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[random idea] Rather than worry endlessly about SOCs and radios not being open enough, why not build a protocol on top of blackbox components that eliminates, t
by alain94040 8y ago
[random idea] Rather than worry endlessly about SOCs and radios not being open enough, why not build a protocol on top of blackbox components that eliminates, through some kind of encryption, the need for openness?
To push the argument to the extreme, even if you find a radio component that matches your requirement of free, it's still going to talk to a radio tower that you don't control, running a software stack that you don't approve. This problem never ends, unless you imagine some end-to-end channel that you control, and then you don't care about the lower layer's lack of openness.
Does that make any sense?
- comesee 8y agoI agree with you, but the issue here is that in traditional phone architectures, the baseband processor could interrupt and monitor the execution of the main CPU (for efficiency purposes). So theoretically you couldn't be certain that your plaintext wasn't being exfiltrated. With a separate baseband, it's a lot harder (but possible) for a blackbox CPU to exfiltrate your info.
- ufo 8y agoThe problem with the proprietary components is that it makes it very difficult for third party developers to install their own versions of the operating system. The complex system of mandatory proprietary firmware is the reason why the custom ROM ecosststem is so fragmented and unreliable.