moko13 firmware

[Mychaela Falconia]

Hello Om community,

A little over a month ago a certain disgruntled ex-Openmoko employee
posted a knowingly false statement on this list, a false statement
which I feel is still in need of factual correction.

On Tue Aug 29 01:05:29 UTC 2017 Joerg Reisenweber wrote regarding the

Please carefully note that this update is not based on the original licensed
firmware for Openmoko devices,

This statement is false, and the poster knows it. Both OM's historical
firmwares and the current FreeCalypso ones are based on the same
20070608 base code delivery from TI; in the case of the current openly-
source-published FC firmwares you can see the original 20070608 code
and all subsequent evolution in the public Mercurial commit history
(yay for open source), and in the case of OM's historical firmwares
for which there is no corresponding source, you can see the dates in
the component version strings displayed with AT%VER, or see the same
strings with dates in them by running strings(1) on a mokoN image
after converting it from *.m0 (byte-reversed SREC) to straight binary.

All of the post-20070608 updates that appear in OM's historical mokoN
firmwares are also included in moko13, with the single exception of
the unofficial L1 update from 20080421 that was a totally misguided
attempt at fixing bug #1024, which did not fix the problem (it
couldn't, as the fw was fine and the problem was in the hw), and which
according to OM's own Sean Chiang (public ML post from 2008 quoted
earlier) had not passed TI's internal quality control. In fact, OM
had taken this unofficial and *experimental* L1 update from TI, and
despite knowing full well that it had not passed TI's internal quality
control, included it in their production moko10 and moko11 firmwares.
AFAIK whatever type approval or certification testing OM had done was
well before this bug #1024 wild hunt, and there was no recertification
testing with moko10/11. Thus one could argue that OM should have
voided their certification when they included that known-to-be-
unqualified L1 update in their production fw.

Thus moko13 has NO functional or quality or stability regressions
relative to moko11, but contains improvements on the contrary: a more
proper version of L1 free of misguided and mysterious hacks, and a fix
for the floating inputs bug described earlier. It uses the exact same
version of TI's code which was in use at the time when OM passed their
type approval or certification testing, and has been carefully vetted
by the FreeCalypso team which has much greater GSM expertise than OM
had ever demonstrated.

The bottom line is this: if you have stopped maintaining a piece of
software, you have no right to be upset and angry when someone else
picks it up and takes over its continued maintenance. You have not
released any new modem fw updates since early 2009, and the last
release you made on 2009-02-24 still contains easily provable bugs:
being an EE, you surely know that floating inputs are a bad idea. So
why are you upset that someone else has picked up the maintenance of
this firmware and is fixing your bugs?

If there is anyone still left who uses a Neo FreeRunner as his or her
primary everyday phone, I encourage you to update your modem fw to
this current moko13 release. I am also working already toward the
next fw version in which the entire G23M protocol stack will be
replaced with a newer version from TI (newer than any of the versions
which OM ever had), and this newer version also comes in full C source
form, rather than blobs. This new radically-deblobbed fw already
exists (hybrid configuration in FC Magnetite), but it still has a few
remaining bugs and missing features which I need to work on.

The FreeCalypso core team is also soliciting input from the wider
community as to what kind of new hardware products people would like
to see. The current choices are:

Option 1: a packaged SMT modem module that can be used as a component
in new smartphone designs like Neo900, replacing the mainstream
proprietary ones, for those who desire a free modem badly enough to
forego all of 3G/4G and use GSM/2G instead.

Option 2: a self-contained "dumbphone" handset consisting of a Calypso
chipset, a 176x220 pixel (probably 2") color LCD and a 21-button
keypad, possibly 3 side buttons as well, for those who just want a
plain phone and do not wish to be burdened with the extra complexity
and power consumption of a Linux computer in their phone.

Option 3: new production of Neo FreeRunner (GTA02) verbatim clones.

We are definitely interested in hearing which of the above might be of
interest to people, if any.

Sincerely,
Mychaela Falconia
Mother of FreeCalypso
www.freecalypso.org

[Mychaela Falconia]

I forgot to add:

: Option 3: new production of Neo FreeRunner (GTA02) verbatim clones.

If people do desire to see new production of verbatim GTA02 clones
that differ from FIC-made ones only in the manufacturing dates and the
identity of the manufacturer, and someone steps forward to fund such,
the new FreeRunners will have a sticker inside the battery compartment
that officially names Falconia Partners LLC rather than Openmoko Inc.
as the manufacturer of record, thus no one will have any ground to
bitch about our firmware not being authorized or endorsed by the
manufacturer.

And for those who missed that news item, let me repeat that we
(Falconia Partners LLC, doing business under the brand name FreeCalypso)
have already successfully produced our first fully working Calypso
modem product, along with production line RF calibration no worse than
OM's, in the form factor of a standalone modem development board. Thus
my talk about building new Calypso phone and modem products is not just
hypothetical, but quite real.

