SoylentNews

"gewg_" writes:

from the more-freedom-out-of-the-box dept.

About Replicant [replicant.us]

Replicant is a fully free Android distribution running on several devices, a free software mobile operating system putting the emphasis on freedom and privacy/security. It is based on CyanogenMod and replaces or avoids every proprietary component of the system, such as user-space programs and libraries as well as firmwares.

Replicant aims to be an ethical system: it does not ship nor recommend the use of non-free software.

The Replicant blog reports [replicant.us]

A few months ago, we were contacted to discuss the endorsement of an online shop selling mobile devices pre-installed with Replicant. [...] We asked for some conditions to be met before endorsing the shop, especially conditions that have to do with informing final users:

• Users should not be mislead into believing that the devices are fine for freedom [replicant.us] and privacy/security [replicant.us]. There are plenty of issues remaining, that are explained in general on the Freedom and privacy/security issues page [replicant.us] of the website and in greater details on each device's wiki page (when documented).[...]
• The devices should ship with the official version of Replicant, not a version that was built from source and signed with different keys. However, it is fine to pre-install free applications originating from F-Droid on top of the system, as long as users are made aware of it.

[...]At this point, the following devices can be bought pre-installed with Replicant:

• From Qibre [qibre.co.uk]:[1] Galaxy S (I9000) [replicant.us], Galaxy S 2 (I9100) [replicant.us], Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 (P31xx) [replicant.us]
• From Tehnoetic [tehnoetic.com]: Galaxy S 2 (I9100) [replicant.us]

Replicant gets kickbacks^W donations from sales of the Qibre devices.
Both Replicant and the F-Droid app repository benefit economically from sales of the Tehnoetic devices.

[1] Redirects to a numerical IP address for me. (...and that's a dead link.) 8-(

WRT blogs: Does it irritate anyone else when comments are numbered top-to-bottom but are listed chronologically bottom-to-top?
Does anyone know of a trick to make those paradigms work together seamlessly?

Original Submission