LWN.net News from the source
HTC: no more locked-down phones
Posted May 27, 2011 14:07 UTC (Fri) by Trelane (subscriber, #56877) [Link]
More details would definitely be nice, like when the changeover will happen. I'm going to guess it's on new phones being released, and not existing phones which are still being manufactured.
HTC: no more locked-down phones
Posted May 27, 2011 14:36 UTC (Fri) by Trelane (subscriber, #56877) [Link]
Basically, there's a twitter post which just points back to the facebook post.
It's perhaps (I hope they used different passwords for the different accounts) less likely then that the post is not real.
HTC: no more locked-down phones
Posted May 27, 2011 18:34 UTC (Fri) by JoeF (subscriber, #4486) [Link]
HTC: no more locked-down phones
Posted May 27, 2011 14:09 UTC (Fri) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
HTC: no more locked-down phones
Posted May 27, 2011 15:22 UTC (Fri) by zzxtty (guest, #45175) [Link]
HTC: no more locked-down phones
Posted May 27, 2011 20:50 UTC (Fri) by ttonino (subscriber, #4073) [Link]
Samsung is good at timely releases of kernel source (minus driver source). HTC seems to delay this. SE, I don't know.
On the closed side, we seem to have Motorola. All the other brands LG, Huawei, ZTE, Acer, Dell, Garmin-Asus, Gigabyte: I have no idea. But I would be happy to see the market moving to 'open'!
HTC: no more locked-down phones
Posted May 27, 2011 23:18 UTC (Fri) by swetland (guest, #63414) [Link]
Nexus S by Samsung supports "fastboot oem unlock" for bootloader unlocking / system reflashing, and is supported "out of the box" by AOSP these days. Proprietary components (opengl libraries, wifi/bt firmware, modem interface library, etc) are available for download and inclusion in your build.
Nexus S binary bits (please note that "drivers" is misleading here -- all kernel drivers for these devices are GPLv2, full source available): http://code.google.com/android/nexus/drivers.html
Building for devices from AOSP: http://source.android.com/source/building-devices.html
The Motorola Xoom supports "fastboot oem unlock", but that will be more exciting when Ice Cream Sandwich is released (providing open source support for that platform).
Sony-Ericsson is supporting some level of bootloader unlocking on some devices, but I'm not sure where the details are off the top of my head.
HTC: no more locked-down phones
Posted May 28, 2011 4:36 UTC (Sat) by leoc (subscriber, #39773) [Link]
I don't really care what Sony's "official " policy is here. After the ps3 linux fiasco I wouldn't trust them.
thrust Sony?
Posted May 28, 2011 6:06 UTC (Sat) by freddyh (guest, #21133) [Link]
HTC: no more locked-down phones
Posted May 28, 2011 11:44 UTC (Sat) by job (guest, #670) [Link]
On the other hand, if you intend to boycott everything Sony owns a share of you should do it properly and find out which those companies are, not just play games with names.
Sony boycott
Posted Jun 2, 2011 11:10 UTC (Thu) by NRArnot (subscriber, #3033) [Link]
I'm not an absolutist on these things, it's shades of grey. I'd be more willing to buy something Sony-Ericcson if I couldn't find a satisfactory alternative, than something Sony.
OT: Samsung, Motorola
Posted May 29, 2011 10:32 UTC (Sun) by debacle (subscriber, #7114) [Link]
OT: Samsung, Motorola
Posted Jun 9, 2011 16:42 UTC (Thu) by endecotp (guest, #36428) [Link]
I have a Defy. Physically it's great - I bought it after getting my previous phone a bit damp turned it into a paperweight. The software, though, is absolutely dire, and ancient, and absolutely not "open" in any way at all. Also because it's a less popular phone than all the non-rugged models, it doesn't get much attention from the crackers and modders. So for now, I don't recommend it.
What free operating systems are available?
Posted May 27, 2011 14:25 UTC (Fri) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]
With Replicant, when the hardware becomes available (non-restricted), the software is ready and waiting.
For me, a smartphone purchase is dependent on nice hardware appearing on Replicant's list of supported hardware.
(I was looking around for other 100% free software systems for phones, but I haven't found any.)
What free operating systems are available?
