The Quest to Build a Truly Free Version of Android
Youve probably heard Android is free and open source. But thats not entirely true.
Although most of the code in the Android Open Source Project is indeed open source, much of the software that interacts with hardware components like GPS chips, cameras and graphics is proprietary. And then theres Google Play, Gmail, Google Maps, and other Google-branded software, all of which is proprietary and requires Googles permission to distribute. In fact, if you were to strip out all the proprietary software, you wouldnt be able to do much with an Android phone.
The team behind Replicant wants to change that. Replicant is an independent version of Android with no proprietary software whatsoever. But the Replicant team doesnt like the term open source. They prefer the term free software, because to them, Replicant is all about freedom.
The term free software was coined in the early 1980s by Richard Stallman, the original developer of the UNIX clone GNU. Free software means software that respects users freedom and community, Stallman wrote for the Free Software Foundation website. Roughly, the users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software.
Although most software that is considered open source also is considered free software according to this definition, Stallman has argued the terms imply different values. For the Open Source movement, non-free software is a suboptimal solution, Stallman later wrote. For the Free Software movement, non-free software is a social problem and free software is the solution.
Thats the spirit the Replicant team follows.
Its a matter of not accepting unjust power over your computing and more generally, over your life, says Paul Kocialkowski, a lead developer of Replicant. Anyone who understands and values this point will understand why free software matters.
Replicant was founded in 2010, though its origins date to the release of the HTC Hero/G1, the original Android phone, in 2008. A few people started looking at the Android source code closely to find out what proprietary software was in there, says Kocialkowski. The free and open source software communities quickly realized that there were many proprietary components needed to run Android, so various developers started building alternatives. The original Replicant team Bradley M. Kuhn, Aaron Williamson, Graziano Sorbaioli, and Denis Carikli began gathering these components into a single build of Android free of proprietary software. Carikli, the only founding member still actively involved in the project, was responsible for quite a bit of the alternative code, Kocialkowski says.
Today Replicant supports 10 different devices, but its based on CyanogenMOD, another fork of Android that supports dozens of devices. But CyanogenMOD gets around the restrictions placed on redistributing Googles apps and other proprietary code by backing up the original copies from a users phone before installing the replacement operating system. That way the user can enjoy the advantages a custom version of Android without giving up proprietary software. But Kocialkowski and company are looking to eliminate proprietary software from their devices completely, so Replicant has no such backup features every bit of code included is free.
Perhaps the most noticeable absence from Replicant is Google Play, the app marketplace most Android users depend upon for apps and media. To make up for this, Replicant includes a free and open source app store called F-Droid. Both the source code for the F-Droid application and all the apps available through F-Droid are free and open source. In the past, there have been attempts to create a Replicant Market application, to replace what was at the time known as the Android Market, now renamed Google Play Store, says Kocialkowski. These attempts didnt succeed, but thankfully, F-Droid was being developed at the time by other individuals.
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The Quest to Build a Truly Free Version of Android