On Wednesday 8. May 2019 09.03.48 Bernhard E. Reiter wrote: > > Actually I am referring to the history section "For the Long Term" of > https://blogs.fsfe.org/pboddie/?p=2386 > which I believe was written by yourself.
Yes, this was written by me. However, I still wanted to clarify that a lot of output on this topic that was thought to be mine was actually my brother's. For an insight into the specifics of developing for Android, I can recommend various articles of his, such as... "Publishing Applications via F-Droid" http://www.boddie.org.uk/david/www-repo/Personal/Updates/2018/2018-11-11.html "The Android Learning Curve" http://www.boddie.org.uk/david/www-repo/Personal/Updates/2016/2016-06-21.html "Language Reflections" http://www.boddie.org.uk/david/www-repo/Personal/Updates/2016/2016-06-08.html > The writeup is interesting and may help to shape a better tactis > and strategy if it picks up some more initiatives like > * https://www.shiftphones.com/en/ You may have to provide a little more context about this for those of us who do not readily read German and who are unfamiliar with this initiative. (Since various correspondents of mine who are native German speakers never mentioned this initiative, I feel that the origins of the initiative are not the principal obstacle hindering any wider awareness of it.) For instance, with an emphasis on conflict mineral avoidance, how does it differ from Fairphone? And has the initiative learned the lessons that Fairphone needed to learn? > * https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/ > * The advances with chipset for MediaTek and other main > SOC producers > * SailfishOS(X) I actually posted a summary of visible and/or viable projects on the Tinkerphones mailing list a while ago: http://lists.goldelico.com/pipermail/community/2019-February/001964.html That thread brought up some other projects, too. As far as Sailfish is concerned, I haven't seen any indication of it being completely Free Software. I know that there is an enthusiastic community who would pretty much buy anything with Sailfish on it, but to me it rather seems like a continuation of aspects of Nokia's dubious policies with regards to keeping some software proprietary for "competitive advantage". Nor, for that matter, have I seen indications of MediaTek SoCs being any better than they were for supporting completely Free Software at the system level, with original design manufacturers wedded to MediaTek being notorious for throwing potentially licence-violating bundles of code over the wall to hapless phone vendors. Interestingly, there are MIPS-based MediaTek products, presumably originating from companies acquired by MediaTek, which do seem to be more friendly to Free Software. Consequently, initiatives wanting to have any hope of shipping entirely Free Software seem to have coalesced around the iMX family of SoCs, including the Purism Librem 5 and the Necunos NC_1, with other initiatives like Neo900 stating that this would be the viable choice if starting again today. A lot of this is probably due to Freescale's corporate culture. [...] > This is why we don't just wait for "the market", we have to enable it. > But for all actions of FSFE, the important point is that they can only be > effective if we have volunteers working on it. So unlesss there are > volunteers it is hard to do something. Most of these topics need to be > followed up over many years and our strategy is to first keep open > possibilities or prevent major problems for initiatives. One example: The > fight against software patents. Another one: the push towards open standards > (which enable competition which means people can still use a different > software or hardware to participate in private or public processes). The fight against software patents has been largely successful, but it illustrates that vigilance and persistence must be elements of any long-term strategy. In that case, persistence meant countering apologists who employed lazy cultural and economic arguments about cultivating "knowledge economy" jobs where patents were supposedly needed. Eventually, such people were no longer able to make their case without being called out, and they could therefore no longer rely on support from ignorant and easily-pleased audiences. But vigilance is required to notice the areas of conflict that emerge when easier monopolisation opportunities are sought, so it should be worth mentioning that machine learning techniques have become a hot area for patenting. Some might see this as a relief (that "traditional" software is no longer targeted by patent opportunism), but knowing that contagion is always a risk (that software might once again be targeted) and having some kind of solidarity with practitioners in such closely-related fields (and even in our own field), we must not be so easily convinced that we have settled any particular argument in our favour. It is interesting that you raise the topic of interoperability. My own path into involvement with the FSFE was via the FFII whose focus was/is interoperability. But this topic naturally spans several different realms, and this is why it can often seem almost futile to further the cause of open standards and fair procurement. It is not possible to argue for these things without considering things like vested interests, corruption, and political ideology. This is why the FSFE must be a faithful partner to other organisations who have the same fundamental ethical foundations. An organisation that promotes something like Free Software for more than mere convenience must have something in common with organisations that advocate privacy, uphold public sector transparency, resist corruption, fight climate change, advocate for sustainability, and so on. The topic of volunteering has come up before and is worth its own treatment. I believe that a survey of Free Software volunteering was conducted a while ago, and I imagine that its findings will be worth examining when they are published. Paul _______________________________________________ Discussion mailing list Discussion@lists.fsfe.org https://lists.fsfe.org/mailman/listinfo/discussion This mailing list is covered by the FSFE's Code of Conduct. All participants are kindly asked to be excellent to each other: https://fsfe.org/about/codeofconduct