Posted May 27, 2011 15:12 UTC (Fri) by oever (subscriber, #987) [Link]
For those that do not know this: Replicant is a 100% Free Software distribution of Android. I'm not replacing my N900, with which I'm still very happy, anytime soon. The number of applications is still growing and it's a more familiar form of Linux. Nevertheless, I think it is fantastic that people are taking the effort of making FOSS distribution of Android.
What free operating systems are available?
Posted May 30, 2011 8:47 UTC (Mon) by lamikr (guest, #2289) [Link]
In addition of that it's also possible to install the u-boot to N900 flash. After that you can select whether to boot Meego from SD or Maemo from Flash.
... And third option is also to overwrite Maemo from Flash with Meego.
There were just Meego conference in SF and we released for that a new images for which we managed to smash a lot of bugs from Meego. I would say that this is first fully open source public release where the phohe is actually in quite usable state... Things like UI for gprs connections, opening etc... are still not in the image, but are planned to be added soon.
Grap the san francisco release from: (bz2 has rootfs and *vmlinuz* has the kernel)
http://repository.maemo.org/meego/n900-de/archive/1.1.99....
or newer daily images:
http://repository.maemo.org/meego/n900-de/daily/
DE images are made by using community obs:
https://build.pub.meego.com/
and we do push fixes made there to packages also to meego's official obs:
https://build.meego.com as well as upstream.
On irc you can find us from freenode/meego-arm
lamikr
What free operating systems are available?
Posted May 27, 2011 16:44 UTC (Fri) by tetromino (subscriber, #33846) [Link]
> This is why Replicant (100% free software) is more interesting than systems which use binary blobs and proprietary software to get broader hardware support.Non sequitur. Locked bootloaders and the availability of free drivers are orthogonal issues. A manufacturer could opt for a 100% free Android distro and lock the bootloader (GPL2 has no tivoization clause). Or use proprietary drivers and not lock the bootloader (which is what HTC is apparently planning to do). Or use proprietary drivers and lock the bootloader (which is what most Android phone manufacturers currently do).
"can be treated separately" != "unrelated"
Posted May 28, 2011 10:17 UTC (Sat) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]
When the goal is to create a 100% free software phone, these two issues are interdependent, not orthogonal. We need both. (For the technical work of fixing these problems, there they're orthogonal.)
And even where the tech work is orthogonal, they're still related: the bootloader being free is more likely to increase the interest in writing free drivers.
What free operating systems are available?
Posted May 27, 2011 17:03 UTC (Fri) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link]
Do you also insist that all web sites that you surf use exclusively free software? And that your car, the aircraft you fly on, etc, run only free software?
Stallman himself used to be pragmatic about these things: it was ok to use proprietary systems (like Sun) in the absence of free platforms, and even to link GPL'd programs to proprietary libraries like Sun's libc. But that was the 80s, and this is now... For most of us, it is better to build on a mostly-free system like Android than to reject it entirely in favour of vapourware (vapour-hardware?) And, indeed, even on desktop systems, it was Linus's pragmatism, not Stallman's dogmatism, that enabled truly free operating systems to arise. (And if Linux hadn't occurred, there were the BSDs, which are dependent on the GNU toolchain but on little else.)
Fundamentalists -- religious or otherwise -- don't get to change the world. They only get to preach to the converted.
What free operating systems are available?
Posted May 27, 2011 18:41 UTC (Fri) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link]
I'm sorry to be the one to break this to you, but we've heard this all before. Like after RMS called cell phones "Stalin's Dream" and he was broadly reviled, and then it turned out they were recording your location at all times and allowing applications to pass that data on.
Some of us are involved in making wireless Open Hardware that is really manufactured, like HPSDR, and we're not going back to the old paradigm in which we depend upon proprietary manufacturers. We don't have to do that any longer. The next step after HPSDR is mobile. We'll get there, without your help.
What free operating systems are available?
Posted May 27, 2011 18:54 UTC (Fri) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]
What free operating systems are available?
Posted May 27, 2011 19:12 UTC (Fri) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link]
HPSDR is not targeted to telephony, it is also not targeted to the frequency band used for mobile telephony. It is the mobile VHF/UHF version that comes next that would potentially have this capability. Community-driven SDR platforms are not the only path to an open phone. However, I think you might be missing a complication of mobile telephones.
