RMS / FSF / OsmocomBB / Free Software GSM phone

[Sylvain Munaut]

Hi,

> After all, it would be the first
> mobile phone that he himself would be able to use, given that there
> is no proprietary software on the baseband anymore.

Well, if you're extremist about it, there is still the DSP.
Not much we can do about it without making our own ASIC tough :p


> Here in Morocco, I've had some further discussion on the topic face to
> face with him, and he is sort of unhappy with the fact that nobody is
> working on making an actual self-contained phone (no matter how simple
> or limited in features) that can be used by a regular user as 'just a
> phone'.

Well, even if we have reached major milestones (IMHO) and are able to
make actual phone calls, there is still a bunch of things missing even
for voice / SMS and reliability problems in some cases.

Besides the UI there is also a lot of things that need to be done to
be usable as a phone, like being able to charge the battery, or at
least not drain it in a few hours by having all chips fully powered on
all the time.


> e will try to draft a similar job description related to MS-side GPRS
> support (L1, RLC/MAC, ..).  That would be yet another area where we
> would appreciate some contribution, and which eventually be important
> beyond our existing voice telephony capabilities.

The RLC/MAC layer can certainly be useful for a lot of reasons (both
MS and BTS side),
but is anyone seriously gonna use GPRS non-edge ?


Cheers,

    Sylvain