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Isn't it more important for the community to fight against closed drivers at the level of legislation than engage in these endless reverse engineering battles?

Isn't it more important for the community to fight against closed drivers at the level of legislation than engage in these endless reverse engineering battles? Why don't all these Pinephone fans put more of their time and their money into funding an international effort to reverse closed blobs instead of repeated crowing over the success of their reverse engineering efforts and how willing they are to fork out good money on outdated hardware?

linmob 6y ago
We should definitely do that, but given that e.g. EU politicians still don’t understand why crypto-backdoors are a terrible idea, I have very little hope for succeeding on that level.
ryukafalz 6y ago
Personally, while that sounds appealing, I think we also still need the RE efforts. Hardware that's built to run free software out of the box is important, and it would be ideal if all those blobs were gone and we didn't have to worry about them. I'd absolutely be on board with an effort to enforce free drivers for the hardware we buy. But... in the short term, given that's not currently the case, we still need a way to move forward, right? And it's much easier to demonstrate why free drivers are important if you have working software to show for it. ("Hey, there's this whole phone OS and app ecosystem that we could run on this hardware if it had free drivers!") That said, yes, the endless reverse engineering required to keep the devices you've bought secure beyond the 2 or 3 years that the manufacturer supports it is ridiculous. I wish it weren't so. But given that that's unfortunately the situation we're in, I applaud anyone contributing to the RE efforts. (But I sure am keeping an eye on hardware that doesn't require it!)
megous 6y ago
What legislation? Mandating that all OS level software/firmware has to be under FOSS license? Mandating a release of detailed HW documentation (datasheets for all the parts + device schematics) prior to being able to sell devices would also be an interesting experiment.
fsflover 6y ago
> international effort to reverse closed blobs https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24916086 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24916086
seabird 6y ago
1.) You can't just open up every driver. I say this as somebody who works on proprietary firmware and software that is basically the future of our company. We operate in a market with thin margins, our control strategies are our advantage, and divulging any info past the bare minimum concerning them would result in mass counterfeiting and ultimately the death of our company. A lot of hardware development is like this. I wish it were some other way, because I know some people would be over the moon with what it would enable, but most of the time it's just not possible. 2.) I think you misunderstand what the Pinephone is -- if my memory serves me correctly, minus the modem blob, there is no need for reverse engineering, as the documentation for the hardware is available. You're talking about sending good money after bad ideas while advocating stopping the thing that has a clear path to victory (starting from a clean slate with something that has real documentation) in favor of something else that has a negligible chance of ever happening (having source be released for drivers but not getting any documentation for it).

linmob 6y ago

We should definitely do that, but given that e.g. EU politicians still don’t understand why crypto-backdoors are a terrible idea, I have very little hope for succeeding on that level.

ryukafalz 6y ago

Personally, while that sounds appealing, I think we also still need the RE efforts. Hardware that's built to run free software out of the box is important, and it would be ideal if all those blobs were gone and we didn't have to worry about them. I'd absolutely be on board with an effort to enforce free drivers for the hardware we buy. But... in the short term, given that's not currently the case, we still need a way to move forward, right? And it's much easier to demonstrate why free drivers are important if you have working software to show for it. ("Hey, there's this whole phone OS and app ecosystem that we could run on this hardware if it had free drivers!") That said, yes, the endless reverse engineering required to keep the devices you've bought secure beyond the 2 or 3 years that the manufacturer supports it is ridiculous. I wish it weren't so. But given that that's unfortunately the situation we're in, I applaud anyone contributing to the RE efforts. (But I sure am keeping an eye on hardware that doesn't require it!)

megous 6y ago

What legislation? Mandating that all OS level software/firmware has to be under FOSS license? Mandating a release of detailed HW documentation (datasheets for all the parts + device schematics) prior to being able to sell devices would also be an interesting experiment.

fsflover 6y ago

> international effort to reverse closed blobs https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24916086 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24916086

seabird 6y ago

1.) You can't just open up every driver. I say this as somebody who works on proprietary firmware and software that is basically the future of our company. We operate in a market with thin margins, our control strategies are our advantage, and divulging any info past the bare minimum concerning them would result in mass counterfeiting and ultimately the death of our company. A lot of hardware development is like this. I wish it were some other way, because I know some people would be over the moon with what it would enable, but most of the time it's just not possible. 2.) I think you misunderstand what the Pinephone is -- if my memory serves me correctly, minus the modem blob, there is no need for reverse engineering, as the documentation for the hardware is available. You're talking about sending good money after bad ideas while advocating stopping the thing that has a clear path to victory (starting from a clean slate with something that has real documentation) in favor of something else that has a negligible chance of ever happening (having source be released for drivers but not getting any documentation for it).