Linux does not generally run on the same CPU as the GSM stack. There is an ARM9 running the PDA, and an ARM7 running the GSM stack and some real-time OS. These, to this day, may still communicate using the Hayes Modem protocol from the 1970's. Yes, when you dial the phone some software sends +++ATDT510 to the ARM7 side of the platform.
Thus, we can be delivered a phone that is entirely open for replacement of the PDA software, in which the GSM stack is still locked down. Which would mostly be OK for Free Software.
The mobile platform is targeted to replacing two-way radio communications at VHF/UHF, still not telephony. But once you have an SDR platform with full-duplex capability at UHF, you have most of what is required of a cellular telephone.
I have been very impressed by the good hardware coming out of the Open Hardware movement. It seems that they have a better success rate in making real devices that get manufactured and sold than much larger-staffed commercial projects like OpenMoko.
What free operating systems are available?
Posted May 27, 2011 19:25 UTC (Fri) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]
What free operating systems are available?
Posted May 27, 2011 19:34 UTC (Fri) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link]
I am very dubious that carriers are going to continue to accept phones with the baseband processor not locked down. They only do so today only because we haven't had good software to put there until recently. So, I am not counting on buying a new off-the-shelf smartphone with this capability.
What free operating systems are available?
Posted May 27, 2011 22:03 UTC (Fri) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]
What free operating systems are available?
Posted May 28, 2011 16:08 UTC (Sat) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link]
I'm not sure what you meant to say.
So far, we've only certified modifiable SDR radios with FCC as test equipment, if there is any chance that they can be made to receive cellular frequencies.
FCC type-approval for consumer receivers, by requirement of the Electronic Communications and Privacy Act of 1986, requires that they not be modifiable to intercept cellular phone calls. Obviously this presents a problem for cellular equipment with modifiable baseband processors.
As far as I can tell, a modifiable baseband is not something the manufacturer can give you legally. That this has had gaps in enforcement up to now is only because we didn't have good software to run there.
To have a cell phone with modifiable baseband sold as consumer equipment will not just require a change with an FCC rule-making, but a change to a bill passed by congress. Yes, it really is Open-Source-hostile law.
What free operating systems are available?
Posted May 28, 2011 17:27 UTC (Sat) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]
I'm glad that people are working on open radio hardware. It just doesn't seem to be either a prerequisite or an aid to providing an open (as in software) phone.
Carriers "allowing" free phones on their networks
Posted May 28, 2011 21:00 UTC (Sat) by smurf (subscriber, #17840) [Link]
Apparently, European carriers don't use IMSI/IMEI whitelists.
So the question whether a carrier will allow some phone on their network doesn't even arise.
As long as you have a SIM card in there, or behave as if you do (there's hardware out there which can forward the phone2SIM interface across the Internet), i.e. as long as you actually pay for your network usage, the operators could care less.
Disclaimer: I have no idea whether that's still true, and/or true in other parts of the world.
Carriers "allowing" free phones on their networks
Posted May 28, 2011 21:29 UTC (Sat) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]
Carriers "allowing" free phones on their networks
Posted May 29, 2011 0:13 UTC (Sun) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link]
We wish that cell phone service in the U.S. was more like Europe. On the other hand, carriers in Europe are doing everything they can to try to turn it into the U.S. Just try paying your SIM fee online without first registering a local address. And after that they implement credit card filters based on your country of residence. I find it more difficult to use a local SIM rather than roaming every time I'm in Europe. You can still buy pay cards over the counter, in many cases. I hope that lasts.
Carriers "allowing" free phones on their networks
Posted May 30, 2011 20:16 UTC (Mon) by pkern (subscriber, #32883) [Link]
What free operating systems are available?
Posted May 27, 2011 23:21 UTC (Fri) by swetland (guest, #63414) [Link]
The big shift we've seen in the last few years is full linux support for the non-baseband core in multi-core solutions, and better linux driver support for the SoC peripherals. Still a long ways to go, but a lot of the silicon/modem vendors are heading in a good direction.
What free operating systems are available?
Posted May 28, 2011 3:03 UTC (Sat) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link]
What free operating systems are available?
Posted May 28, 2011 15:29 UTC (Sat) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link]
I don't know of any devices that actually have the non-commercial license applied. I'll check with the team. But in any case the only thing the licenses apply to is the plans, not commercial manufacture of the devices, because schematics are not copyrightable and these devices have not been patented.
What free operating systems are available?
