On 10/29/2013 10:56 AM alex.padoly@laposte.net wrote:
Hello to all, I shall want to buy a SMARTPHONE with a free O.S (GNU). Many of my friends say to me that ANDROID is a free system, it is LINUX! What do you think about it? Does it exist a SMARTPHONE with a system DEBIAN GNU LINUX Thank you for your answers Alex
Alex,As you can see (from this long conversation), there are a variety of interpretations of what "free" means and its value to the end user. Getting back to your original concerns, here are some observations I've made about android which indicate to me that it's not free.
When you buy a phone with android on it, you don't have root access to the system. You're just a regular user. Yes, you can root the phone, but then you invalidate the warrantee, from what I understand, both the software and hardware warrantees. So if something fails on your phone, the company whom you bought it from won't provide support. If something breaks (whether it's software or hardware), you're on your own. There are some android-specific lists which could be helpful.
Updates are automatic. That is, you don't control what of the OS is changed or when. Well, you could take the battery out of the phone and/or take other measures, but then the phone isn't as useful.
There are FOSS apps available. But most of what's available at play.google.com is not FOSS.
I wanted a FOSS editor on my android, so installed both emacs and vi. Neither of them are functional and need a LOT of further development.
When you buy a new android phone, you have to assume that everything on it will be accessible to prying eyes and might even be used against you maliciously. Most apps are closed source and many have permission to look at personal data on your phone they have no reason to access. I.e., an app which allows you to keep a list of food items you wish to buy will have free use of your network connection and access to your address book. Of course it's your choice whether to install such apps or not, it's my experience that the majority of the available apps are overly intrusive in one way or another.
Add to this that important parts of the OS are closed source, so whoever's in control of the OS has free access to the entire phone. Then, too, if you've been following the news at all over the past few weeks, you'll know to assume that anything garnered by a commercial interest is likely passed on to yet other institutions. This means your actions are likely transparent to others, but theirs and the operations of a device you purchased are not transparent to you. This is pretty much the opposite of FOSS and demonstrates one reason (among many) why FOSS is important.
I've never googled for 'debian on a smartphone', so couldn't say that such a thing exists. I can only say I've never heard of such a thing. The closest thing I have heard of is, as I mentioned before, OpenMoko. FOSS-- and so then too OpenMoko-- is often constrained by patents, licensing, NDAs, and other factors of a commercial nature. And so FOSS and FOSH developers, OpenMoko included, find it advantageous to wait until patents expire. The result is that the hardware might not be the most recent to come to market. As I pointed out elsewhere in this thread, it's rather myopic and mindless to dismiss a product simply because it's not the newest on the market (when in fact this can be an advantage). Far more important is what you want to do with a product and how you want to do it. For example, do you really need to run 802.11q on a proprietary system or does 802.11b/g running FOSS provide what you need and for other reasons might even be preferable?
In short, like any other computer (or most anything in the world a person would consider acquiring), it's best to think about what you want to do with it and how you want to do it... maybe even make a list of the features and characteristics and capabilities sought. Then with that in mind, search for what satisfies those.