OSCON: That "open phone" is not so open [LWN.net]

OSCON: That "open phone" is not so open

Posted Jul 29, 2010 7:35 UTC (Thu) by tajyrink (subscriber, #2750)
Parent article: OSCON: That "open phone" is not so open

I'm quite happy with a phone that has pretty all bits open source that are running on the main CPU. The idea of having GSM chip as an "external device" attached like implemented on Neo FreeRunner is nice. Also, I do believe MeeGo phones (at least from Nokia) will have more open drivers than Android - already on N900 things like sound, cameras and Bluetooth work fine AFAIK without proprietary bits, and there is a modem driver under construction. WLAN has the usual firmware problem (or maybe even fully closed driver, not sure about that wl12xx). However, if it's no worse than on current laptops, it's relatively good.

Still, the GPLv3 resistance seems relatively large because of the patent weapons that are wanted to be kept, and drivers surely will need more lobbying and educating. Not to mention the graphics chips part of the story.

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OSCON: That "open phone" is not so open

Posted Jul 29, 2010 10:51 UTC (Thu) by laf0rge (subscriber, #6469) [Link]

having the GSM/3G modem as an external (proprietary) device is nice and ok for many people, _BUT_ at that point the interface to that device needs to be publicly documented/specified.

For old GSM/GPRS devices it typically was a serial line with AT commands and a 3GPP-specified multiplex protocol (TS 07.10). In that case, anyone could write code to drive that modem.

But the modern high-end 3G chipsets typically have proprietary RPC interfaces that are running on top of a dual-ported RAM of some sort. So you end up having proprietary components speaking a proprietary protocol to a proprietary GSM/3G modem, rather than _only_ a proprietary modem.

OSCON: That "open phone" is not so open

Posted Jul 29, 2010 15:17 UTC (Thu) by martinfick (subscriber, #4455) [Link]

Not only that, the proprietary code on the other CPU still has access to all the RAM used by the CPU running the free OS! From a security standpoint, this is way worse than a stand alone separate modem.