FreeCalypso plans and direction update

[Mychaela Falconia]

Arsenijs wrote:

> Yep, that's what I remember from the ML, so I tried to condense it down
> into a short answer - sorry if it misrepresents the project in any way,
> let me know if you want me to make any edits to the message

No need to rewrite history, I've already added my own comment to that
reddit thread with a better explanation.

> That's what I think, too. the 30mm*30mm project you've described is
> quite an undertaking, and 2G is running away at the speed of, well,
> planned obsolescence.

Just to be absolutely crystal clear, the issue is *NOT* time, instead
the issue is MONEY.  Let me be even more specific: if someone (anyone)
were to donate $5500 USD or Bitcoin equivalent thereof before the end
of year 2018 in the California time zone (GMT/UTC-8:00), i.e., within
the next 2.5 days or so, then in return I will make every possible
effort to have a working FreeCalypso modem module in 33.8x36.8 mm form
factor by the middle of 2019, which is quite well before any 2G
shutdown projections in places like Europe.  On that aggressive
schedule the first version will be BenQ-made hardware converted to
FreeCalypso by way of firmware plus recalibration on my CMU200 station,
and we only have about 45 pieces of that hw, but that supply should
last in the interim while we work on our own version made from chips
which are available in practically unlimited quantities.

I would have gladly covered this $5500 USD cost myself if I were
cisgender, but alas, I had the misfortune of being born in a body of
the wrong sex, and I need to allocate my money toward the cost of
fixing my birth defect (about 26 kUSD) before I can spend more money
on FreeCalypso - I have *already spent* some 15 kUSD or so on FC.  But
99.9% of humans are cisgender, people with my condition are no more
than 0.1% of the population, so why can't some cis-majority person who
is not burdened with gender/medical costs like I am donate $5500 USD
to the worthy cause of sending a BenQ M32 module to ScanCAD for PCB RE
and recovering its detailed PCB structure and layout?

> That's what I was thinking, too. For example, it's not unimaginable
> that someone could start with this: http://meetthebrick.com/eu/

That page fails to load for me - times out.

> From my side, I offer a fully-assembled ZeroPhone, with any hardware
> addons that could aid in the development of such a project.

Since you told me in another email that ZP uses ofono, I got this idea:
I reason that the ofono community may be larger than the ZP community,
and the ofono community is likely to be comprised of actual developers
who are experts at modem-interfacing sw, as opposed to the folks I've
encountered in the ZP community who are too timid to even try.
Therefore, my idea is as follows: when our FCDEV3B V2 boards become
available in January, I will join and post on the ofono mailing list,
offering a free board to the first person who steps up to make it work
with ofono.  Those people are so used to the pain of interfacing to
closed and proprietary black box modems that a modem with fully
published source code may be interesting to some of them.

M~