Pinephone and open source firmware for baseband

[justneedsomedatathanks]

i represent me and me only, i do NOT speak behalf of the pine organization or its individual members.

my views are partial or preliminary, but i may or may not add more later.

i don't think pine organization or its members has suspicious things going on. meaning that members have not mislead buyers.

Thank you for clarifying this.

however, pinephone regular and pro has eg25g modem chip, which has its own firmware/software, which is not open source, it could be replaced by this https://github.com/the-modem-distro/pinephone_modem_sdk . even this pp sdk is not fully open source.

Okay, so the Pinephone modem is not using open source software, and Pine64 is not claiming it is? Again, I couldn't find any pages or marketing text where Pine64 said it was, but presumably the GrapheneOS account is pushing back against *some* claim made at *some* point.

those claims by "grapheneos" is said by organization, which makes security hardened android for pixel phones and uses pixel's CLOSED SOURCED drivers and vendor image. and those drivers have license agreement, not open source license. even though gms (google mobile services) is removed, android even as its open source version is developed by google, also android api's and interfaces are developed and designed by google.

basically, "grapheneos" complains pinephone for its closed stuff, but then "grapheneos" is dependent on closed stuff from google.

at this point, if i still use android somewhere, graphenos is not going to be one, i may give more details later.

closed stuff here:
https://developers.google.com/android/drivers

I was a GrapheneOS community member at one point, and this is where I was linked to this information. I'd like to clarify that GrapheneOS is well-aware it uses non-free drivers, though it does not make this clear to its users anywhere on its website. I know this because I spent about an hour attempting to ascertain whether Google distributes its security firmware updates under a non-free license. I found this page, but this is not the same as firmware updates, as far as I'm aware (?). As someone unfamiliar with Android, this website is an absolute maze.

In any case, GrapheneOS is not claiming to be completely free software, and it doesn't view that as a good thing, because without the non-free firmware updates, it puts the device at greater risk to attacks. GrapheneOS's concern seems to be only with the truth of Pine64's statements. I wouldn't say GrapheneOS is forthright about delivering non-free updates (likely because they consider this fact completely unimportant), but they don't lie about it, which is what they are claiming Pine64 is doing.

GrapheneOS is based on the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) with significant improvements and patches related to security, and some to privacy. GrapheneOS is released under a free license apart from those third-party firmware blobs, though not as stringent as the GPL in case they later want to sell GrapheneOS phones with locked bootloaders. Could you clarify what you mean by the vendor image being non-free?

And though this topic is interesting to me, I'd still like to keep this topic focused on the subject of the baseband and whether Pine64 claims the firmware is open source or not.