Episode: 4499
Title: HPR4499: Greg Farough and Zoë Kooyman of the FSF interview Librephone lead developer Rob Savoye
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4499/hpr4499.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-11-22 15:06:57

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4499 for Thursday 30 October 2025.
Today's show is entitled, Greg Faroth and Zoe Kuhamen of the FSF entered Ulyra Phonely
Developer Rob Savoy.
It is hosted by Ken Fallon and is about 23 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is, Greg and Zoe of the FSF interview Ulyra Phonely Developer Rob Savoy.
Today's show is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License.
Hi everybody, my name is Ken Fallon and you are listening to another episode of Hacker
Public Radio.
As some of you may know, I am a janitor at Hacker Public Radio and as such we implement
the policies that are discussed and agreed on the mailing list.
One of those policies is that HBUR does not air shows that have been recorded or published
somewhere else and unfortunately I've recently had to reject a show on that one.
So that's the bad news.
The good news is that show was actually released under a Creative Commons CCBISA license
and it is available on the free software foundation's website fsf.org forward slash campaigns
forward slash Libra Phonely Developer Rob Savoy.
So therefore I am submitting it as a show under our policy that if you have a piece of
cruise commons content that you would like to promote then feel free to record it as
a regular show, introduce the content, explain why it's important, provide links where
you can get more information and include it as one sample episode.
And here you go.
This is Greg Farrow and Zoe Koeman and the interview Libra Phonely Developer Rob Savoy
from DesiGnu, GNU Cash, GCC on his new project to liberate non-fairy binary blobs on mobile
phones.
Apologies if I mispronounced anybody's names but sit back, relax and enjoy the show.
Links will be in the show notes.
Hey everybody, this is Greg Farrow, the campaigns manager of the free software foundation.
I'm here with Zoe Koeman, the executive director of the free software foundation.
Zoe do you want to introduce yourself, introduce the work of the fsf and the guests that we
have today?
Oh yeah, sure.
So my name is Zoe Koeman, I'm the executive director of the free software foundation
and this is a podcast basically coming two days after our 40th anniversary.
So 40 years of commitment to software freedom.
So the fsf has as a mission to defend the rights of computer users worldwide and we do
that in the form of running advocacy campaigns to promote the philosophy of free software
and talk about what free software is.
We are the fiscal sponsors for the GNU project, which is of course the original free software
operating system as founded and started by Richard Stalman in 1983.
And we do licensing and in our licensing team we focus on defending the GNU general
public license which is a strong copy left license which is of course the strategy with
which we protect software freedom.
So for everyone listening that doesn't know what copy left is, it's a structure of copyright
where we tell everyone that uses the software that we create but copy left is also something
used in free culture for example.
So anything any product that you make you have a license to use it and to edit it just
that you like and then to distribute it again under the condition that you have to redistributed
under the same license and that means that everyone that uses your modified version of
the software or in some cases another piece of art material, cultural work gets the same
freedoms as the ones that you receive.
So always a right to study the software to edit it and to share it with your friends
and to distribute it.
And then of course we have a tech team and our tech team runs like I said the infrastructure
for what I mentioned before the GNU project and a couple other free software projects that
are important for the community for example to scale the free operating system that a lot
of free software users use and they also run our entire system of the office on free software.
So we as an organization do every single thing that we do in freedom and that's a place
that we would love other people to be at as well.
So in short that is what we do at the free software foundation and we run several projects
to sort of make a significant difference for people in their software users or in their
computing and we want to free up for as many people as we can and that is one of the reasons
why we are here today talking about a project that we have just recently launched and we
have invited Rob Savoy to join us today.
So Rob do you want to tell us a little bit about yourself?
Sure so I've been working on the GNU toll chain full time mostly on and off since the late
1980s and with a big focus on embedded systems, backgrounds with hardware, bring up,
port support packages, all the really fun hardware software, glue layer stuff I actually
think is kind of fun to work on and so yes I'm kind of excited to be jumping into this
project and do much more of that.
Yeah definitely so Zoe I guess one question that comes to mind is as much as we like
him, people are probably wondering why is Rob here, can you answer that?
Yes I can definitely answer that actually I'm pretty excited to answer that.
So the FSF has been working on software freedom and computing for about 40 years now and
as part of that anniversary we started reflecting on one of the biggest gaps that we had which
is obstructing freedom for users and that is of course mobile phones, a lot of the work
that we do at the FSF is focused on actual computing, desktop computing, laptops, things
like that but we don't have, we haven't made a lot of progress in mobile phones and of
course most individuals do much or cannot even really get around doing their computing
on mobile phones.
So even though there is a lot of work to be done in mobile phone freedom mobile phone computing
remains largely non-free due to a range of non-free software blobs that are proprietary
and even the most progressive what they call free software operating systems.
So we want to build on the work that's already being done by some of these projects that
a lot of people already know, one of these projects is actually a free software project
as well called Replicant which is a project that the FSF also is a fiscal sponsor for but
then we're also talking about projects like Graphino S which is of course not an entirely
free project, lineage OS, same story and then there's Calix OS which is also not entirely
free and unfortunately also temporarily suspended right now.
