; you're stuck in Google's sandbox, and you can only play with the toys they put in the box next to you.
Yet on my FreeRunner, I have the choice between many different distributions of Linux, including Android, and everything is open source and at my finger tips. I can write system programs in C, Python, Perl, Ruby, Java, or whatever someone can manage to get compiled. And I don't need anyone to tell me that my system image is "acceptable", or what system devices I can and cannot access.
That's freedom.