LWN: Comments on "HTC: no more locked-down phones"

OT: Samsung, Motorola

endecotp — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 16:42:46 +0000

> What about Motorola, e.g. the Defy, which seems to be the only
> "rugged" Android so far?

I have a Defy. Physically it's great - I bought it after getting my previous phone a bit damp turned it into a paperweight. The software, though, is absolutely dire, and ancient, and absolutely not "open" in any way at all. Also because it's a less popular phone than all the non-rugged models, it doesn't get much attention from the crackers and modders. So for now, I don't recommend it.

HTC: no more locked-down phones

JanC_ — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 11:52:17 +0000

That's been true for several years in the EU too.

What free operating systems are available?

BrucePerens — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 17:03:19 +0000

I'm not a lawyer, just an expert witness in copyright cases and consultant to legal counsel.

In the case of software, the functional elements can't be copyrighted. Only the "artistic" ones. There is a case called Computer Associates Inc. v. Altai which goes deeply into this, and a pretty good article about it in Wikipedia. In general it means that APIs aren't copyrightable, and any piece of code that must be done in a particular way (for example because that's the only way that the hardware works), or is done in a standard way across the industry (patterns and algorithms) is not copyrightable.

What free operating systems are available?

sfeam — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 16:59:35 +0000

It says that copyright protection is not like a patent. The work itself is protected, but not things that are described by the work. Copyright on a piece of software limits reproduction of a particular stream of characters, but does not limit re-implementation of the underlying ideas or algorithms.

Copyright on a description or diagram of a tractor does not constitute ownership of the idea "tractor" or limit the rights of others to build, use or describe tractors in other words.

What free operating systems are available?

nye — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 16:49:40 +0000

>17.92.102(b) In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work.

Do you have a succinct explanation of what that means to a lawyer?

To a non-lawyer, it appears to be saying that a number of things, like software or recipes cannot be copyrighted. Obviously that interpretation is incorrect in the case of software, fairly obviously in the case of recipes - you can rewrite a recipe, but not just copy it verbatim - but I can't figure out where that interpretation goes wrong or what the clause is supposed to mean.

What free operating systems are available?

BrucePerens — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 16:16:23 +0000

17.92.102(b) In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work.

What free operating systems are available?

wookey — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 13:47:37 +0000

Who says schematics are not copyrightable? They look like creative works to me.

Sony boycott

NRArnot — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 11:10:28 +0000

If you are boycotting Sony, you want to avoid buying anything that contributes to Sony's profits. On that basis I'd avoid Sony-Ericsson, because even if Sony doesn't control the venture, it does profit by it.

I'm not an absolutist on these things, it's shades of grey. I'd be more willing to buy something Sony-Ericcson if I couldn't find a satisfactory alternative, than something Sony.

HTC: no more locked-down phones

rfunk — Tue, 31 May 2011 20:08:59 +0000

It may help to know a bit of backstory:

First, HTC has historically been the best OEM about providing timely Android updates after Google does a new release, despite HTC's addition of the "Sense" user-interface customizations.

Previous HTC phones, particularly the Evo 4G, have been popular with people who root and re-flash their phones with custom firmware such as CyanogenMod.

Sometime in June, HTC is scheduled to release a powerful successor to the Evo 4G, the Evo 3D. (Obviously HTC doesn't share Apple's product-naming department.)

A couple weeks ago, enough information leaked out about the Evo 3D to confirm that it would have a cryptographically-signed bootloader, effectively preventing the user from replacing the stock firmware with third-party firmware no matter how much rooting is done. (You'd need HTC's private key to do that, just like trying to forge someone's PGP signature.)

When that information came out there was a huge uproar in the Android development/customization community. There were petitions, and people contacted HTC directly.

So yes, there actually was "overwhelming customer feedback".

HTC: no more locked-down phones

rahvin — Tue, 31 May 2011 19:36:49 +0000

In the US the carrier is required to unlock (carrier) or provide the code to unlock if the phone is paid for (ie the contract is up) upon request. That was one of the nice laws they passed a few years ago.

