Am Mittwoch 08 Mai 2019 15:05:53 schrieb Paul Boddie: > > * 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
Thanks for the link. There is much information out there, it stresses my point from my other post that it would be cool to have an overview from the perspective of Free Software that is kept current. > As far as Sailfish is concerned, I haven't seen any indication of it being > completely Free Software. No, it isn't. But this is not the main question, the question is does it help to promote more software freedom? And in my bottom line, it is. I also know several people with Sailfish OS devices. Most of them work well and the main point is diversity. Apart from Google's GNU/Linux distribution called "Android", there is almost no other one people could by if they wanted to. Actually "Android" is a big success for Free Software as most consumer devices now come with a Free Software operating system by default. :) But we all know that there are drawbacks if one company dominates this and this is why it is important to have viable competition. Sailfish is a viable competition and comes with more Free Software by default than most Android phones (I'D guess. ;)) Note that Sailfish X can only work on devices that can be unlocked, and if Sailfish X works on them, then chances are high other operating systems will, too. Back to Sailfish OS, yes they are treating the community not as good as they could, but technically with their rpm based system, they offer much more possibilities what to do with the phone as you can use other Free Software products more easily. I know there is documentation about the various parts which a Free Software and which are not - yet. I don't have the link at hand, but one starting point is https://sailfishos.org/wiki/Open_Source > like a continuation of aspects of Nokia's dubious policies with regards to > keeping some software proprietary for "competitive advantage". Yes, this is a business decision that I don't fully like. Still I'd rather have them around as a company than losing their progress for diversity and parts of the phone stack. You'll have to accept that they need to gain income somewhere and probably don't see other approaches. [SOCs] > 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, Not being an expert, I've spoked to people I'll regards as knowledable and heard credible reports that MediaTek has improved and is further improving. It makes sense on a number of levels. Companies like Qualcomm also had to learn that maintaining drivers as Free Software in the mainline Linux is better for them in the long run. They all want mindshare of developers. MediaTek seems to be getting this message as well, but I don't know details. It is credible to me, because there are apprearing LineageOS ports for newer MediaTek SOCs. The old MediaTek which was used in the Fairphone 1 certainly will never get the drivers, but newer ones may. (Again it would be cool to have a nice overview with links to the original information.) Best Regards, Bernhard -- FSFE -- Founding Member Support our work for Free Software: blogs.fsfe.org/bernhard https://fsfe.org/donate | contribute
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