3 ms·

Who is actually going to update this even if it is open source though? There are so many drivers and firmware in a smartphone, nevermind the tens of thousands o

Who is actually going to update this even if it is open source though? There are so many drivers and firmware in a smartphone, nevermind the tens of thousands of models of smartphones out there. It would require an army of people to patch, test and distribute everything. That's even if you can figure out all this code.

onli 6y ago
We see that happening all the times with devices that are open and popular enough, as much as is possible now. Have a look at the xda forum to see how it is done today.
Nextgrid 6y ago
I don't think this should be a consideration. I agree that the manufacturer or carrier doesn't owe you updates indefinitely, but they definitely should give you all the resources you need to develop these updates yourself if you wanted to. The landscape can change. Maybe there's going to be a huge open-source project that will make these updates. Maybe someone will figure out a way to automatically handle a large number of hardware configurations at scale (a powerful enough hardware abstraction layer should be able to deal with it). Maybe someone will make a business out of it, providing security updates at a reasonable cost. Either way, there shouldn't be any artificial hurdles against the customer developing and running their own firmware on hardware they paid money for.
reegnz 6y ago
It's not about 'who's going to do it' but about 'if I want to do it, I can'. I would really like to hack on a tablet I have that's 5 years old, but I can't because the firmware and drivers are both closed source. I think when I buy a device, I should get the source code to it once the manufacturer decides it's not worth it for them to continue patching the software for the device I've bought.
fsflover 6y ago
Have a look at Pinephone. It has no official developers, but the community created >17 operating systems for it with constant updates.

onli 6y ago

We see that happening all the times with devices that are open and popular enough, as much as is possible now. Have a look at the xda forum to see how it is done today.

Nextgrid 6y ago

I don't think this should be a consideration. I agree that the manufacturer or carrier doesn't owe you updates indefinitely, but they definitely should give you all the resources you need to develop these updates yourself if you wanted to. The landscape can change. Maybe there's going to be a huge open-source project that will make these updates. Maybe someone will figure out a way to automatically handle a large number of hardware configurations at scale (a powerful enough hardware abstraction layer should be able to deal with it). Maybe someone will make a business out of it, providing security updates at a reasonable cost. Either way, there shouldn't be any artificial hurdles against the customer developing and running their own firmware on hardware they paid money for.

reegnz 6y ago

It's not about 'who's going to do it' but about 'if I want to do it, I can'. I would really like to hack on a tablet I have that's 5 years old, but I can't because the firmware and drivers are both closed source. I think when I buy a device, I should get the source code to it once the manufacturer decides it's not worth it for them to continue patching the software for the device I've bought.

fsflover 6y ago

Have a look at Pinephone. It has no official developers, but the community created >17 operating systems for it with constant updates.