And then what we want to do is we want to free up the blobs that will get us to mobile phone
software freedom.
Yeah, absolutely and like as we said at the original announcement our project is called
Librephone. Rob, you know I know we've been talking about this for I guess a couple hours
total over the time that we've spent together but if I was just coming to you and I asked
what is Librephone, how would you answer it?
Boy, we're trying to free up people from the software that controls the hardware on their
phone that nobody knows how it works.
Maybe it's leaking private information like who really knows and so we're attempting
to free up kind of that last big black box that controls kind of how we use our devices.
Yeah, so just to be clear Rob, can you just talk a little bit about we are not developing
a free mobile phone operating system, right?
Yeah, correct.
We are not actually going to build like yet another fork of Android open source project
or any of that kind of stuff.
There's plenty of people doing that but they all ship the exact same binary blobs and
so we're focusing on kind of reverse engineering that low level software that would actually
be shared by multiple of the mobile operating systems.
So we're not actually specifically focused on that.
We don't want to do the whole operating system that's an entire project by itself there's
a lot of people in that space so in a lot of ways you know they'll benefit by the work
we're going to do and of course I'll be benefiting this project by the work that they do as
well.
So can you just clarify and explain a little bit more for the users, give us some examples
of some of these low level blobs that you mentioned?
So a simple one, Bluetooth.
So Bluetooth you know one point was basically you know a separate chipset now it's built
into the SOC but yes if you want to have Bluetooth to your headset to your stereo to you
know your car or whatever your Bluetooth thing is the software that actually does the
Bluetooth communication is a binary blob that nobody knows how it works and so part of
what we want to do is figure out how that works, same thing, Wi-Fi, your touch screen,
your fingerprint sensor, all these things have a proprietary blob that nobody knows how
they kind of work and so we kind of want to know how they work and then ultimately once
we understand how they work right free replacements for them so that they're no longer needed.
Otherwise you end up with a phone that actually doesn't work.
Right so to be completely clear so if I download either Graphi-NOS, or CalXOS to mention some
of the ones that we mentioned before they are for a large part they're free software but
then indeed a lot of these for example Bluetooth or the touch screen they're software around
that can be found in most of these operating systems that is actually still non-free, right?
Yeah exactly don't benefit draft a lot by this work because I think all these other people
would like to get rid of the binary blobs it's just an entire project by itself so they focus on
getting as close as they can get to being as free as possible. We can supply that last missing
piece for a completely free phone. Yes and we are very excited about starting to do that.
So Craig why is Maplephone needed? Well you know we were talking about replicant earlier and
replicant is of course you know I like to call it state-of-the-art when it comes to freedom like
so when you you know if you have a device that supports replicant and you install it
replicant will strip out you know most of the binary blobs of course there's still the
mobile baseband which we won't you know talk about right now but you know it strips them out so
you might have replicant on a phone but you won't have working Wi-Fi on the phone or you won't
won't have working Bluetooth on the phone kind of you know like Rob was mentioning.
So Librephone is a project that you know is looking for a or working for a world where you know
you do have Wi-Fi on your phone running for your software you do have Bluetooth on your phone
running for your software in fact all of your hardware are supported because of a very long
research and development and ultimately a reverse engineering project to bring those
you know binary blobs into the free world.
Right and then of course like we said before most individuals actually do a large part of
their computing on mobile phones today and we are very thankful that there have been projects
that have been working on these what they goal free software operating systems and as they are
gaining in popularity we want to make sure that we sort of bring them home and close the gap
there and have them computing in full software freedom and we think that with the work we will
be doing will be benefiting not only one particular operating system but indeed multiple and that
will set us or how do you say that in English and it will bring us miles ahead in bringing us
to mobile phone software freedom because of course the work that we will be doing people can
build on that for years to come is the plan. So FSF has partnered with Rob to start doing most
to start this project so we started in August and we started doing of course a research
in development phase first so we have set up with Rob for about six months to really analyze
what is currently out there what projects are there what kinds of blobs do we need to be looking at
and also sort of what are the systems that are out there now that have most of these blobs
coming back and which would be like the best choice to make to make a start on and then of course Rob
can go into detail a bit further on this but after that just to give you sort of the highlights of
what we are for seeing after that what we'll be doing is we'll be defining the project we'll be
choosing a system and we will be analyzing that thoroughly we will going through we going through
all of the different blobs that are there and then we will have to reverse engineer them now
as I'm sort of talking through this we are talking about a project that could potentially be
years right Rob yeah I think of equivalent projects like the new radio which is another classic
reverse engineering project so what are your first goals and targets Rob can you tell us a
little bit about that about the work that you're doing now and how you see it coming together
in a couple months from now yeah so initially instead of just kind of launching off on whatever
phone I happened to own I decided it was actually worth doing like kind of serious research
there's often variations and the hard work chipsets on phones that may make them easier or harder
to reverse engineer and so when the things I did was since the lineage OS project very nicely has
over install packages up on their website I managed to download all 215 packages and extract all
the binary files and so I've been kind of looking through all the different firmware and what
