Richard Stallmans standpoint about openmoko

[Mikko J Rauhala]

On ti, 2007-04-24 at 17:02 +0400, t3st3r wrote:
> As for me, I'm have to ask few "unfair" questions.

These are not unfair, IMO.

> 1) Why there should be some closed-source daemon which does some unknown 
> things?And why should I trust it, if I have no idea what it does?

Actually, closed-source plugin to a daemon, but that's just a nitpick,
and the issues remain the same. You can toss it if you don't trust it. I
personally expect it to be reverse-engineered and replaced by a communal
free plugin in relatively short order, considering that the data in an
out of the plugin will be available to us.

> 2) As I understand, to fully use features of AGPS I should send some 
> data to some server over network, without really having any idea what 
> they will do with these data, if they will collect them for later use 
> and if my privacy protected here or not.

Correct. Don't know if the plugin will allow you to use your own server
or other source of satellite tracking data not, as I'm not with Moko
(and apparently there's some issues for them even getting their hands on
working GPS drivers; hey, Moko people, how's that going, by the way?).

However, turning the assist feature off should keep you private assuming
no intentional backdoor, and mostly just cost you time to get the first
fix. (I wonder if the Moko people will see the source or only the GL
people, that would at least add some trust for me...)

-- 
Mikko J Rauhala <mjrauhal at cc.helsinki.fi>
University of Helsinki