Replicant at FOSDEM 2015

This year’s edition of FOSDEM, one of the major free software conferences in Europe, is just around the corner! Among the various talks that mention the state of free software on embedded devices, I (Paul Kocialkowski) will be presenting a talk entitled “Reached milestones and ongoing development on Replicant” on Sunday afternoon, that will first highlight the various achievements that were accomplished within the Replicant project to handle the numerous devices it supports today, only to explain how the majority of those devices are fatally flawed when it comes to freedom and privacy/security. Thus, the second part of the talk will put the emphasis on the new focus of the development effort, on devices that can take freedom to the next level. In particular, the current status of the Goldelico GTA04, LG Optimus Black (P970) and Allwinner (Sunxi) devices ports will be mentioned in detail, along with a description of the various plans for the work that is left to be done.

FOSDEM is also a great opportunity to meet members of the community, so do not hesitate to say hi if you bump into me in the embedded devroom or around the place! Remember that face-to-face meetings also allow for verifying the Replicant project’s release key‘s fingerprint and creating a chain of trust for verifying the software released by the Replicant project.

10 thoughts on “Replicant at FOSDEM 2015

  1. > Do you have any more English speaking presentations you’re doing in the near future?

    I’ll be giving one in Beauvais, near Paris, next July, as part of the Libre Software Meeting/RMLL: https://www.rmll.info/

    > do you mind telling me how the Optimus Black and Sunxi devices are coming along?

    The Optimus Black is booting Android just fine now, I need to clean everything up and submit code to upstream U-Boot (but the dirty code is already usable as-is). As for sunxi, U-Boot support is there and I’m contributing to upstream these days (see: http://git.denx.de/?p=u-boot/u-boot-sunxi.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/next ). The Replicant part hasn’t started yet on either devices and since I’m *really* busy with studies right now, I think it won’t be until, say, June. I know Replicant isn’t moving forward a lot (actually, not moving forward at all) these days, I’m a bit sad about it. Still, I’m not giving up, it’ll just take some time for me to get there. Actually, the linux-sunxi community is pretty active, so you might want to get in touch with the people there, to have a close idea of what’s going on (it’s really exciting)! GNU/Linux has been running for some time and a lot of effort is going into the mainstream Linux kernel now!

    > Oh, and you are wrong when you said that your work is somewhat inspirational. It actually is extremely inspirational!

    Thanks a lot :) And as usual, thanks for your interest !

  2. Your english is great. Don’t think twice about that. You’re right though, it was unfortunate that you ran out of time towards the end. Do you have any more English speaking presentations you’re doing in the near future? Also, I read in the comments that you’re “not a big fan of writing lots of status updates”, but do you mind telling me how the Optimus Black and Sunxi devices are coming along? I’m super excite about both of them.

    Oh, and you are wrong when you said that your work is somewhat inspirational. It actually is extremely inspirational! ;) Keep it up!

  3. Well, I was waiting for the WebM version to come out (which should happen once all the videos have been validated), but perhaps I’ll change my mind if it takes too long, or will just convert it myself. In any case, it will be available at: http://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki/Conferences and I’ll gladly make a blog post about it!

    Thanks for your comments, I know my English is sloppy and I’ll try to do better next time though. It’s sad that I didn’t have enough time to concentrate on the really important part (the Optimus Black and Sunxi devices) so I’ll probably split that talk in two next time. And it’s great to see that this is somewhat inspirational. Still, I think that I gained more from free software than I’ll ever possibly be able to give back!

  4. I just wanted to make a humble suggestion that you do a blog post with this video linked or embedded: http://video.fosdem.org/2015/devroom-embedded/replicant_embedded_freedom.mp4

    You did a fine job with this talk and it really explains the state of replicant well. Thanks for all the work you do, Paul! It is greatly appreciated by a vast number of people, many of whom you’ll never know you’re helping. It’s always so encouraging to see a person working on behalf of freedom. It makes me want to replicate the good things that you do by working towards freedom as all the more.

  5. Does or can Replicant replace the operating system on the Iphone and Ipad?
    If it can I would gladly give it a shot. I have an Ipad 2 and Iphone 5c.

  6. I’m not a big fan of writing lots of status updates, but I can say that the biggest part of it is done now. I can run CyanogenMod without big noticeable issues at this point. What is left is to add clean support for display with DSI, clean everything up and submit to upstream!

  7. Any updates on how the bootloader (U-Boot) port is going with the LG Optimus Black?

    I wish FOSDEM would hurry up and get some videos posted! Any chance you have the video to your presentation and can upload it?

  8. Hi,

    Is the Galaxy SIII special 4G is working with Replicant please?

    This one: http://www.ldlc.com/fiche/PB00140068.html

    And is the Galaxy S III Mini is the same device (but more little) than the Galaxy S III classical or is it completely different (and so is the SIII Mini working with Replicant?)

    Thanks for your great work!

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