[Gta04-owner] Invitation to indicate interest in next batch of GTA04A5 boards

[Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller]

Am 09.04.2013 um 11:48 schrieb Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli:

> On Thu, 4 Apr 2013 11:53:23 +0200
> "Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller" <hns at goldelico.com> wrote:
> 
>> http://www.google.com/nexus/4/
>> 
>> It fulfills all the requirements: switch on and make phone calls +
>> being able to modify (almost) everything. At a (subsidized) low price
> Almost? I guess not.
> look here:
> https://github.com/CyanogenMod/android_device_lge_mako/blob/cm-10.1/proprietary-blobs.txt
> There are a lot of them...way too much...so much that with Replicant we
> decided not to work on that phone...
> 
> Also we strongly suspect that theses libraries implement spyware.
> specifically the proprietary parts of the RIL(the library which talks to
> the modem).
> We suspect that it tracks your position trough the cell ID, and also
> could push and pull files from the device(on nexus S I heard that the
> proprietary ril ran as root even...).
> 
> And even if someone runs replicant to avoid theses libraries there are
> still some issues with the hardware itself:
> 
> Some phones uses shared RAM memory(which is really bad because there
> is literally banks of RAM wired between both CPU and modem. On the
> Nexus S, the issue is that that RAM bank has 2 areas, one of them is
> for exchanging with the modem(16M)...and the rest...well...it's
> reserved for CPU code(80M)... so the modem could probably change
> what's inside...)and shared NAND(like for the htc dream) between the
> modem(which runs non-free software) and the CPU, some have the sound
> card(does it ring a bell? a sound card with the microphone attached to
> it in direct control of the modem....) and the GPS integrated to the
> modem(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RRLP, more precision than just the
> normal triangulation, and it doen't require any authentication )...

Oops. I didn't know that.

But why is everybody in the open source/linux community then
developing for the Nexus (Replicant, Ubuntu Touch)?

If the community would reject developing for such a hardware design
(which saves cost of course), the GTA04 would maybe get more developers...

> 
> And all the off-the-shelf phones supported by replicant have non-free
> and signed bootloader:
> There is a lot of talks on secure boot recently, it's meant to protect
> against malware subverting the boot system to install rootkits and
> similar things.
> So if a malware can do it, why coundn't any proprietary bootloader do
> something like that?
> 
> The GTA04, while having a non-free wifi firmware that is a pain to
> handle, solve all the previous mentioned issues.

I think this should be made more widely known.

BR,
Nikolaus