- What is LibrePhone?
- This is a project to research proprietary files in Android to work towards a long-term goal of freely licensed replacements. It was announced at the FSF40 event in Boston.
- Are you developing a free mobile phone OS?
- NO. There are many projects working in mobile phones, and many of them are largely free software. The FSF doesn't see the need to join these projects, but wants to build upon them and improve on their current state of freedom. While there are many proprietary libraries and other files in Android, this project is focused on binary blobs.
- What do you expect the process to look like?
- The first (approximately 6) months are focused on research and definition of the project. We will work to analyze common nonfree blobs in current (mostly) free software operating systems. We will use this knowledge and other factors to identify the best device for development, as well as documenting how these proprietary blobs get used by the kernel Linux, in order to understand what it would take to legally reverse-engineer them using clean room techniques.
- Are you developing hardware?
- NO. We are working on freeing up software, we are not hardware developers.
- How can I help?
- Donate! This project will take years, research, engineers, volunteers, and more. Your donation will help us achieve software freedom for mobile phones.
- Volunteers — I have engineering skills
- Volunteers — I don't have engineering skills
- Volunteers — I know a little about mobile phone freedom
Once there is sufficient interest and funding, a detailed specification will be written so that programmers who are not bound by the DMCA can code free implementations.