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OpenMoko: Ten Years After (vanille.de)
Michael Lauer, member of the core team at OpenMoko, a project that sought to create a family of open source mobile phones -- which included the hardware specs and the Linux-based OS -- has shared the inside story of what the project wanted to do and why it failed. From his blog post: For the 10th anniversary since the legendary OpenMoko announcement at the "Open Source in Mobile" (7th of November 2006 in Amsterdam), I've been meaning to write an anthology or -- as Paul Fertser suggested on #openmoko-cdevel -- an obituary. I've been thinking about objectively describing the motivation, the momentum, how it all began and -- sadly -- ended. I did even plan to include interviews with Sean, Harald, Werner, and some of the other veterans. But as with oh so many projects of (too) wide scope this would probably never be completed. As November 2016 passed without any progress, I decided to do something different instead. Something way more limited in scope, but something I can actually finish. My subjective view of the project, my participation, and what I think is left behind: My story, as OpenMoko employee #2. On top of that you will see a bunch of previously unreleased photos (bear with me, I'm not a good photographer and the camera sucked as well). [....] Right now my main occupation is writing software for Apple's platforms -- and while it's nice to work on apps using a massive set of luxury frameworks and APIs, you're locked and sandboxed within the software layers Apple allows you. I'd love to be able to work on an open source Linux-based middleware again. However, the sad truth is that it looks like there is no business case anymore for a truly open platform based on custom-designed hardware, since people refuse to spend extra money for tweakability, freedom, and security. Despite us living in times where privacy is massively endangered.
However, the sad truth is that it looks like there is no business case anymore
I'm not so sure. Yesterday, a female coworker showed me her Fairphone, then proceeded to completely disassemble it, right in front of my eyes. I couldn't contain my enthousiasm, but it was very remarkable. She told me she bought the phone then a couple of months in, dropped it and broke the screen. She ordered a new screen and replaced it herself.
take a deep breath... (and people with moderator rights: leave that "troll/flamebait -1" button alone please)... the problem with the fairphone has been that they've been massively ignorant of the consequences of software lock-in. yes, sure, great: they tackled the (hard) problem of "fair wages", and conflict minerals: these are things that any coop worth the "Fair Trade" salt would do, and it's good to see that they did it. ... BUT....
for the first fairphone they did only that: tackle the "Fair Trade" concepts. people loved it. including various extremely prominent software libre developers and advocates. at first. we then warned them, "hang on a minute, you're going for 'Fair' but you've completely ignored the "UnFair-ness" of the proprietary operating system that you've bought - lock stock and binary-only GPL-violating criminally-infringing barrel from frickin MEDIATEK of all frickin people, and are about to get yourself into a shit-load of trouble when it comes to people wanting to upgrade. or fix security flaws".
response: absolutely f***-all from the Fairtrade team. so we stopped bothering to communicate with them, knowing that they (and their customers) would just have to experience the train-wreck for themselves. ...and what happens? *EXACTLY* as they were warned, customers 18 months down the line who were delighted to have bought the Fairphone 1 were getting REALLY PISSED OFF, feeling that they'd been totally deceived, when their requests for firmware upgrades to fix MAJOR known security vulnerabilities went completely unanswered.
why did those requests go unanswered? well... because AS THEY HAD BEEN WARNED, the chinese factory was under NDA with Mediatek (in direct violation of the GPL) and had *only* been given an illegal copyright-violating *BINARY ONLY* version of android (containing linux kernel source code and so also a second GPL violation). there *was* no source code, and there certainly weren't going to be any updates, at any time.
(btw note that because it has not obtained - and cannot obtain - the source code for the Fairphone 1, Fairphone is still in criminal infringement of Copyright law and has lost its rights to sell any products that use the linux kernel....)
now let's fast-forward to the Fairphone 2, which is now sold on the basis of its modularity. it's fantastic that it can be repaired, just as you say, cerberusss, but can the *OPERATING SYSTEM* be quotes repaired quotes?
if there's a massive security flaw like the one that left 900 hundred MILLION qualcomm--based devices completely vulnerable last year happens again, can the people who paid well north of $EUR 500 get it fixed immediately, rather than be at the mercy and whim of a company that ITSELF has *ABSOLUTELY NO CONTROL* over the software it's providing with the device that it's selling?
of course they cannot.
this is what michael is trying to get across to people. *it doesn't matter* even if you bought a "Fair" phone, with "Fair" hardware, and "Fair" wages, and "Fair terms for the workers" or anything else that's "Fair" if, just like *any other* device which is *not* under the "Fairtrade" brand you *still* have to chuck the whole fricking device into landfill because it became totally useless, virus-ridden and was instrumental in emptying your bank account, is it? that's not exactly "Fair", is it, ehn? :)