

This hacker is not impressed with the G1 - mindplunge
http://laforge.gnumonks.org/weblog/2008/12/09/#20081209-google_htc_android_g1

======
nuclear_eclipse
In all fairness, probably nothing short of an Openmoko Neo would satisfy him;
he's a "core" community member for Openmoko (appearing regularly on the
planet.Openmoko feeds), and is driven by the need for freedom in all
electronics.

I can't say I blame him though; I bought a Neo myself purely because it's the
only freedoms-oriented, commercially-available smart phone that comes out of
the box with the ability to flash system images over USB, and will run just
about anything that can boot on an ARM processor.

When you believe deeply in free and open source software and hardware,
anything that restricts your freedoms is just unacceptable.

That's why I haven't purchased a G1 myself, even though I already have service
through T-Mobile: it's not an open hardware platform, and you can't do
whatever you want to it; you're stuck in Google's sandbox, and you can only
play with the toys they put in the box next to you.

Yet on my FreeRunner, I have the choice between many different distributions
of Linux, _including Android_ , and everything is open source and at my finger
tips. I can write system programs in C, Python, Perl, Ruby, Java, or whatever
someone can manage to get compiled. And I don't need anyone to tell me that my
system image is "acceptable", or what system devices I can and cannot access.

 _That's freedom._

~~~
zacharydanger
That's cool. I was looking into a Neo myself some months back, but then I read
that it wasn't yet capable to do things like _make phone calls_.

~~~
sutro
_it wasn't yet capable to do things like make phone calls_

This is overstated, but close to the truth.

I care about technological freedom and openness, and I'm willing to endure
some early-adopter pain in order to get it. So I tried the Freerunner a few
months ago.

Unfortunately, the device I received had no practical use as a day-to-day
phone. And, yes, I tried many different software images. The Qtopia image came
the closest to providing something usable, but still never came close to the
functionality or usability of my 3+ year old Motorola RAZR. I ended up
returning the phone, minus a 20% restocking fee. Ouch.

I support Openmoko. I hope they succeed. I will continue to monitor their
progress, and may buy their next device. But I wanted to warn those looking at
purchasing the current Freerunner to set your expectations appropriately. In
my opinion, this is not yet a phone that can serve as your everyday
communication device; it is rather a cool prototype that freedom-loving mobile
hackers may enjoy experimenting with while keeping some other device on hand
for everyday use.

------
sh1mmer
Talking with some of the Moko folks at MobileCampLondon last year they were
telling me about the issues with truly open mobile devices.

Even Moko has a couple of closed components, namely the radio. The carriers
and the FCC seem to be pretty against open source software radios for the sake
of the networks.

Remember the same networks that carry commercial traffic have priority bands
for Police/Fire/Ambulance/Military. Cheap consumer available devices with
patchable software radios devices could be a very bad thing for that.

------
sayrer
He can buy an unlocked developer handset from Android Market without these
issues.

I still think the Apache2 license will have them claiming closed-source stuff
is not part of "Core Android", but it's a step forward.

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
A developer G1 may allow you to flash any Android image you want onto the
phone, but the hardware is still not "open" or "free", in that the drivers are
not (afaik) open sourced in any method. However, it is still a step forward,
yes, but it's still not as big of a step as the phones on offer from Openmoko,
for example.

~~~
litewulf
Can you give me a source for the hardware not having drivers? That makes no
sense to me, how are you supposed to be able to reflash a phone in any
meaningful sense without drivers so the phone, er, works.

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
The hardware has drivers, just included as binary blobs; they are not open
source, akin to Nvidia's binary driver for Linux.

------
baddox
I agree with his points, but even so, surely Android is a good step toward
more openness. Plus, isn't the G1 more open than many (most?) phones? I don't
own one, but the impression I get is that it's fairly open.

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
The _software_ is open (Android), but the hardware is not, or at least no more
open than any other GSM phone with a SIM card. There is a big difference:
consumer G1's still require Google/T-Mobile signed system images to boot up,
meaning you can't reflash it with your own images, unless you want to risk
bricking it by hacking the bootloader...

------
iigs
The URL has "GNU" in it, I knew better than to click.

Respectfully, _waaaahhh_.

From the article:

 _I still think it's extremely weird that you actually buy a device, and then
don't own it. I would have no problem if the device is rented from the
manufacturer or the mobile network operator. Sure, then in this rented device,
only they control what kind of software you use. But this is not the case.
People buy it, pay money, legally own the device but technically don't._

You absolutely _do_ own the device. You're just not capable of getting the
software you want onto it. I own my house, even though I have no idea how to
move walls and put up new drywall (in my case, I did but it didn't work out as
well as I'd hoped).

If you really can't live without the kernel of your choice, perhaps you should
desolder the IC that contains the crypto keys and install one that has keys
you created. Worst probable case is that you're out an integrated CPU/EPROM
device. As mentioned by sayrer elsewhere in this thread, the route this guy
would be better off taking is to get a Developer one.

I'm sure the GNU "I hold my nose at your lack of freedom" attitude provides
many mutual high-fiving opportunities for The Free. Unfortunately the real
world, particularly as it concerns security, is made up of endless compromises
and trade-offs. Practically speaking, the decision to outsource security of
the device to a group of people who are paid full time to do it makes the
devices safer for the five orders of magnitude of people who are unable to or
unwilling to understand the decisions they'd otherwise be asked to make.

Sorry to get lathered up about this, but statements of this nature sway
uninformed geeks in dangerous ways. There's a ton of legitimate value to
having a solid crypto foundation within devices, and one man's open
certificate authority access to the device's firmware is ten million men's
malware attack vector.

I agree with the guy in some aspects, in that I'd like to be able to control
the boot loader and other fundamental aspects of a mobile device. At one time
I had an idea to create a micro/mini-payment application that would live
within your telephone. With the computing resources of even a free-with-
contract phone you could greatly reduce the risks that credit cards are
increasingly facing. This could prove a very lucrative business for someone
who could out-efficient Visa. Unfortunately, as noted in the article, the keys
to the device are held by the carrier, and this, for me, would be insufficient
to trust my banking information with, so I never pursued the idea.

~~~
kragen
_I own my house, even though I have no idea how to move walls and put up new
drywall (in my case, I did but it didn't work out as well as I'd hoped)._

You can hire someone else to put up new drywall. If you can't, you don't own
the house; you're just renting.

Outsourcing your security to a group of people makes you vulnerable to that
group of people, and anybody who can lean on them. As you point out yourself,
mobile phone carriers have not proven trustworthy in that way. The guy who
buys the phone has the right to choose who they want to trust; mobile carriers
blackmailing phone manufacturers into giving them backdoors into this most
personal of devices is a violation of that right, and it imperils us all.

------
newt0311
Wierd. Was I the only one who confused this with the Hotspot JVM's new garbage
collector?