Posted May 28, 2011 15:31 UTC (Sat) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link]
Someone seems to have applied the wrong license, uniformly, to all projects in the wiki.
What free operating systems are available?
Posted Jun 2, 2011 13:47 UTC (Thu) by wookey (subscriber, #5501) [Link]
What free operating systems are available?
Posted Jun 2, 2011 16:16 UTC (Thu) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link]
17.92.102(b) In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work.
What free operating systems are available?
Posted Jun 2, 2011 16:49 UTC (Thu) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]
Do you have a succinct explanation of what that means to a lawyer?
To a non-lawyer, it appears to be saying that a number of things, like software or recipes cannot be copyrighted. Obviously that interpretation is incorrect in the case of software, fairly obviously in the case of recipes - you can rewrite a recipe, but not just copy it verbatim - but I can't figure out where that interpretation goes wrong or what the clause is supposed to mean.
What free operating systems are available?
Posted Jun 2, 2011 16:59 UTC (Thu) by sfeam (subscriber, #2841) [Link]
Copyright on a description or diagram of a tractor does not constitute ownership of the idea "tractor" or limit the rights of others to build, use or describe tractors in other words.
What free operating systems are available?
Posted Jun 2, 2011 17:03 UTC (Thu) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link]
I'm not a lawyer, just an expert witness in copyright cases and consultant to legal counsel.
In the case of software, the functional elements can't be copyrighted. Only the "artistic" ones. There is a case called Computer Associates Inc. v. Altai which goes deeply into this, and a pretty good article about it in Wikipedia. In general it means that APIs aren't copyrightable, and any piece of code that must be done in a particular way (for example because that's the only way that the hardware works), or is done in a standard way across the industry (patterns and algorithms) is not copyrightable.
What free operating systems are available?
Posted May 27, 2011 21:07 UTC (Fri) by boog (subscriber, #30882) [Link]
What free operating systems are available?
Posted May 28, 2011 3:44 UTC (Sat) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link]
http://shr-project.org/trac/wiki/Devices
http://wiki.freesmartphone.org/index.php/HardwareComparison
http://wiki.debian.org/Smartphone
http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Distributions
SHR (based on FSO and OpenEmbedded) seems to be the most ported so far. As a Debian developer I'd really like to see it on more devices but nothing happened so far. QtMoko folks are thinking of porting it to the FSO middleware.
What free operating systems are available?
Posted May 29, 2011 10:35 UTC (Sun) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]
Debian for smartphones would be great (if all the binary blobs are removed from Debian's Linux). I hope the project gathers momentum.
SHR seems to have lots of hardware support, but I can't find anything on their site to say if they use binary blobs or proprietary software (drivers etc.).
What free operating systems are available?
Posted May 31, 2011 1:41 UTC (Tue) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link]
Yes, all the binary blobs in Linux (and the FreeBSD kernel) were removed from Debian main for the release of Debian squeeze. If you find any in a later release, please file a bug.
SHR spawned out of the OpenMoko community and is OpenEmbedded based so I assume they won't be using non-free drivers. I'll try to get them to respond here about it though.
HTC: no more locked-down phones
Posted May 27, 2011 15:07 UTC (Fri) by yann.morin.1998 (subscriber, #54333) [Link]
Phone locking
Posted May 27, 2011 16:12 UTC (Fri) by rvfh (subscriber, #31018) [Link]
I think the Iphone has one more level of lock linked to Itunes (which you need to jailbreak)
HTC: no more locked-down phones
Posted May 27, 2011 16:27 UTC (Fri) by Shachar (subscriber, #67086) [Link]
Getting root on an unlocked phone is, for all intents and purposes, trivial. This has nothing to do with operator lock (i.e. - the phone only working on a certain operator's network), which is done via the radio firmware.
Shachar
HTC: no more locked-down phones
Posted May 27, 2011 16:34 UTC (Fri) by Trelane (subscriber, #56877) [Link]
Getting perhaps, but not necessarily maintaining and maintaining without bricking or lockout in the presence of a hostile software provider.
(Of course, if your bootloader is unlocked, you can just use different software)
HTC: no more locked-down phones
Posted May 27, 2011 17:53 UTC (Fri) by smurf (subscriber, #17840) [Link]
Still, the vast majority of customers won't bother.
