Re:The Huawei Disaster Reveals Google’s Iron Grip on Android
by squarefoot on Friday May 24, 2019 @07:18AM
(#20000331)
Google Play can be rewritten from scratch to look like the real one and point to open source repositories, but the real hassle are device drivers: they're tight closed to the point there's not a single person in the world who managed to install a 100% open OS on a phone or tablet; even Purism themselves had to use some closed blobs here and there.
Closed firmware/blobs/drivers are the #1 problem; that's the battle to send more troops to, not play stores or apps. The day we eradicate them from devices is the day we can consider those devices really open and trustworthy, the day no entity in the world, not even the original manufacturers, can suddenly decide to make a device obsolete forcing the user to buy a new one.
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Re:The Huawei Disaster Reveals Google’s Iron Grip on Android
by Phlarp on Friday May 24, 2019 @11:04AM
(#20002257)
What about the baseband?
Re:The Huawei Disaster Reveals Google’s Iron Grip on Android
by squarefoot on Friday May 24, 2019 @11:51AM
(#20002773)
I understand carriers don't want the average Joe to mess with the radio, I'd be totally ok with that, so I would agree on closed source firmware on baseband if it was limited only to that use: a fully separated system that deals with connections and nothing else. All data could be en/decrypted on main device CPU, so that the radio closed firmware would essentially have full access to noise. Of course IP addresses could not be masked, but they would be available anyway to authorities with full access to cell towers and traffic.