M~

[joerg Reisenweber]

Post by Mychaela Falconia
: Option 3: new production of Neo FreeRunner (GTA02) verbatim clones.
If people do desire to see new production of verbatim GTA02 clones
that differ from FIC-made ones only in the manufacturing dates and the
identity of the manufacturer, and someone steps forward to fund such,
the new FreeRunners will have a sticker inside the battery compartment
that officially names Falconia Partners LLC rather than Openmoko Inc.
as the manufacturer of record, thus no one will have any ground to
bitch about our firmware not being authorized or endorsed by the
manufacturer.

What will be your FCC approval number for those devices. or on same topic,
what IS the FCC approval number (and URL to the publicly available FCC
approval report) of the devices you already built? And is that a global
approval or a US-only one?

Just asking since I might have missed that part and am wrong (as usual
according to you) in assuming you're selling devices that have no approval at
all and thus are illegal to operate outside an anechoic chamber

BR
/j

[Mychaela Falconia]

What will be your FCC approval number for [new GTA02 clones]

There will be one if someone pays for it, or none otherwise.

what IS the FCC approval number (and URL to the publicly available FCC
approval report) of the devices you already built?

There is none.

Just asking since I might have missed that part and am wrong (as usual
according to you) in assuming you're selling devices that have no approval at
all

You are correct in that I am selling devices that have no approval at
all, however, the part you are missing is that these devices are
intended for those people who practice radical self-empowerment and
self-sovereignty, and do not need approval from anyone other than
themselves.

and thus are illegal to operate outside an anechoic chamber

I've already asked you before: please cite at least one documented
example of any police force anywhere in the world using extrasensory
psychic powers to detect the use of a device which they deem to be
illegal (for lack of regulatory approval) but whose actual radio
transmissions are 100% correct, 100% in accord with the relevant
technical standards, and thus indistinguishable from type-approved and
thus presumably legal devices.

M~

[Mychaela Falconia]

Further on the subject of FCC type approval or lack thereof, your
change log at:

http://people.openmoko.org/joerg/calypso_moko_FW/all_version__CHANGELOG.txt

lists "Pass the PTCRB certification" under moko5. Does it imply that
there was no PTCRB certification and thus no FCC approval number prior
to the time of moko5? Yet you sold quite a few GTA01 devices prior to
that time. Does it mean that those GTA01s, particularly the earliest
phase 0 devices, were sold or sent free of cost to people who weren't
OM employees without having FCC approval? If you say that selling
devices without such full approval is absolutely illegal, then how
were you able to get away with it?

And when it comes to my *current* FreeCalypso devices (as opposed to
potential future ones) which lack FCC approval, please keep in mind
that these current devices are *development* boards, not intended for
end users. These development boards are specifically intended for
developers and tinkerers who will be playing with their own radio fw
builds, and have no other purpose. I doubt that such developer kits
(as opposed to end user products) are eligible for FCC approval at all.

Yet there are many, many companies that sell gear specifically for
developers, specifically for lab use in controlled environments, gear
that does not have FCC approval for end user operation. Even TI back
in the day when they made cellular baseband chipsets made and sold
such development kits, and I even managed to score one of those
historical TI dev kits on ebay:

https://www.freecalypso.org/members/falcon/pictures/D-Sample/

TI's cellular development kits like the one pictured above were sold
to chipset customers who were developing their own products with TI's
chips, were delivered along with those infamous NDA-controlled firmware
sources or semi-sources, and were specifically intended for engineers
to try out their own fw builds. I somehow doubt that these development
kits had FCC approval of the same kind as end user devices, yet I also
doubt that TI were breaking laws by selling these kits.

Thus if a piece of gear is explicitly sold as a development kit for
engineers, not as an end user product, and it is very clearly indicated
that it is not FCC-approved as an end user product and that the
engineer-customer must take the full personal responsibility for its
radio operation, then maybe it is not so totally illegal for the dev
kit manufacturer to sell such kits?

You are of course correct that if someone buys a non-type-approved
cellular development kit like TI's D-Sample or my FCDEV3B and uses it
to do their own radio fw development, they have a responsibility to do
their initial tests in a controlled environment, either without an
antenna, using a conducted connection to an RF tester like R&S CMU200
(that's my setup), or with radiated transmissions in an anechoic
chamber like you said.

But there also exists a phase in the development and testing cycle in
which a device has not received full approval yet, but is being tested
on real live GSM networks. Such tests are conducted with the full
knowledge and cooperation of the network operator, with the test
device operator ready to unplug the power supply at any moment should
the device under test cause any kind of disruption or interference to
the live network.

