Free alternative to Google and Apple: Free Software Foundation plans LibrePhone

The Free Software Foundation turned 40 on 4 October. As part of the celebrations, FSF Managing Director Zoë Kooyman announced a new initiative, the LibrePhone project, which aims to create an alternative to the dominant mobile platforms from Apple and Google. The aim is to develop a platform that offers “full computing freedom” for mobile devices.

According to the FSF, the LibrePhone project is to be developed in partnership with Rob Savoye. The developer has been working on free software since the 1980s and was chief developer of the free Flash player Gnash. He has also worked on several projects, such as the GNU toolchain, GCC (GNU Compiler Collection), GDB, Cygwin, Debian, and Red Hat Code.

“Because the mobile phone is so ubiquitous today, we are very excited about LibrePhone and believe it has the potential to enable software freedom for many more users around the world,” reads the FSF blog post.

Few details

The announcement of the new project provides few details, but it should be clear that such a project will be developed according to the strict FSF principles of free software. According to FOSS News, the LibrePhone project aims to develop “a completely open mobile platform from scratch”.

Meanwhile, user “disjunct” writes on Hackernews that it was explained in the livestream of the event that Rob Savoye's work will consist of finding “the freest Android ROM and phone” and reverse engineering the proprietary components according to FSF standards. This could mean that a LibrePhone could be based on Google's AOSP; a free app store would already exist with F-Droid.

The FSF would not have to reinvent the wheel, but custom ROM developers currently have serious problems with the way Google treats the AOSP. For example, Google withholds device trees of its Pixel devices, which makes it easy to develop custom ROMs. Google has also changed its Android security patch strategy from monthly cycles to a “risk-based update system” and now only delivers extensive patches on a quarterly basis.

The LibrePhone project is not the first attempt to develop a free mobile operating system. Back in 2010, the FSF announced its own custom ROM, "Replicant," which apparently still exists but has never been widely used.

(afl)