Tweets: Developer Daniel wrote about Librem 5 flaws as not open source ! Here’s why
benefit :
Snowden praised the developer Daniel and his GrapheneOS system.
Do you have any comments ?
I hope so…
Thank you
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Purism never claimed that everything about the Librem 5 is open hardware, so there is absolutely no dishonesty, only uninformed people. Have a look at Librem 5 — Promise Delivery Chart
It is already monumental what Purism is delivering, going 100% full open hardware is just not possible for such a small company. They will get there, eventually, in accordance with their freedom roadmap.
As the baseband and the WiFi/BT cards contain proprietary code, they are treated as untrusted devices. The Librem 5 is basically the only phone on the market where these components have no access to memory (or more precisely: have no access to anything. They can only send and receive data, and the operating system decides what to do with it).
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Of course they are not open source, hence they are called “flaws”. Therefore I shan’t have a problem with it.
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The problem with many in the security/privacy crowd is that the tin foil hat can never be big enough. People want the impossible, and bemoan any not foolish enough to try it.
His comment about trusting Purism is just pure idiocy. If I put words in their mouth, I’m sure they can let me down as well. That dude is just grandstanding, trying to be the all enlightened one.
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This has been discussed before here:
Purism, a small company, are trying to make a smart phone that is useful in modern life with the components that are currently available to them. If people don’t support companies trying to get closer to a completely open device, how will one ever exist? Isolating everything, that’s how I’d do it. I’m glad someone is building what I would if I had the ability.
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I like him using Edward Snowden to try to bolster his claims.
I’m not against Snowden. I’m reading his book now. I respect that he unveiled the massive spying going on on all Americans (though those more tech-savvy already knew of the massive spying).
But talk about claims to unqualified authority. Has Snowden ever built a phone, an OS, etc?
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GrapheneOS has built a Phone with open hardware? ahahah
Even Snowden said that the best system at the moment is a portable librem with qubes (opportunities that the company Purism offers at the time of purchase). I don’t understand this discussion … or maybe yes
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They (Graphene) specifically ask you to buy the latest Pixel models , so you can have the most up to date firmware (not open source) on it and “longest” support on your device.
So , their magical solution is to have us feed the beast all the time , just so we can hide from it.
Utter non sense.
And this whole thread on Twitter is nothing but slender.
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Is it MONEY or POWER as evil.
I prefer both.
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as i understand so far Snowden is more like a network OP guy not a hardware engineer.
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Of course it currently isn’t possible to build a fully open-source mobile because the market is dominated by parties that have no interest in any of that, but to state that atleast attempting to do so ( and being as open as possible about the process and all the ups and downs ) is just marketing is just wrong.
And to claim that I am better of with closed-source upgrades by a company which first provided me the initial flawed firmware/software then none at all is something I can not agree or disagree with. Fact is I just cant tell by looking at filenames… I don’t know if i’m making things better or worse either way but by claiming that it is better I would basically agree with the situation where someone tells me that I need an upgrade (without actually specifying what was fixed) and just apply it and that I do not.
Looking at the Android scene you see people switching between closed-source firmware versions all the time because one version has better WiFi reception the other has better 4G reception, but no one actually tells you what was updated ( example of the enormeous amout of details offered on an example update: https://developer.sony.com/file/download/software-binaries-for-aosp-oreo-android-8-1-kernel-4-4-nile ) and if it was to fix a known bug/flaw or any other reason.
Basically there is no security through obscurity.
I’d rather back a project that at least tries to break-out of the current situation ( and yes its nowhere near perfect ) then just foolishly continue to stick with the known evil or even try to somehow advocate it. The only way to make things better is step-by-step and in my opinion Purism is making some of the first needed steps.
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Uhhh…this is just sad to see. If you look further into it, it’s obvious that this is some misdirected CopperheadOS rage (and that’s not saying either side of all that drama I think is right or wrong). People who hurt, hurt 
He does raise some interesting questions about software on chip and arm but I’m not going to pretend that history isn’t incremental. The Purism team and supporting projects have done an amazing job! 
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I have Lotus 1-2-3 on a chip and it runs on MS-DOS 2.11 with 512K of RAM !!!
No complaints here.
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512K? Looxury …
Cool! I’m going to look into it further at work tonight between patrols because this is the first I’ve heard anything about arm being encumbered tbh. I don’t know why, I’m just curious and that looks like an entertaining rabbit hole
You can find some discussion regarding ARM SoC proprietary issues in this very forum.
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Just ranting.
From a chip maker’s perspective (I am one). Sure ARM is not open source itself. But for all intents and purposes, it doesn’t matter. There’s NO way ARM and/or NXP can stick a tiny CPU within (not beside, that’s done everywhere) the main processor; while maintaining the processor fast and low cost. Hardware IS NOT SOFTWARE, adding useless stuff to chip literally costs you millions.
So, you want RISC V, I see. That doesn’t work now. The vector ISA is not ready yet and there’s other proprietary stuff even in the SiFive’s RV cores or the BOOM2 cores. There’s the AXI bus, ChipLink, etc. Not to mention the DDR controller. DDR RAM is basically some high speed voodoo that someone, somehow made it work. There’s not even a working open source DDR2 phy. Good luck using the 133MHz DRAM controller. (And here’s the thing, it’s hard enough to get voodoo working. Now try adding stuff to your voodoo)
It’s already a great improvement for Purism to have only open source software on the main processor and devices that can touch the main RAM.
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Don’t get too excited. It only runs on a thirty plus year old HP110+ laptop. The chip was specifically designed for it.
The laptop has a black on green display like an old calculator, you can’t use it in the dark.
I just changed the batteries for it too. It take three Cyclon 2Volt sealed lead rechargables. (D-size with solderable tips.)
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