The ONLY way in which my process deviates from the "fully legitimate"
process described above is that I do not seek special approval from
T-Mobile prior to sticking one of their SIM cards into one of my
development devices, but just do it. But I never leave such a setup
unattended while powered on, and I always closely monitor the operation
of my devices whenever I conduct operational tests on the live T-Mobile
GSM network. If the device ever misbehaves in any way (which has yet
to happen), I will most certainly power it off immediately. Because
my devices function 100% correctly and in accord with the GSM specs,
no interference or disruption of any kind takes place, and absolutely
no harm is caused to anyone.

M~

[David Arnold]

<…>

Post by Mychaela Falconia
We are definitely interested in hearing which of the above might be of
interest to people, if any.

FWIW, I think the last 2G network in Australia is shutting down in March 2018 (following the December 2016 and August 2017 closure of the other two networks).
So I expect there’ll be no (or very little) interest from here.




d

[Mychaela Falconia]

Post by David Arnold
FWIW, I think the last 2G network in Australia is shutting down in
March 2018 (following the December 2016 and August 2017 closure of
the other two networks).

And how many people have responded to this shutdown plan by taking a
vow to live without any cellphone at all instead of accepting 3G/4G
when such shutdown happens? I have already made just such a vow for
myself when it comes to the threatened shutdown of T-Mobile's GSM/2G
network in my part of the world, which is also the last one.

And how many people are looking into building their own replacement
GSM/2G networks following the example of Rhizomatica? See:

https://www.rhizomatica.org/

M~

[David Arnold]

Post by Mychaela Falconia

Post by David Arnold
FWIW, I think the last 2G network in Australia is shutting down in
March 2018 (following the December 2016 and August 2017 closure of
the other two networks).

And how many people have responded to this shutdown plan by taking a
vow to live without any cellphone at all instead of accepting 3G/4G
when such shutdown happens?

To a first approximation? Zero.




d

[Stefan Monnier]

Post by Mychaela Falconia
And how many people have responded to this shutdown plan by taking a
vow to live without any cellphone at all instead of accepting 3G/4G
when such shutdown happens?

Why would someone do that? I mean this as a real technical question:
what is the difference between 2G and 3G which would cause someone to
take a stand against 3G?


Stefan "who doesn't want to use cell-phone technology and limits
itself to wifi instead, where it's harder to track you
from a central location"

[Mychaela Falconia]

Post by Stefan Monnier
what is the difference between 2G and 3G which would cause someone to
take a stand against 3G?

The difference is that for GSM/2G there exists a practically usable
implementation whose source code you are free to study and improve,
running on hardware whose electrical schematics and even physical PCB
design are published, consisting of chips whose detailed register-level
documentation is also published, without any restricted boot mechanisms
to block you from running your own firmware, i.e., a completely
transparent glass box implementation with full end user empowerment in
terms of understanding and improvement. Absolutely nothing of this
sort exists for 3G or 4G or newer, or for any of the non-GSM
technologies (CDMA etc) that are also called 2G in marketing terms.

M~

[H. Nikolaus Schaller]

Post by Mychaela Falconia
Option 3: new production of Neo FreeRunner (GTA02) verbatim clones.

I wonder where you want to get all the tiny glue components from...

E.g. toppoly display, pogo pins for speakers, speakers, vibramotor, battery connector, HF08 battery,
shields, just to name some. Many of them are EOL for years and almost impossible to locate even
through broker networks.

You may be able to find almost compatible replacements for *some* of them but then you have to
redesign everything and it is no longer a verbatim clone. BTW: it was already a problem when
designing the GTA04 years ago.

And: can you produce Neo Freerunner plastic cases?

[Mychaela Falconia]

Post by H. Nikolaus Schaller
I wonder where you want to get all the tiny glue components from...
E.g. toppoly display,

The last time I looked a few months ago, they were readily available
from AliExpress.

Post by H. Nikolaus Schaller
pogo pins for speakers,

Are you talking about the ones on the motherboard itself? Take a look
at this photo:

Loading Image...

It is a semi-clone of the GTA02 motherboard made by an Iranian company;
it retains the Samsung AP and the Calypso modem from the GTA02, and I
developed some custom features in FreeCalypso firmware for them. They
specifically needed the modem to be Calypso so they can do some special
things with it, and they hired me to implement the necessary firmware
support for their special features.

These people have made some changes to the functionality of the board
which make their board usable only for them and not for the community,
but as far as I can tell, all of the electromechanical interfaces are
unchanged from the original. Thus all exotic components which sit on
the motherboard itself have been successfully located. If these
Iranian folks have successfully made a GTA02 MB semi-clone with their
special modifications, we can likewise make one without those mods.

