Re: The future of mobile computing.

[Garreau\, Alexandre]

On 2014-12-10 at 10:19, Brandon Invergo wrote:
> There is the Replicant project for making a libre Android (it's not an
> official GNU project),

Yet it follows the GNU philosophy of freeing everything and therefore
doesn’t need to be a GNU project to be actively encouraged by GNU and
FSF ;)

> but I think even there you are stuck with proprietary drivers to run
> some essential hardware bits.  Could anyone who has used Replicant
> confirm/deny/elaborate on that?

Discussing with its founder (GNUtoo, I don’t know if he’s on this list),
I know Replicant is 100% free, if not everything on your phone is
supported by free driver, you’ll have to deal without it. There’s
CyanogenMod which replaces all the most “important” (high level) parts
by free alternatives (free replacement of libraries, F-Droid, free apps,
etc.), but keeps most proprietary drivers so it’s installable and usable
on most phones (still better than the default Android, more hackable,
yet not secure).

Replicant is supported by only some phones, not always completely, and I
know only one or two phones are really acceptable: others give to the
detached and proprietary modem the control on CPU, RAM, IOs, etc. and
hence is not secure (especially in the post-Snowden era: NSA can take
the complete control of phone only by sending microwaves on the phone).

The advantage is that with Replicant on a decent phone, you almost get
something as secure as a normal (understand: not recent, fancy,
SecureBoot and/or tablet laptops) computer. If you want you can just
shut down modem and try to takes a little connection for your jabber
(passing trough Tor, of course) by DNS tunnels trough free hotspots
around. That’s great for your privacy.

I mean, with free software, you’re getting a phone more secure than most
of presidents, dictators and kings/queens on Earth, that’s amazing! :p
If Merkel used that, she wouldn’t had made spying of German state
possible x)

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