New Fairphone, New Features, Same Old Software Story?

I must admit that I haven’t been following Fairphone of late, so it was a surprise to see that vague details of the second Fairphone device have been published on the Fairphone Web site. One aspect that seems to be a substantial improvement is that of hardware modularity. Since the popularisation of the notion that such a device could be built by combining functional units as if they were simple building blocks, with a lot of concepts, renderings and position statements coming from a couple of advocacy initiatives, not much else has actually happened in terms of getting devices out for people to use and develop further. And there are people with experience of designing such end-user products who are sceptical about the robustness and economics of such open-ended modular solutions. To see illustrations of a solution that will presumably be manufactured takes the idea some way along the road to validation.

If it is possible to, say, switch out the general-purpose computing unit of the Fairphone with another one, then it can be said that even if the Fairphone initiative fails once again to deliver a software solution that is entirely Free Software, perhaps because the choice of hardware obliges the initiative to deliver opaque “binary-only” payloads, then the opportunity might be there for others to deliver a bottom-to-top free-and-open solution as a replacement component. But one might hope that it should not be necessary to “opt in” to getting a system whose sources can be obtained, rebuilt and redeployed: that the second Fairphone device might have such desirable characteristics out of the box.

Now, it does seem that Fairphone acknowledges the existence and the merits of Free Software, at least in very broad terms. Reading the support site provides us with an insight into the current situation with regard to software freedom and Fairphone:

Our goal is to take a more open source approach to be able to offer owners more choice and control over their phone’s OS. For example, we want to make the source code available to the developer community and we are also in discussions with other OS vendors to look at the possibility of offering alternative operating systems for the Fairphone 2. However, at the moment there are parts of the software that are owned or licensed by third parties, so we are still investigating the technical and legal requirements to accomplish our goals of open software.

First of all, ignoring vague terms like “open software” that are susceptible to “openwashing” (putting the label “open” on something that really isn’t), it should be noted that various parts of the deployed software will, through their licensing, oblige the Fairphone initiative to make the corresponding source code available. This is not a matter that can be waved away with excuses about people’s hands being tied, that it is difficult to coordinate, or whatever else the average GPL-violating vendor might make. If copyleft-licensed code ships, the sources must follow.

Now there may also be proprietary software on the device (or permissively-licensed software bearing no obligation for anyone to release the corresponding source, which virtually amounts to the same thing) and that would clearly be against software freedom and should be something Fairphone should strongly consider avoiding, because neither end-users nor anyone who may wish to help those users would have any control over such software, and they would be completely dependent on the vendor, who in turn would be completely dependent on their suppliers, who in turn might suddenly not care about the viability of that software or the devices on which it is deployed. So much for sustainability under such circumstances!

As I noted before, having control over the software is not a perk for those who wish to “geek out” over the internals of a product: it is a prerequisite for product viability, longevity and sustainability. Let us hope that Fairphone can not only learn and apply the lessons from their first device, which may indeed have occurred with the choice of a potentially supportable chipset this time around, but that the initiative can also understand and embrace their obligations to those who produced the bulk of their software (as well as to their customers) in a coherent and concrete fashion. It would be a shame if, once again, an unwillingness to focus on software led to another missed opportunity, and the need for another version of the device to be brought to market to remedy deficiencies in what is otherwise a well-considered enterprise.

Now, if only Fairphone could organise their Web site in a more coherent fashion, putting useful summaries of essential information in obvious places instead of being buried in some random forum post…