Freesoftwareenjoyer

@Freesoftwareenjoyer@lemmy.world

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Freesoftwareenjoyer ,

That is just not true. Free Software developers still have the copyright to whatever they make and nobody says that they can't make money - it's free as in freedom, not price. https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/e35a17af-bcd9-4cb7-8f09-4ec55abc7987.png

Freesoftwareenjoyer ,

It's always funny how on Lemmy everything is always capitalism's fault and the solution to every problem is socialism.

Freesoftwareenjoyer ,

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/c89d1359-9757-4bc6-a122-66b60317e9c3.png

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html

Freesoftwareenjoyer ,

Backend developer.

Freesoftwareenjoyer ,

XKCD 2228

https://xkcd.com/2228

Freesoftwareenjoyer OP ,

Thought so! I guess people just assume that whenever they see something on GitHub.

Freesoftwareenjoyer OP ,

Ah, true. I didn't know about Grayjay, though. It doesn't seem to mention this on their website or GitLab, but I can see that the license is proprietary. Ok, their license does use the words "open source". You are not even allowed to edit the code! Crazy and a huge shame for something coming from people in the right to repair movement. Software freedom should be one of their goals. But I guess they think you should be able to control hardware, but not software.

Freesoftwareenjoyer ,

It glosses over the issue of microcode at the expense of security which ultimately affects privacy.

I'm pretty sure the FSF doesn't say that you shouldn't be allowed to update/changed the firmware. They just say it shouldn't be a part of the operating system. The OS needs to be entirely libre with no compromises.

It would be smarter to focus on arm and risc-v as many of those chips are compatible with free software in some way while being highly efficient and portable.

Most devices with those chips require a custom kernel and most likely proprietary firmware (at least for WiFi and Bluetooth). I don't think you can install an official Debian build from debian.org on a Raspberry PI for example (on RPI 4 you could by using some custom BIOS, but I'm not sure if everything will work then - https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi4). Almost nobody talks about this, though. I have a PinePhone and it runs a custom kernel maintained by the community and its future is uncertain (https://blog.mobian.org/posts/2023/09/30/paperweight-dilemma/). In PinePhone Pro at lot of the patches to the Linux kernel have been upstreamed, but some things are still missing. Librem 5 developers tried to get a RYF certificate, but I'm not sure what happened there. So those kinds of devices can't save us right now.

Freesoftwareenjoyer ,

For instance, why is this community modded by me? You would of though that they would of monitored the state of Reddit and jumped on board Lemmy. Its things like these that show that the fsf is blind.

First of all, thanks for doing this. Some months ago when I searched for a community like this, I couldn't find anything. I'm not sure that the FSF can do much more, though.

Richard Stallman still travels the world to give talks about Free Software in multiple languages. They have a conference called Libre Planet. I wish there were more of Richard's talks on YouTube, but other than that I don't know what else they could do that would matter.

It's just very hard to reach people with such a complicated message. I think that's why a lot more people have heard of the term Open Source than Free Software. Even on Lemmy most discussions are about "Open Source" and "Linux". When I commented on some proprietary app being made for Lemmy saying that it was unethical, people downvoted me. They don't understand when I say that users deserve rights and they think Free Software just means you want to get something for free (I don't think it even has anything to do with the word "free", btw - they often think the same way about "Open Source").

It's a very complicated topic to explain to an average person, even to developers (many Free Software projects have a Discord server or use other proprietary software). We still should try whenever we can, but this should really be taught at schools. I doubt the FSF can suddenly become much better at this, no matter what they do. If you think there is a gap, we could try to fill it ourselves (and maybe we should), but we probably aren't gonna build a big audience either.

Also, I just remembered there were some talks about promoting Free Software in last Libre Planet: https://media.libreplanet.org/u/libreplanet/m/questions-are-the-answer-how-to-have-deeper-conversations-with-anyone-about-free-software-philosophy/

Freesoftwareenjoyer ,

Oh, I see, but I'm guessing you can't use normal Debian on it? https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/Quartz64_Software_Releases

Freesoftwareenjoyer ,

If you are still interested, I have the original PinePhone. I've been using it as my only phone for around 2 years. It's slow (I think the hardware is from 2010?) and not very good in general, but I don't want to use a proprietary operating system, so I'm stuck with it.

