![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/fsf-40-1-584x500.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
As explained in an announcement<\/a> and interview with lead developer Rob Savoye<\/a>, and a FAQ on the Librephone website<\/a>, the goal is not to design a new smartphone operating system or build a new phone.<\/p>\n Instead, the idea is to reverse engineer the stuff that keeps existing operating systems from running\u00a0completely free and open source software without any closed-source components.<\/p>\n This is a project that could take a long time to complete, and there\u2019s no guarantee of success. But the idea is that over the next six months, the team \u201cwill work to analyze common nonfree blobs in current (mostly) free software operating systems.<\/p>\n What operating systems? At this point, it seems like the team is planning to use the Android-based LineageOS as a starting point.<\/p>\n But\u2026 again, the goal here isn\u2019t to develop a whole new operating system. It\u2019s to reverse engineer the firmware and binary blobs used in processors, wireless chips, and other components so that LineageOS and other operating systems can interact with that hardware without relying on \u201cblack box\u201d code that\u2019s inaccessible to users.<\/p>\n So it\u2019s possible that if the Librephone initiative is successful, we could see the fruits of its labor applied to a wide range of operating systems.\u00a0Which devices will be supported remains to be seen though. The Librephone project is taking aim at a moving target \u2013 by the time the team has reverse engineered the code for one set of smartphone hardware, it\u2019s highly likely that next-gen hardware will already be available.<\/p>\n In other words, this is a project aimed at folks who value software freedom<\/a> over convenience\u2026 because there\u2019s a decent chance that if you\u00a0can ever run completely free software on a phone, it\u2019ll be a model with older hardware.<\/p>\n Liliputing’s primary sources of revenue are advertising and affiliate links (if you click the “Shop<\/a>” button at the top of the page and buy something on Amazon, for example, we’ll get a small commission).<\/p>\n But there are several ways you can support the site directly even if you’re using an ad blocker* and hate online shopping.<\/p>\n Contribute to our Patreon campaign<\/a><\/p>\n or…<\/p>\n Contribute via PayPal<\/a> * If you are using an ad blocker like uBlock Origin and seeing a pop-up message at the bottom of the screen, we have a guide that may help you disable it.<\/a><\/p>\n Join 9,540 other subscribers<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There are plenty of smartphone operating systems that are\u00a0mostly made from free and open source software, including de-Googled…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":226085,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[126770,126771,126772,126773,165,74],"class_list":{"0":"post-226084","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mobile","8":"tag-foss","9":"tag-free-software","10":"tag-free-software-foundation","11":"tag-librephone","12":"tag-mobile","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226084"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226084\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/226085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}