Meanwhile, unless HTC decides to give me some way to unlock my Legend, I'll continue to treat this topic as the digital equivalent of vaporware.
HTC: no more locked-down phones
Posted May 27, 2011 21:11 UTC (Fri) by elanthis (guest, #6227) [Link]
HTC: no more locked-down phones
Posted May 27, 2011 19:10 UTC (Fri) by rickmoen (subscriber, #6943) [Link]
It's been a consistent pattern: The telco mass-purchases an otherwise reasonable smartphone but then SIM-locks it to work only with that one telco, and in some cases Carrier ID-locks it so that its bootloader will refuse to boot if you have reflashed the firmware, and justifies that sort of customer-control on grounds that they've financially subsidised the low retail price. Which of course they then make back through jacked-up service rates and deliberate lack of competition because the customer feels locked in.
Fair enough. End-run that entire syndrome by eschewing the telco as a hardware vendor. Plenty of decent smartphones are available at only slightly higher pricepoints from elsewhere (including their actual manufacturers) with fewer or no lockdown measures.
As Bruce points out, there's still some amount of proprietary bullshit, even at that, so work remains to be done (as is common with embedded Linux).
Rick Moen
rick@linuxmafia.com
HTC: no more locked-down phones
Posted May 31, 2011 19:36 UTC (Tue) by rahvin (subscriber, #16953) [Link]
HTC: no more locked-down phones
Posted Jun 5, 2011 11:52 UTC (Sun) by JanC_ (subscriber, #34940) [Link]
HTC: no more locked-down phones
Posted May 27, 2011 17:46 UTC (Fri) by arekm (subscriber, #4846) [Link]
HTC: no more locked-down phones
Posted May 27, 2011 17:56 UTC (Fri) by bats999 (guest, #70285) [Link]
Would be nice, though.
HTC: no more locked-down phones
Posted May 27, 2011 19:05 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
It's easy to be skeptical, but even if it turns out to be bogus the fact that they are mouthing freedom and they realize it's attractive statements to make is a positive thing.
HTC: no more locked-down phones
Posted May 27, 2011 21:07 UTC (Fri) by rgmoore (✭ supporter ✭, #75) [Link]
Maybe "overwhelmed by customer feedback" means "gotten too many complaints from people who have bricked their phones trying to unlock them". Yes, HTC can stick a big warning on their phones that you void the warranty by trying to unlock them, but that doesn't mean people won't tie up their customer service line when something goes wrong. If the telcos don't mind selling phones with unlocked bootloaders, it's probably easier on HTC to sell them that way because it removes one thing people will do with their phones that's likely to mess them up.
HTC: no more locked-down phones
Posted May 31, 2011 20:08 UTC (Tue) by rfunk (subscriber, #4054) [Link]
First, HTC has historically been the best OEM about providing timely Android updates after Google does a new release, despite HTC's addition of the "Sense" user-interface customizations.
Previous HTC phones, particularly the Evo 4G, have been popular with people who root and re-flash their phones with custom firmware such as CyanogenMod.
Sometime in June, HTC is scheduled to release a powerful successor to the Evo 4G, the Evo 3D. (Obviously HTC doesn't share Apple's product-naming department.)
A couple weeks ago, enough information leaked out about the Evo 3D to confirm that it would have a cryptographically-signed bootloader, effectively preventing the user from replacing the stock firmware with third-party firmware no matter how much rooting is done. (You'd need HTC's private key to do that, just like trying to forge someone's PGP signature.)
When that information came out there was a huge uproar in the Android development/customization community. There were petitions, and people contacted HTC directly.
So yes, there actually was "overwhelming customer feedback".
HTC: no more locked-down phones, but...
Posted May 28, 2011 4:28 UTC (Sat) by pr1268 (subscriber, #24648) [Link]
No more locked phones, but now Microsoft gets 5 USD whenever one buys an HTC Android. That just doesn't sound right...
HTC: no more locked-down phones, but...
Posted May 28, 2011 6:49 UTC (Sat) by Hausvib6 (guest, #70606) [Link]
HTC: no more locked-down phones, but...
Posted May 28, 2011 11:49 UTC (Sat) by job (guest, #670) [Link]
HTC: no more locked-down phones
Posted May 30, 2011 15:40 UTC (Mon) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link]
http://laforge.gnumonks.org/weblog/2011/05/30#20110530-ht...
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