I don’t usually share news, but I think this is worth mentioning here. The Free Software Foundation has made bold claims about developing a fully free and open source smartphone. I’ve included a couple of links with more information below. Unfortunately, there aren’t many details available yet, but I still find it a very interesting development.
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Yes, interesting. But, I am an first one user of sfos and ubuntu touch. That’s 13 years ago and still there is missing a tiny little bit of things. I can handle that and I am big fan of both.
How long do you think it will take until this new phone will really work? How much manpower and money is behind this?
I’ll stay with sfos/ut.
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Maybe they will rely on the Mer stack, which is essentially SFOS minus some proprietary components?
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A phone is a serious and focused long term commitment to making a phone.
The FSF, like so many other “look we’re doing a phone now” announcements, is not focused on just this one thing.
Further both Sailfish, and Windows phone, show that it takes years of persistence beyond the first production release to bring a properly working phone os up.
It will go nowhere. I would put money on it.
Yeah. Unfortunately I also think, that this will lead nowhere. There was liberux recently trying to crowdfund the development of an open phone and they only gathered about 10% of the fixed goal of EUR 1.4 Million (see Liberux NEXX | Indiegogo ). Ubuntu tried it a few years back and tried to raise EUR 27 Million, but it wasn’t realized, as “only” EUR 11 Million got backed (see Ubuntu Edge | Indiegogo ).
I’m not sure how much money is needed to start a project of that size, but it seems, that 11 Million is not enough and there seem to be not enough people out there willing to support it anyway.
Edit: and I really loved both of these ideas, as they aimed to make the phone a desktop replacement, using a docking station to connect it to monitors/peripheral and use it as a normal desktop computer while connected, but have it with you as phone.
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If FSF keeps their no-binary-blobs, no-DRM, no-patents stance, as much as I’d wish them to succeed I doubt they can find some sufficiently open hardware, as modern mobile chipsets rarely come with open usage policies.
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And cameras unfortunately also.
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Very fine! Thank you @RosSigudottir . I’m still interested in SFOS.
I am also wondering why the concept of convergence is not leading to a product finally. I have a old laptop from 2006 running Debian and frequently think about to replace it with something more powerful and recent. But I always skip it in the end…
I would love my next laptop to be a phone at the same time:
At home a PC with a dock, mobile a phone.
I would prefer such a product anytime over a standard laptop PC…
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I am also skeptical because they talk about cooperation but there are no people nominated with a track record in mobile phone development as far as I can see:
‘partnership between the FSF and developer Rob Savoye, who “has worked on free software (including the GNU toolchain) since the 1980s’
Well, I do have a fairphone 4 with UT and it’s the best one for convergence yet. Not perfect but on it’s way. Other UT phone, you are right, can’t do that, or at least not so good. FP4 is worth a daily device for sure.
xperia 10 iii in theory also could do that, but jolla would have to fix that video out driver
This would be very nice. Convergence on Sailfish would be worth an extra header.
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I guess the scalability of apps and desktop usable app landscape is also missing
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You could simply run debian in a container and use desktop apps
I wouldn’t call it bold; there’s only one paragraph announcing that project (but of course a site like liliputing would blow it up into a whole article) with very little info. A first draft of a vision.
On one hand I like the idea that a big central entity like the FSF takes the reigns in an overarching project. On the other hand I’m not sure any US-based Inc. should be doing anything like that. And of course centralising has downsides as well.
FWIW PostmarketOS are making progress. Quite many community devices are “almost there”. Certainly the mainlining seems to work although they’re stll not usable as phones, let alone daily drivers. [oops it seems I confused mainline kernel with mainstream distro]
Jolla announces a new phone, than comes FSF. Is that a coincidence? 
Hehe, really funny speculation.
I would hope that FSF would be less rigid and go into cooperation with Jolla.
Is there any new information compared to the original thread?
I would like to see something materialize before continuing the noise that all these news site regurgitate
SFOS seems miles ahead…
But joining forces is always recommended
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