I myself believe that we need to get to a fully open-hardware phone that will be as accessible as this one. However, temporarily using some pieces of closed-source hardware is the only way I see for this project to gain enough traction to actually mean something in this world of big corporations with enormous resources. Open-source matters to me a lot, and I believe that once this project is complete, it will be a stepping stone to exclusively open-hardware phones. Why do I think so? And why am I disregarding the fact that parts of hardware aren't fully open-source - especially the GSM modem?

Considering the current state of open-source microcontrollers, SoCs and RF basebands, focusing on open GSM modems is not the part where this project could really help the open-source phone movement take off on a large scale. The part that's actually lacking is a user interface and an universal hardware platform - that you can use with any hardware you see fit, both fully open-sourced chips and those with no public specifications/using closed-source firmware blobs or microcode. This is also the part that helps build an ecosystem, the interface is one of first things these days that people look for. You generally got to believe in the platform, to see something in the platform to make yourself write an app for it. People that'll impulse-write an app, while playing with the framework, will come and go, will they maintain it? Will they write another one? The framework would need to be really cool for that.

But what can we do to get back the progress open-source is missing? Technology runs forward. Phones, and the technology in general, become more and more complicated compared to what we make at home. Hobbyists often get outdated technologies to play with, which is because the price needs to be low enough and there should be first adopters to help make those technologies more accessible for hacking upon. Often the path is like this - modules get replaced by superior modules, fall in price because the high-quantity demand is lower, manufacturers sell their surplus at a lower price to distributors and, if the documentation exists, the tech can be picked up by companies like Adafruit, Sparkfun and other resellers. Bits of code get written, are assembled into libraries, accompanied by breakout boards, code examples and wiring diagrams. This takes time and is one of many reasons tech is outdated when we get to it, compared to the sweet stuff you can get if you're a company with a popular product bringing revenue to you - and potentially to everyone who gives you a good enough offer to become one of your suppliers.

Again, that's just one of the reasons we often get outdated tech to play with. What do we do? We 1) indicate that the demand is there 2) work with manufacturers that can cooperate with hobbyists. So far, there are companies who, if even can't provide fully open-source hardware, do their best to help is in our interests. However, that gesture of good will usually does not last if we don't bring them profit - which is understandable, considering that companies need to keep afloat and bring profit to develop new technologies to keep their competitive edge.

That, of course, means there should be a community behind open-source phones. Just like there's a community of programmers behind JS frameworks nowadays, what could theoretically stop us from making it as far as GitHub's load balancers can handle? I want your comments about this - I'm kinda in the dark here.

Tinfoil hat on. What happens if we don't keep up? It's possible we'll have the same technology gap we now have with GSM modems. Nobody was motivated to keep up with the rapidly developing technology, and now every phone carries a black box that's incomprehensible. Not only it hinders innovation, what if a covertly rogue-ish government (think Congress-approved NSA programs) decides the black box is a good enough place to tap into whatever's flowing through and labels it as "fighting terrorism"? We're at the mercy of manufacturers, governments and law enforcement on this one, and they're all controlled by the same imperfect humans inhabiting our world.

We've come a long way, and as we progressed we installed more and more social and technological safeguards to prevent other people with bad intentions from doing bad things (and to keep honest people honest). One day, it could happen that this will become one more front where we'll become vulnerable without expecting the huge scale of vulnerability. In the world where large volumes of information help people manipulate other people's opinions - what happens if somebody malicious gets just enough data to get insights about making people support whatever his goal is?

Tinfoil hat off. It's just a shame that sometimes people wearing tinfoil hats sometimes are the ones to guess what'll happen. There's always another way to screw things up when it comes to humans governing humans, and I feel like there's a hole in our pocket that our mobile devices with all their sharp edges help create.

The most important thing, however, is that a platform like the one I hope to bring you can show the most important benefits of open-source phones. With an OSHW GSM modem, the benefits are much less tangible, more, let's say, spiritual and less noticeable in normal operating conditions. With an OSHW mobile phone platform come the benefits of hackability, repairability and improved security, which are much more popular as problems regarding these occur much more often. Open-source hardware, historically, has fared much better than the closed-source alternatives when it comes to these three problems, and it can help acquire a much larger initial user base.

There's a lot to add about the important things. Hardware is useless without software, software is useless if it won't accomodate future changes (and changes from whoever needs something slightly different), and that I'll periodically ramble about, hoping that I can spark a discussion to get some new ideas and get rid of those not applicable to the real world. Whatever you like/don't like/want to discuss, comment here, write me to crimier at yandex dot ru or maybe post to /r/tin_foil_hats, but I'd like to hear your thoughts. Oh, and I there are writeups about actual hardware too!