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

Gesendet: Dienstag, 05. August 2014 um 20:44 Uhr Von: "Michael Spacefalcon" <msokolov(a)ivan.harhan.org> An: baseband-devel(a)lists.osmocom.org Cc: mark.neuhaus(a)email.de, sebastien(a)lorquet.fr Betreff: Usefulness of the Calypso (was Re: seL4 is open source now) Someone (not clear who) said: 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 The word "outdated" does not exist in my vocabulary; I evaluate a tool based on how well it does the job, rather than some arbitrary irrelevant criteria like manufacture date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