Free Software Foundation announces librephone project

astromox

Source: https://www.fsf.org/news/librephone-project

BOSTON, Massachusetts, USA (Tuesday, October 14, 2025) — The Free Software Foundation (FSF) today announced its project to bring mobile phone freedom to users. "Librephone" is an initiative to reverse-engineer obstacles preventing mobile phone freedom until its goal is achieved.

Sounds interesting.

GrouchyGrape

astromox looks interesting and I support all efforts like this one, although I worry that "freedom" in this case will come at the cost of security.

DeletedUser495

https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/15/fsf_librphone_vs_proprietary_binary_blog/?td=rt-3a

23Sha-ger

Another bullshit that nobody asked for and will die in 3 years

aw22

23Sha-ger

Plenty of people including myself would love to have less binary blobs on our phones. Why would you be against that?

23Sha-ger

The Librephone project is backed by FSF board member John Gilmore, who explained in a statement, "I have enjoyed using a mobile phone running LineageOS with MicroG and F-Droid for years, which eliminates the spyware and control that Google embeds in standard Android phones. I later discovered that the LineageOS distribution links in significant proprietary binary modules copied from the firmware of particular phones.

Wait until this guy discovers how firmware works, good luck reversing baseband. Such a joke, reminds me Replicant OS

Miles

23Sha-ger he could have used replicant

ignoramous

23Sha-ger this guy discovers how firmware works, good luck reversing baseband. Such a joke

I mean, everyone has to learn things at some point. Full marks for embarking on the project and acting on their conviction, and I'm sure they know the challenges that lie ahead, given FirefoxOS' & Librem's very public failures, to give a few examples.

Lock

I think hurd will be stable before they release this one

userofgos

aw22 Plenty of people including myself would love to have less binary blobs on our phones.

Agreed.

aw22 Why would you be against that?

There's a lot of pretext here: https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/14034-gnu-claiming-that-grapheneos-is-partially-non-free/14

aw22

userofgos There's a lot of pretext here: https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/14034-gnu-claiming-that-grapheneos-is-partially-non-free/14

I'm continuously disappointed by the hostility shown by many involved with GrapheneOS towards anyone who doesn't fall in line with their exact definition of security.

It's healthy in an open source community to have and discuss differences in opinions and priorities. Arrogant dismissal of everyone else isn't helpful for anyone.

Foggy

My take on this is that 'firmware' is a misleading term. Aside from the application cores running the Android OS there are dozens of cores behind the scenes running things like the storage, the radio and wifi controller. They run 'firmware' which presents an interface to the application core - for example NVMe - but what's sitting behind that interface is some cores running an OS we can't see, interfacing to some hardware which is entirely proprietary and undocumented. So effectively this project is saying we're going to write an OS for the NVMe controller, an OS for the wifi controller, and OS for the camera, etc etc, in the complete absence of documentation of how the hardware actually works, and which will likely change completely between revisions or vendors.

This is an enormous undertaking, but it seems like they don't know this yet. Therefore this project is almost guaranteed to fall.

aw22

Foggy This is an enormous undertaking, but it seems like they don't know this yet. Therefore this project is almost guaranteed to fall.

I'm also skeptical, but I felt the same about Asahi Linux reverse engineering m1 macs, and they ended up with some impressive results.

userofgos

aw22 It's healthy in an open source community to have and discuss differences in opinions and priorities. Arrogant dismissal of everyone else isn't helpful for anyone.

I agree it's healthy to discuss various opinions and perspectives. However I do not agree that the GrapheneOS admin account, devs, and mods are being arrogant or hostile. I respect their high standards for Security and privacy, and it shows in the quality of work and continual effort to keep those standards.

Too often GrapheneOS' comments, responses, and criticisms aren't taken seriously enough by those who claim they care about security and privacy. And instead of actually making the necessary changes to improve their product, services, and code. I've noticed numerous times when the GrapheneOS project has noted/complemented those who have made an effort to improve privacy and security, and they will reference third party security researchers as well.