Re: [Savannah-hackers-public] Projects for Android in GNU Savannah

[Martin Pool]

On 21 December 2011 10:34, Karl Berry <address@hidden> wrote:
> On the other hand, rms's essay
> (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/android-and-users-freedom.html) concludes
> Android remains effectively nonfree.  Which implies we shouldn't do any
> hosting.

That essay covers a lot of ground, and some aspects of it are
obsolete: the Android 3.x source is now public.  (There is an update
saying "the 4.0 source is now out" but it doesn't clarify the 3.0
source is also in their git mirror.)

Leaving that aside the main objection is that almost all Android
devices ship with non-free software: firmware, Google proprietary
apps, CarrierIQ, vendor shovelware.  But you can build a new image
from source leaving all of this out, and the firmware is comparable to
the firmware in all modern hardware.  You can run
<http://www.android-x86.org/> on a vm and then everything down to the
vm is free (the hardware beneath it is your own problem.)

-- 
Martin