chipsets what the functionality is and then the kind of the goal of that is in the kind of the
near term is to kind of figure out what's going to be the best development device ideally some kind
of SAC that's maybe used by multiple manufacturers same thing for chipsets we don't really want to
support anything that's kind of a one off hardware for example and because the project may take
several years we also want to have hardware that we can also buy a few years from now on eBay or
somewhere else and so yeah so basically my goal was to actually do a really deeply researched
thought out plan and then at that point it's a matter of collecting some of the resources to start
actually documenting the specifications to replace the blobs bringing in other contractors
things like that but right now I'm just kind of actually going to have a really good idea
what we think we're going to do rather than just launching off with no real plan
yeah so let's talk a little bit about how people can help of course because you're not going to
do this all alone are you now this project is way too big for one person
so the FSM was funded initially by John Gilmore who gave us a really generous donation and
that will sort of keep us going to make sure that we define the project timeline and the next step
we will of course need additional funding so we will be sourcing that as we go along and go
through these projects for the coming years we will also be keeping everyone of course in the
loop on where we are with these different kinds of steps that we need to go through and we will
be reporting as we do the work and Rob has already started a lot of the documentation and as we go
live we will be launching also places where that documentation can be found so Rob what else do we
need help so this is a really big project if we actually want to have workable replacements for
the binary blobs within a reasonable amount of time it needs multiple people I mean you're
looking at average fund there's five six seven different pieces of firmware so ideally what we
need is people with reverse engineering skill sets to work on that as volunteers preferably funding
to actually pay people because these reverse engineering skill sets aren't super common and so
ultimately being able to fund some contractors actually working on the implementation for these
blobs because of the way the legalities are here in the US I'm primarily focusing on the specifications
and the initial reverse engineering and then we will need the people to actually implement the
specifications to kind of stick to the clean room process there so yes we need motivated people
there's a lot of people also working on various pieces of free phones so we'll love to invite them
to sort of loosely join this project with their own contributions maybe stuff that's not directly
firmware related but there's other pieces on a totally free phone so we kind of encourage everybody
to like hey let's jump in together yeah tell us what you're working on and we will look at it
and we will see how we can help each other for sure um so what if I'm not super technical Rob
is there a way that I can help as well so um documentation um I've been trying to write
documentation but I've been told in the past that it's usually very dense so people that can
actually turn it into um something that normal people who aren't embedded systems engineers
can really be helpful um ultimately there are people have put deep time into some of this
firmware you know some people are really in the Broadcom chips and some people are in the media
text I would love to hear from people that actually do have some direct experience with some of
the manufacturers or the chipsets we're looking on um and things like that so I think there's a lot
of ways people can help but of course funding so if you're not an engineer well you can help
fund an engineer um it all works um and I think as time goes on there will be other stuff
eventually we'll need testing and all that other kind of stuff but if I say we're still just
getting the R&D phase launched yeah okay well that's very good to know and then of course one
thing that we say at the FCEF always is also talk talk talk talk talk talk talk about the project talk
about the need for free software talk about uh why you want to free up your mobile phone talk about
the system that you're already writing and why it's not completely free yet and how they can help
to get us there because who knows maybe the person that you're talking to is the person that
is going to make a significant difference in this project um Craig I suppose we also have a bunch
of places where people can meet up with each other or read more about the project do you want to
go through a little bit of that uh yeah we do I mean and thanks to the magic of time travel by the
time that this episode goes out we will have launched a website for the project at leberphone.fsf.org
if for whatever reason you do not see it you will see it on the front page of fsf.org that is free
software foundation um so like bar hackers we have a particular fondness for IRC uh so
if you're on IRC we have set up a pound leberphone uh IRC channel on the leberit.chat IRC network
um of course you know if you want to get involved with the fsf or can you on a more general level
you know all that information is on fsf.org and canu.org it's not just leberphone that needs help
any uh aspect of the uh free software you know movement of using free software of canu linux
all of it needs you know some kind of help and um if you'd like to donate to the fsf you can do that
at uh fsf.org slash donate or ideally uh the thing that helps us the most and which forms the
vast vast majority of our funding is our uh associate membership program and if you're not
an associate member you can join up at fsf.org slash join so to make a long story short uh there
are multiple ways to get involved in leberphone project and there are just literally hundreds of
opportunities to get involved in uh you know free software generally whether that's bug reports
documentation you know actual development uh advocacy which is what we do here on
lebersef campaigns team you know anything that you can do is going to help uh the free software
of movement succeed for sure uh yeah so rob do you have any last thoughts that you want to share
with us? let's go do it hey let's do it yeah
all right just gonna it just gonna be a hard and challenging project they're also the most fun
yes and and it's significant like it's gonna make a significant difference for different for
the future and uh and we're all very excited to start it uh so thanks everyone thanks for listening
yeah thank you and thanks rob for joining us and for teaming up with us on this project very excited
let's go do it yeah
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