Correct , "Dead End" . if you are aiming at somewhat "All Layers Open for All" in any of Industrialized Telecom Standards , like GSM , UMTS , LTE -- you are either alone or one of the already huge Cartel vendors , the usual suspects . i am specifically referring to business-oriented closed-circuit cold-blooded capitalistic side of the issue . it is big bucks and involves elements of serious power . like Oil business , you simply can not dig a whole and start a shop today . a whole layers of politics and beneficiaries are involved to stop you doing that . internationally recognized organizations like ITU , also , for more or less same reasons do not let some one man company or a small scale team who is not already in bed with big players to go solo , and be available everywhere .
Note that i am not in essence , talking about "Security" , whatever that means to you or the next person . you might be well , or feel safe , with your standards under your treat model for your whole life using primitives like 2Gs . in fact i believe this is valid for , figuratively speaking , 99.9 of consumers . it is import an to differentiate between Patents , Licenses , Lobbying for money and ownership all the way down to technical details of how to implement some A5/3 efficient code that can not be tempered with by an evil rouge element in or mitm the network that cancels the whole point for good .
you will not reach to a widely usable phone , that all the details of it is free and open by all means . business , export restrictions , regulations and shareholders are responsible for that , good or bad . you CAN define specifics of a secure system based on your priorities and test and certify to see if it fits your criteria or not on the other hand . what society you belong to ?
- Freedom of software warriors - Political Activist , Reporter in a Hostile environment or some Humanitarian effort type - Business opportunity research - Military and Dark ops - Finance with 7+ figure daily account exchange - a dude with 007s up his ass after leakage of those topless pix - a Kind smily average father - into white slavery , drug smuggling , dark international arms sales
Secure and "Feel Alright" might have different interpretations in each group but that "Open" mobile phone internationally available , legal and realistic is as you put it correctly , a Dead end.
M.
On پنجشنبه, مهر ۱۳, ۱۳۹۱ at ۱:۴۲, John Case wrote:
On Thu, 4 Oct 2012, Mh wrote:
TI or Qualcomm will not sell "you" their IP , no matter what . there is a very complicated "legal" process behind these kinds of deals , specifically a regulation process done outside the vendor , that is usually a government organization . you would however be able to purchase protected DSP style working components and NDAed dox with 6-figure deals .
Ok. So if there was to be a free-as-in-freedom Galaxy Nexus, with full control of all layers, it would be the result of a real, material breech, or leak. Someone would have to do Something Bad.
there is a different type of business you can look into though , take a look at Lyrtech's stuff for example . you can buy at least as good as HDL crystal clear IP from them licensed and hassle free with support and dox and all , but they target specially built systems , usually huge expensive SDRs .
But the point here is an end user (like me) having a secure and free-as-in-freedom phone, so unless we're going to create a community-backed reference platform (which would be great, of course) this doesn't help a lot. Are there any 3G handsets currently for sale that have this (more open) system underneath ?
the alleged TI's leaks , mo matter what the circumstance , are not to my experiences of much practical importance . if you got the engineering resources and enough money to put such stuff into use , you may as well code it all from scratch , since most specs are already public . the Patents usually prevent people from certifying , therefore , prevent selling big time for serious profit and limiting the market . its not like they are Nuclear missile code secrets . difference between engineering and reverse engineering in Software ecosystem and Telecom ecosystem is exactly in the time/resource/profit formulation . kids code a virus or crack a code over a couple of nights using ollydbg , although they need to learn a lot of math and electric shit before doing baseband scale maneuver . they almost never do , or Apple offer them Jobs ;)
You're approaching this as if I want to build and market cell site equipment, or build my own infrastructure ... of course that is interesting, but really all I want is a somewhat modern phone that I can control and feel somewhat secure in using, which means either isolataing the basebadn processor (see my other thread about using USB GSM modems with a galaxy music player) or breaking the baseband of a platform more useful than calypso...
I do wonder, however, if these open reference chipsets exist, why we are looking at calypso as the basis for the "other" osmocom projects (like the baseband dev kit that has been proposed...) it seems like your example would be less of a dead end...