State of FreeCalypso

[Spacefalcon the Outlaw]

Joshua Judson Rosen <rozzin at geekspace.com> wrote:

> OsmocomBB?

Unfortunately they seem to have absolutely no interest in producing a
phone (or firmware for a phone) which an end user could carry in her
purse.  Their software absolutely requires the phone to be tethered to
a PC at all times (instead of running the GSM protocol stack on the
baseband processor where it is supposed to run, they run it on the PC
instead), and if the phone gets unplugged for even a moment, it
immediately loses its ability to receive incoming calls and SMS.

Furthermore, the state of OsmocomBB today (for normal GSM usage, NOT
hacking) is exactly the same today as it was in late 2010 or early 2011:
zero progress made in 4 years.  It is very unfortunate indeed: the
people behind OsmocomBB know GSM far better than I do, and I am fairly
sure that they are very capable of making their GPLed GSM stack work
on a phone in a practically usable manner if they wanted to.  But
apparently they have no interest in such a project, and I don't have
any supernatural powers to make them work on something they are not
interested in.

Therefore, I am doing the only thing that *is* within my power and
which *will* result in a practically usable phone running source-
enabled firmware: working on my own alternative non-OsmocomBB
implementation, called FreeCalypso.

Bob Ham <rah at settrans.net> wrote:

> They didn't put you through torture, you put yourself through it.  You
> continue to do that now, in different ways.

Just out of curiosity, how do you think I am "torturing" myself now?

> The person who you most need to apologise to is yourself.

For what?  For wanting to have a phone that doesn't suck?  For wanting
to have a phone such that if something doesn't work because of a bug
in the firmware, I can fix it myself instead of throwing it out and
getting a new one in a vain hope that it will work better?  I don't
see any wrongdoing in having such a desire or in working toward its
satisfaction - hence I don't see what I should be apologizing to
myself for.

> I wish you healing and wellness.

Those will happen automatically as soon as I have a phone in my purse
that runs my own firmware.  I am actively working toward the latter,
and don't need anything from you.

VLR,
SF