What free operating systems are available?

pabs — Tue, 31 May 2011 01:41:51 +0000

Software is never complete, so don't hold your breath there :)

Yes, all the binary blobs in Linux (and the FreeBSD kernel) were removed from Debian main for the release of Debian squeeze. If you find any in a later release, please file a bug.

SHR spawned out of the OpenMoko community and is OpenEmbedded based so I assume they won't be using non-free drivers. I'll try to get them to respond here about it though.

Carriers "allowing" free phones on their networks

pkern — Mon, 30 May 2011 20:16:40 +0000

That's mostly because of stupid anti-terror regulations, though.

HTC: no more locked-down phones

pabs — Mon, 30 May 2011 15:40:01 +0000

Harald Welte's thoughts:

http://laforge.gnumonks.org/weblog/2011/05/30#20110530-ht...

What free operating systems are available?

lamikr — Mon, 30 May 2011 08:47:46 +0000

And actually there are now also N900 DE images for adventurous.
They are fully open source images based on to Meego.
If you have (class 6 or faster) SD card, you can also extract the N900 DE meego image there and then just use the N900 flasher to load/boot vmlinux. --> N900 will boot from the sd card.

In addition of that it's also possible to install the u-boot to N900 flash. After that you can select whether to boot Meego from SD or Maemo from Flash.
... And third option is also to overwrite Maemo from Flash with Meego.

There were just Meego conference in SF and we released for that a new images for which we managed to smash a lot of bugs from Meego. I would say that this is first fully open source public release where the phohe is actually in quite usable state... Things like UI for gprs connections, opening etc... are still not in the image, but are planned to be added soon.

Grap the san francisco release from: (bz2 has rootfs and *vmlinuz* has the kernel)

http://repository.maemo.org/meego/n900-de/archive/1.1.99....

or newer daily images:

http://repository.maemo.org/meego/n900-de/daily/

DE images are made by using community obs:
https://build.pub.meego.com/
and we do push fixes made there to packages also to meego's official obs:
https://build.meego.com as well as upstream.

On irc you can find us from freenode/meego-arm

lamikr

What free operating systems are available?

coriordan — Sun, 29 May 2011 10:35:59 +0000

Those are great projects, but I'm looking for complete systems that I could install, which are 100% free software.

Debian for smartphones would be great (if all the binary blobs are removed from Debian's Linux). I hope the project gathers momentum.

SHR seems to have lots of hardware support, but I can't find anything on their site to say if they use binary blobs or proprietary software (drivers etc.).

OT: Samsung, Motorola

debacle — Sun, 29 May 2011 10:32:20 +0000

Does anybody know, whether the cheap Samsung Androids (Galaxy 3, mini, 550) are open, too? What about Motorola, e.g. the Defy, which seems to be the only "rugged" Android so far? TIA.

Carriers "allowing" free phones on their networks

BrucePerens — Sun, 29 May 2011 00:13:59 +0000

We wish that cell phone service in the U.S. was more like Europe. On the other hand, carriers in Europe are doing everything they can to try to turn it into the U.S. Just try paying your SIM fee online without first registering a local address. And after that they implement credit card filters based on your country of residence. I find it more difficult to use a local SIM rather than roaming every time I'm in Europe. You can still buy pay cards over the counter, in many cases. I hope that lasts.

Carriers "allowing" free phones on their networks

mjg59 — Sat, 28 May 2011 21:29:40 +0000

If they think that there's some sort of threat then they could implement white/blacklisting without too much trouble (there's clearly some level of capability in the infrastructure, given the support for blacklisting of reported stolen phones). And if they don't think there's a threat, I don't see why they'd insist on unmodifiable basebands.

Carriers "allowing" free phones on their networks

smurf — Sat, 28 May 2011 21:00:43 +0000

A few years ago, I worked with people who build and test phones.
(I'll refrain from mentioning the company.)

Apparently, European carriers don't use IMSI/IMEI whitelists.
So the question whether a carrier will allow some phone on their network doesn't even arise.

As long as you have a SIM card in there, or behave as if you do (there's hardware out there which can forward the phone2SIM interface across the Internet), i.e. as long as you actually pay for your network usage, the operators could care less.

Disclaimer: I have no idea whether that's still true, and/or true in other parts of the world.

