Usefulness of the Calypso (was Re: seL4 is open source now)

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Scott Weisman sweisman at pobox.com
Tue Aug 5 18:58:21 UTC 2014


I think this desire is recognized. I remember an initiative some years
back, started with some enthusiasm, that never got passed the stage of
deciding on NuttX as the OS to use, and forking it.


On Tue, Aug 5, 2014 at 9:44 PM, Michael Spacefalcon <
msokolov at ivan.harhan.org> wrote:

> Someone (not clear who) said:
>
> > > [...] The calypso is just to outdated to be interesting
> > > for anything 'useable' beyond pure hacking-fun.
>
> I violently disagree with that statement.  I personally carry a
> cellphone for one and only one purpose: so I can call my significant
> other (soon to be wife) and she can cell me at any time.  A handset
> based on the Calypso chipset does this job wonderfully, and is IMO
> the optimal tool for the job.
>
> But the problem is that at the present time there does not exist any
> cellphone at all, of any kind (dumb, smart, old, new, whatever) that
> can make and receive cellular phone calls using only Free Software, as
> defined by the Free Software Foundation, i.e., providing the user with
> the most essential Four Freedoms:
>
> http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
>
> Hence I am currently forced to use a cellphone that runs proprietary
> firmware, such that I lack the ability to fix any of the UI design
> flaws that constantly drive me nuts.  This situation causes me severe
> distress, hence I have committed my hobby time and cash budget to a
> multi-year project to solve this pressing (for me) problem.
>
> OsmocomBB is not a solution: it works wonders for "hacking-fun" (the
> wording in the comment I'm responding to), but is utterly useless for
> a practical phone which one can carry around in a pocket or purse: my
> back just isn't strong enough to carry a supersized backpack containing
> a full PC for running the L23 stack plus a bank of lead-acid batteries.
> Hence I need a totally different Free Software GSM handset
> implementation, one that actually runs on the phone itself with proper
> power management exactly like the original proprietary firmware.  And
> because no one else is working on such a thing, I started my own, and
> made quite a bit of progress:
>
> https://bitbucket.org/falconian/freecalypso-sw
>
> But I am using the same Calypso GSM chipset for my project as OsmocomBB
> uses, simply because it is IMO the optimal tool for the job at hand:
> allowing a person to communicate with his or her significant other by
> way of cellular phone calls.  The word "outdated" does not exist in my
> vocabulary; I evaluate a tool based on how well it does the job, rather
> than some arbitrary irrelevant criteria like manufacture date stamps
> or whatever.
>
> Viva la Revolucion,
> SF
>
>
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