The Free Software Foundation (FSF) today announced "Librephone," a new project aimed at achieving complete mobile phone freedom for users from Google and Apple. The initiative will work to reverse engineer obstacles until its goal of a fully free mobile phone environment is realized. Can they be successful where industry leaders like Ubuntu failed previously?
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@nixCraft I would love to see this succeed.
@nixCraft as someone who worked on three different phone platforms that failed (Windows Phone, Kin, and Fire Phone) the problem isn't the OS, it's the app ecosystem. People want their Tiktok and their Facebook and Netflix, and unless you can get them on board then no matter how clever the platform is adoption will not happen. And those apps will expect compromises to support their business models.
@Offbeatmammal ah, yes, that makes sense. i guess we all stuck in Apple or Google hell for now.
@nixCraft not saying it's a good thing, or an insurmountable problem, but I have lived through "oh, this year is the year of desktop Linux" for a long time, and watched phone platforms try to bluster past the app store challenge because the hardware or OS are cool to get my hours too high. I miss PalmOS, S60, and the original Sidekick and am not a fan of the iOS and Android ecosystems right now so hope this does solve the problems
@nixCraft I hope it will be successful, but I also hope that they don't put a high price tag on it, like the Pine64 Pro or Librem 5.
Paying 700€ for old hardware specs isn't really cool.
The Ubuntu Edge was a high end smartphone proposed by Canonical Ltd. in July 2013. Canonical attempted to crowdfund a limited production run through Indiegogo with the ambitious goal of raising $32 million, the highest target in crowdfunding history at the time. However, the project fell short of its goal, raising $12,733,521. I remember getting refund for this project. At that time big companies with deep pockets like IBM, RedHat and other refused to support Canonical. Now we all pay price
If it was fucking AI, LLM, or crypto idea, they would have pumped billions into it. I’m not saying Canonical is perfect, but they did try, unlike Red Hat, IBM, and SUSE, who treat the Linux desktop as a 3rd class citizen because they make their money from the cloud and server markets. These companies have short sighted vision. But what the fuck do I know about running big business. LOL
Ubuntu Edge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_Edge
Here is that email where I was refunded. I truly thought I was going to get a Linux phone. Oh, I was such a sweet child of summer.
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