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I'd rather see a stable OS and ecosystem for good, Free apps that we can flash onto existing devices. I'm quite happy with my Fairphone (repairable! modular! ethical!) and we know that building and marketing a device is painfully expensive.
Let's make Debian or Arch just work on most phones instead of trying to compete in a saturated market.
There isn't much concrete information, but my guess is that OS/ecosystem is exactly what this project is, and that they are not talking about physical hardware. Specially considering that they are putting the emphasis on free software (not hardware) and they are involving a software developer. Making a phone's hardware free would be an entirely different beast.
In the afternoon, FSF executive director Zoë Kooyman announced an exciting new project: Librephone.
Librephone is a new initiative by the FSF to bring full computing freedom to mobile computing environments. The LibrePhone Project is a partnership with Rob Savoye, a developer who has worked on free software (including the GNU toolchain) since the 1980s. "Since mobile phone computing is now so ubiquitous, we're very excited about LibrePhone and think it has the potential to bring software freedom to many more users all over the world."
Mobian is Debian designed for phones. PostmarketOS is another project doing the same thing, but with an alpine Linux base.
work on most phones
A lot of the world can hardly get an unlockable phone.
Let's make Debian or Arch just work
Wonder why that's extremely rare on ARM devices, especially those with modems, and rarely works beyond proof of concepts on some very specific devices? Its not like you're the first to have this idea.
How old is your oldest working fairphone? I’ve heard too many bad things about software atrophy to declare it a success yet.
I'm using a Fairphone 4, which is 4 years old at this point (October 2021) and I'm still quite happy with it, but I owned the Fairphone 1 and 2 as well.
In terms of software atrophy, they do offer support for your device for 5 years, which is better than most, and because of its open nature, it's generally well supported by alternatives like Lineage or Calyx, but yeah, I'm still on Android 13. While I still get regular security patches and haven't really had a need for an upgrade, there's no denying that the FP4 is behind.
Of course, it's also easily repairable, supports an SD card and replaceable battery, so that's a tradeoff I'm happy with.
Do phone calls and RCS work 100% of the time? (I really hope the answer is “yes” because I really want to get out of the closed source ecosystem.)
I'm afraid I have no idea what an RCS is, but maybe that's a network/region specific thing? I'm in the UK using GiffGaff (O₂) and the phone, SMS, and data works exactly as well as everyone else's... which is to say perfectly in most places and sporadically on the train due to the dead zones on the route.
Let's make Debian or Arch just work on most phones
You have no idea how any of it works, do you?
Fighting closed source drivers, blobs, configurations, entitled users who want everything to work perfectly is not a child's play. Having control over the whole device like this project is huge.
Please god, help me find my keys! Tell St. Anthony I need my keys!
Also could you make this Foss phone be real and reasonably priced below the cost of a gaming PC?
What a nice thing to do
Interesting interview with FSF's new Executive Director Zoë Kooyman if you are curious about her/where the organization is at.
https://fossforce.com/2025/03/zoe-kooyman-on-post-stallman-changes-at-the-free-software-foundation/
I can't find any links to the project itself, only to announcements about the project. Anybody have anything more concrete? How far along is this project?
I'll use my de-Googled and update-blocked S23 until it's physically unable to boot up, and hopefully by then I'll find something that can run this OS, assuming it's ready
Let's hope this lights a fire under Google's ass too, so everyone can have free and open phones.
F-droid maybe we'll find a new good home then?
F-droid for Waydroid enabled Linux phones?
F-droid for AOSP Android
Honestly, I prefer flatpaks with all the drawbacks, give me 100% freedom while providing Android like comfort... Like the new xdg permissions portal.
If the price is no good maps or banking apps, I'll gladly pay it. I just wish the grapheme team worked on linux instead.
Waydroid isn't an "emulator" or a fully independent thing like Wine. It runs a full Android system in a container. It's no more or less dependent on Google than AOSP itself is.
Very cool
Why would anyone think that FSF is capable of releasing a unique and good device? It's gonna be a bog-standard Android device with some software modified/removed.
Might be ok for some people still though. Also I'll be happy to be wrong about my cynicism.
Because as much as they're ridiculed today by libcucks of OSS, FSF was a formidable force of software once. At some point in history literally the only way to avoid paying absolutely insane manufacturer license fees for things like compilers was using GNU tools.
If they put their ass into it, they can pull it off tbh
I guess I'll see phones with this in my local stores at.. 10 years? Too generous, maybe 15.