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Mychaela Falconia mychaela.falconia at gmail.comHi Harald, Thank you for taking the time to respond to my GSMUA idea. I agree with you that representing the interests of users at GSMA/ETSI/3GPP would a task beyond our means, but I still see social value in creating our own totally informal group purely for mutual support and camaraderie. Throughout human history members of various oppressed minorities have banded together for mutual support, even if that support is purely emotional and nothing more, and I am currently experiencing an unmet need for such a group with regard to GSM/2G. > Regarding your proposal: It seems like a contradiction in terms to me if > you establish something called an 'user association' while your interest > is (at least partially) to represent "boutique manufacturers" regarding > IMEI allocations. My idea of a recycled IMEI registry was just one potential application for GSMUA, and the overall idea of GSMUA still appeals to me even if we don't pursue the recycled IMEI registry idea. As for representing boutique manufacturers of end user devices in a user association alongside with actual end users, I don't see much of a contradiction, as the interests of the two are expected to coincide. Boutique manufacturers are fundamentally different from mainstream ones: while mainstream manufs act as users' enemies for all practical purposes (they prefer to serve the interests of carriers and/or governments instead, and their entire "security" model sees the user as the enemy), boutique manufs exist for no purpose except to serve the interests of underrepresented end users, and given that FLOSS development typically proceeds by scratching one's own itch, a real-life boutique manuf of GSM devices will almost certainly make those devices for his or her own personal use first and foremost, and then offer them for sale in extremely small volume to others of a like mind. In my original proposal I outlined the following list of parties whom I see as the target audience for my proposed GSMUA: * Empowered end users; * Small boutique manufacturers for devices for said empowered end users; * Small community and other non-mainstream network operators, i.e., those who operate networks for the empowered end users and their FLOSS devices to connect to. A key goal of GSMUA is to be a truly neutral meeting ground where all of the above can come together, with everyone being equally welcome regardless of specific project affiliation, if any. The closest thing that exists so far where all kinds of different people with an interest in cellular telephony can come together are your OsmoCon and OsmoDevCon get-togethers, but those are limited to projects that fall under the Osmocom umbrella, and do not include non-Osmocom projects in the same general space. My vision for GSMUA is to be more inclusive and more neutral, a place where people from Osmocom, FreeCalypso, OpenBTS, YateBTS and others (as well as just persons who are simply interested in the general subject matter, but not affiliated or involved with any specific project) can come together (at least online if not physically) without any of them being in a dominant position. The very fact that this discussion we are having right now has to be cross-posted to 3 different mailing lists is an indication of the problem which my GSMUA proposal is meant to solve: there presently exists no truly neutral, truly general community mailing list where *everyone* with an interest in non-big-bucks GSM and other cellular networks can interact with others in the same field, regardless of whether their specific interest is in running their own network, making their own end user phones, or just using one or both of those as a highly intelligent, highly empowered end user, and without being specific to any one particular project. One specific reason why I feel there is a need for people on the empowered-end-user mobile device side to meet with people on the network infrastructure and network operations side is the imminent threat of GSM/2G shutdown by the uncaring major network operators. There exist people in the world, myself included, for whom life without GSM/2G would be absolutely intolerable, as GSM/2G is the only cellular technology for which there exist practically usable FLOSS implementations on the MS/UE side. In both USA and Canada there is only one GSM/2G operator left, and if T-Mobile USA and Rogers completely shut down their GSM/2G networks in another year or two, and reallocate every last 200 kHz channel in both 1900 and 850 MHz bands to their stinking 3G/4G/whatever services so no one else can set up replacement community networks, users of Calypso phones will be completely screwed. This is where people in the OpenBTS/OpenBSC/etc projects can come to the rescue. As I understand it, there are both commercial and community operators who run their own GSM/2G networks using BTS hardware and software built and maintained by the Osmocom/OpenBTS/etc community, and because of the imminent shutdown of GSM/2G services in "first world" regions, I feel that a bridge needs to be built ASAP between users of 2G-only Calypso phones on one end and those non-mainstream community network operators on the other end. To put it simply, if the evil first world governments take away the last remaining bit of spectrum from GSM/2G users, we (the latter users) need to know which remote third world village we should flee to where we can set up our own OpenBTS/OpenBSC/OsmoNITB/etc GSM/2G network without having radio regulators show up with tanks the next morning to shut it down, or where such a community network already exists. To put the matter in perspective, I will be giving a presentation about FreeCalypso at REcon in Montreal just two weeks from now, and the subject of imminent GSM/2G shutdown will be unavoidable. Unless there exists another person in the world who is as crazy as me and who would be willing and able to carry out a project similar to FreeCalypso, but using leaked Qualcomm or MTK sources for some 3G-capable or even LTE-capable chip instead of TI's 2G-only ones (seems rather unlikely to me that anyone else can be insane enough to do such a thing), creating a GSM village in some remote 3rd world location that would welcome refugees from the "first world" fleeing from 3G/4G tyranny seems like the most proper solution which I should advocate for. M~