PinePhone Pro is way faster, has better cameras, but it's still not gonna be as fast as a modern phone (I think it uses 2016 hardware?). It has worse batter life than the original PinePhone, unless you add some proprietary firmware (https://xnux.eu/log/083.html - note that this is an old post) - then it's supposed to be similar to the original. The original PinePhone lasts a day if you don't use it much. If you use it, it will probably only last a few hours. If you buy the keyboard case with builtin battery, it will have 3x as much power, but the case is very thick (https://web.archive.org/web/20230523083341/https://phal.io/tech/pinephone-keyboard-review). But there is at least one other extended battery case that you can buy or 3D print.

A true Linux phone that can be flashed with Mobian (mobile Debian) or any other Linux distro.

PinePhones need custom kernel patches. For PinePhone Pro a lot of them have been upstreamed to the Linux kernel, but if you want everything to work, it might still require a custom kernel. So I'm not sure what experience you will get out of a normal distro (I suspect some things might not work). But you can install Mobian, postmarketOS, Manjaro ARM and more. Those are the mobile distros that most people use.

Note that Mobian has 2 proprietary firmware packages (https://packages.mobian.org), so technically it's not a fully free distro. They are probably necessary for WiFi and Bluetooth to work. I don't know how free other distros are, but I doubt that the other ones that I've mentioned are any better.

possible dead development of Mobian

Pine64 only develops the hardware and all software is developed by the community or Purism (the company that makes Librem 5). Mobian isn't dying, the problem is with the kernel for the original PinePhone (which is maintained only by the community). But there is nothing to worry about for the PinePhone Pro according to Mobian devs: https://blog.mobian.org/posts/2023/09/30/paperweight-dilemma/

good gps navigation

I don't use it much, but last I checked mine, it was off by around 1km. PinePhone Pro uses the same modem, so I don't know if it's better. But maybe things got better if you use newer versions of software.

I think if you buy it, it should be with the expectation that you are buying a toy to play around with. Because it's hard to say if it will work out for you. I've heard that PinePhone Pro has issues with call audio quality. In my PinePhone, modem sometimes doesn't wake up from suspend, so I have a script to reset it. So sometimes you will have to use workarounds to improve things. If you don't use a stable distro, some things might also break from time to time.

Also, the modem runs proprietary firmware, which has some vulnerability that can be exploited locally. There is a libre replacement for one of those parts of the firmware (the rest will still be proprietary), but it's not shipped with the phone, so you will have to flash it yourself: https://github.com/the-modem-distro/pinephone_modem_sdk

Software is another topic. You probably won't be able to use Signal for example (requires an Android app), unless you use Waydroid, which lets you run Android apps.

Freesoftwareenjoyer ,

I definitely am eyeing a Linux phone but I don’t think I’ll buy one until a lot of the bugs are worked out on the next model, maybe the Pinephone Pro v2 or whatever the next one is.

Keep in mind that when it comes out, it's probably gonna take at least 1-2 years for it to be good. PinePhone Pro has been around for 1-2 years it seems and I assume it's pretty usable now. I'm not up to date on latest development, though. It's kind of a weird thing, because a few months of progress can make a big difference - something you saw a few months ago might be outdated now (if you use latest software - but things like Mobian Stable will stay the same). But overall it's a slow process.

Right now I just use stock android with all Fdroid apps, nothing proprietary at least as far as apps go. And with Rethink DNS/firewall it pretty much blocks 100% of Google’s telemetry. Seems to be a happy medium before I can switch to an alternate like graphene, e/os or preferably a better hardware linux phone.

That sounds pretty good compared to what most people do! There are also phones that run Ubuntu Touch, which uses an Android kernel I think. I don't know if that's better or worse than Graphene, though.

Freesoftwareenjoyer ,

You think it was just a fake promise? I haven't thought about it, but it's certainly possible.

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