What free operating systems are available?

mjg59 — Sat, 28 May 2011 17:27:27 +0000

The concern was over whether or not it was practical (or even possible) to produce a fully open phone. Doing that requires an open GSM implementation (which exists), for it to be legal to provide an open and modifiable GSM implementation (which it doesn't seem to be) and for carriers to allow such devices onto their network (which isn't an issue that's arisen so far). The availability of open hardware seems to be orthogonal to that, in that it doesn't alter the legality of a modifiable GSM stack and it would be technically straightforward for networks to block said hardware.

I'm glad that people are working on open radio hardware. It just doesn't seem to be either a prerequisite or an aid to providing an open (as in software) phone.

What free operating systems are available?

BrucePerens — Sat, 28 May 2011 16:08:14 +0000

I'm not sure what you meant to say.

So far, we've only certified modifiable SDR radios with FCC as test equipment, if there is any chance that they can be made to receive cellular frequencies.

FCC type-approval for consumer receivers, by requirement of the Electronic Communications and Privacy Act of 1986, requires that they not be modifiable to intercept cellular phone calls. Obviously this presents a problem for cellular equipment with modifiable baseband processors.

As far as I can tell, a modifiable baseband is not something the manufacturer can give you legally. That this has had gaps in enforcement up to now is only because we didn't have good software to run there.

To have a cell phone with modifiable baseband sold as consumer equipment will not just require a change with an FCC rule-making, but a change to a bill passed by congress. Yes, it really is Open-Source-hostile law.

What free operating systems are available?

BrucePerens — Sat, 28 May 2011 15:31:30 +0000

Someone seems to have applied the wrong license, uniformly, to all projects in the wiki.

What free operating systems are available?

BrucePerens — Sat, 28 May 2011 15:29:19 +0000

I don't know of any devices that actually have the non-commercial license applied. I'll check with the team. But in any case the only thing the licenses apply to is the plans, not commercial manufacture of the devices, because schematics are not copyrightable and these devices have not been patented.

HTC: no more locked-down phones, but...

job — Sat, 28 May 2011 11:49:02 +0000

With today's sales of phones, those patent fees from Android land might even add up to more than the profits from Windows phones. A weird world indeed.

HTC: no more locked-down phones

job — Sat, 28 May 2011 11:44:01 +0000

Again, not Sony. Sony-Ericsson. Different company. It's a joint venture where Sony is part owner but is not under their management.

On the other hand, if you intend to boycott everything Sony owns a share of you should do it properly and find out which those companies are, not just play games with names.

"can be treated separately" != "unrelated"

coriordan — Sat, 28 May 2011 10:17:16 +0000

> Locked bootloaders and the availability of free drivers are orthogonal issues.

When the goal is to create a 100% free software phone, these two issues are interdependent, not orthogonal. We need both. (For the technical work of fixing these problems, there they're orthogonal.)

And even where the tech work is orthogonal, they're still related: the bootloader being free is more likely to increase the interest in writing free drivers.

HTC: no more locked-down phones, but...

Hausvib6 — Sat, 28 May 2011 06:49:15 +0000

An interesting fact. So somehow, Microsoft is profitting from Android's sale... What a weird world.

thrust Sony?

freddyh — Sat, 28 May 2011 06:06:09 +0000

Not to mention their brilliant cd copy protection system, alias: rootkit

HTC: no more locked-down phones

leoc — Sat, 28 May 2011 04:36:33 +0000

I don't really care what Sony's "official " policy is here. After the ps3 linux fiasco I wouldn't trust them.

HTC: no more locked-down phones, but...

pr1268 — Sat, 28 May 2011 04:28:03 +0000

No more locked phones, but now Microsoft gets 5 USD whenever one buys an HTC Android. That just doesn't sound right...

What free operating systems are available?

pabs — Sat, 28 May 2011 03:44:28 +0000

Probably you haven't been looking very hard. Almost all of the Linux distributions that originally targeted the OpenMoko FreeRunner are now being ported to other newer phones and are at various stages, some links:

http://shr-project.org/trac/wiki/Devices
http://wiki.freesmartphone.org/index.php/HardwareComparison
http://wiki.debian.org/Smartphone
http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Distributions

SHR (based on FSO and OpenEmbedded) seems to be the most ported so far. As a Debian developer I'd really like to see it on more devices but nothing happened so far. QtMoko folks are thinking of porting it to the FSO middleware.

