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Read this about the #librephone by the #fsf. It's a great effort but as someone who has been involved in at least 3 different phone efforts - it's a daunting task.
The biggest problem is the modem which is a black box and trying to reverse engineer that is going to be quite the effort but there is also convincing the cell phone tower operators to accept it as well.
Without creating your own network of sorts - you're only going to have limited success. This project also needs to work with govts
@sri I wonder if there is any market whatsoever for a phone-shaped device that isn't technically a phone. Basically, iPod Touch. It seems like that would be a better starting point than a phone for an actual fully libre stack. Focus on high quality media playback and freeing yourself from big tech first but with a familiar form factor.
Combined with efforts for keeping Android phones out of landfills like postmarketOS, I feel like if anything was going to work, that would be it.
@cassidy Sure, you can do that. But people still want the convenience of ubiquitous access to the internet. So you still need a modem of sorts. I thought about using things like mesh networks where community provides the network. You need some kind of critical mass for that to work, but it is possible.
@sri but I guess this Librephone effort sounds more like a complement to efforts like postmarketOS than a whole new stack, so maybe it makes sense. I just don’t see it being something that an average consumer would ever care about; the end result is that they’ll get an Android phone, but probably worse overall. It would be more exciting to me to see a focus on something like GNOME for phone shaped devices, but maybe I’m a bit biased. 😅
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