What free operating systems are available?

pabs — Sat, 28 May 2011 03:03:07 +0000

What is with the non-commercial license? Doesn't seem like HPSDR can be classified as Open Source Hardware.

http://freedomdefined.org/OSHW

What free operating systems are available?

swetland — Fri, 27 May 2011 23:21:31 +0000

These days the baseband core is often at least an ARM11, and most manufacturers are supporting more efficient transports for IP data than PPP and nicer control planes than AT commands (though both of those are still in evidence in a number of solutions).

The big shift we've seen in the last few years is full linux support for the non-baseband core in multi-core solutions, and better linux driver support for the SoC peripherals. Still a long ways to go, but a lot of the silicon/modem vendors are heading in a good direction.

HTC: no more locked-down phones

swetland — Fri, 27 May 2011 23:18:39 +0000

Some additional data points:

Nexus S by Samsung supports "fastboot oem unlock" for bootloader unlocking / system reflashing, and is supported "out of the box" by AOSP these days. Proprietary components (opengl libraries, wifi/bt firmware, modem interface library, etc) are available for download and inclusion in your build.

Nexus S binary bits (please note that "drivers" is misleading here -- all kernel drivers for these devices are GPLv2, full source available): http://code.google.com/android/nexus/drivers.html

Building for devices from AOSP: http://source.android.com/source/building-devices.html

The Motorola Xoom supports "fastboot oem unlock", but that will be more exciting when Ice Cream Sandwich is released (providing open source support for that platform).

Sony-Ericsson is supporting some level of bootloader unlocking on some devices, but I'm not sure where the details are off the top of my head.

What free operating systems are available?

mjg59 — Fri, 27 May 2011 22:03:40 +0000

There's no fundamental reason for carriers to accept any phones with custom GSM implementations. If they want control then they can achieved that without limiting hardware.

HTC: no more locked-down phones

elanthis — Fri, 27 May 2011 21:11:33 +0000

A vast majority of consumers won't bother because a vast majority of consumers don't give a shit about replacing their phone's firmware. They just want it to work. Hell, I understand that "Free Software" doesn't mean freely downloadable apps like Internet Explorer and I'd still rather have a phone that Just Works(tm) and doesn't need me to even consider replacing any of its system, much less know how to do so.

HTC: no more locked-down phones

rgmoore — Fri, 27 May 2011 21:07:37 +0000

Maybe "overwhelmed by customer feedback" means "gotten too many complaints from people who have bricked their phones trying to unlock them". Yes, HTC can stick a big warning on their phones that you void the warranty by trying to unlock them, but that doesn't mean people won't tie up their customer service line when something goes wrong. If the telcos don't mind selling phones with unlocked bootloaders, it's probably easier on HTC to sell them that way because it removes one thing people will do with their phones that's likely to mess them up.

What free operating systems are available?

boog — Fri, 27 May 2011 21:07:06 +0000

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." (George Bernard Shaw, I believe)

HTC: no more locked-down phones

ttonino — Fri, 27 May 2011 20:50:19 +0000

On the "open" side we have HTC, Samsung, and Sony-Ericsson. These explicitly allow loading other software on at least some models. HTC has this announcement, Samsung has at least the Galaxy S and S2 open but probably others too, and Sony-Ericsson allows unlocking the bootloader (a bit inconvenient, and only on new models).

Samsung is good at timely releases of kernel source (minus driver source). HTC seems to delay this. SE, I don't know.

On the closed side, we seem to have Motorola. All the other brands LG, Huawei, ZTE, Acer, Dell, Garmin-Asus, Gigabyte: I have no idea. But I would be happy to see the market moving to 'open'!

What free operating systems are available?

BrucePerens — Fri, 27 May 2011 19:34:35 +0000

I am very dubious that carriers are going to continue to accept phones with the baseband processor not locked down. They only do so today only because we haven't had good software to put there until recently. So, I am not counting on buying a new off-the-shelf smartphone with this capability.