Post by H. Nikolaus Schaller
speakers, vibramotor,

These are case components, not on the MB, but once again I remember my
Iranian contacts telling me that they got those components taken care
of somehow. Literally the ONLY component they said they couldn't find
was the bow-shaped GSM antenna, which I assume would need to be
custom-recreated. I told them about the green "cucumber" antenna
board depicted on your case kit page.

Post by H. Nikolaus Schaller
battery connector,

On the motherboard and clearly visible in the GTA02 semi-clone board
photo above.

Post by H. Nikolaus Schaller
HF08 battery,

Plenty of Chinese phone manufs make batteries in Nokia BL-6C form
factor, and it can't be too difficult to have a special version made
with an OM-style Coulomb counter built in. Besides Christoph Pulster
told me that he still has a whole ton of NOS ones in stock.

Post by H. Nikolaus Schaller
shields,

These would need to be custom-made, of course.

Post by H. Nikolaus Schaller
And: can you produce Neo Freerunner plastic cases?

Sure, if someone pays for the cost of making new moulds.

M~

[H. Nikolaus Schaller]

Post by Mychaela Falconia
Sure, if someone pays for the cost of making new moulds.

So let merephrase: how do you think to get someone pay for it?

[Mychaela Falconia]

Post by H. Nikolaus Schaller
So let merephrase: how do you think to get someone pay for it?

By spreading the message as far and wide as I can that making new
Calypso phones and modems (be they GTA02 clones or semi-clones, or my
proposed Libre Dumbphone, or my proposed FC modem in SMT module form
factor) IS possible, and that there is a small company able and ready
to do the job given the necessary funding. I shall keep spreading
this message far and wide until it reaches the ears of someone who
sees the idea as a positive and who has the needed money.

M~

[H. Nikolaus Schaller]

Post by Mychaela Falconia

Post by H. Nikolaus Schaller
So let merephrase: how do you think to get someone pay for it?

By spreading the message as far and wide as I can that making new
Calypso phones and modems (be they GTA02 clones or semi-clones, or my
proposed Libre Dumbphone, or my proposed FC modem in SMT module form
factor) IS possible, and that there is a small company able and ready
to do the job given the necessary funding.

Well, with necessary funding Goldelico would be mass producing a GTA17 this
year which would beat the latest iPhones and alike in quality, user-experience,
functionality and openness.

If we get enough funding, we can even get proper FCC/CE certification and
modify the standards so that a free&open modem can be certified. It is
all just a matter of getting a big enough budget...

Unfortunately, free&open is contradicting big-budget. Like Heisenberg's
uncertainty principle.

Post by Mychaela Falconia
I shall keep spreading
this message far and wide until it reaches the ears of someone who
sees the idea as a positive and who has the needed money.

In that case, please convince him/her to spend money for more important
things. Like fighting diseases (incl. dictatorship and nationalism) and
rescuing endangered species (like homo sapiens).

[Mychaela Falconia]

Post by H. Nikolaus Schaller
Well, with necessary funding Goldelico would be mass producing a GTA17
this year which would beat the latest iPhones and alike in quality,
user-experience, functionality and openness.

The amount of funding I would need in order to turn my post-FCDEV3B hw
ideas into reality would be far less than what you would need for what
you just described. Specifically, I would only need about 2 kUSD to
finish some work on FCDEV3B which needs to be finished before any
follow-up FreeCalypso hw project can be started (I'll cover this part
myself in a few months after I'm done with the current round of family
expenses), and then another 10 kUSD to do any one of the following:

Option 1: reverse-eng the PCB layout of BenQ's M32 module (historical
Calypso-based) and make a FreeCalypso modem module in the same SMT
form factor.

Option 2: for the FreeCalypso Libre Dumbphone idea, produce a bare
board with the functionality of this dumbphone, i.e., a dumbphone sans
case, allowing ad hoc wooden cases and such.

Option 3: produce a clone of OM's GTA02 motherboard (either verbatim
or with changes like Glamo-ectomy), bare, no case, no WLAN/BT add-ons,
plus new Toppoly displays from Alibaba.

Whoever donates the needed 10 kUSD gets to pick which of the above 3
options is to be done. I cannot guarantee that each of the 3 can be
fully done to the finish line for that 10 kUSD, but 10 kUSD is all I
would need to get the ball rolling, and it would get more than 50% of
the job done.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I get the impression that for your
ideas you would need a lot more than 10 kUSD.

M~

[Bob Ham]

Post by Mychaela Falconia
On Tue Aug 29 01:05:29 UTC 2017 Joerg Reisenweber wrote regarding the

Please carefully note that this update is not based on the original licensed
firmware for Openmoko devices,

This statement is false, and the poster knows it. Both OM's
historical
firmwares and the current FreeCalypso ones are based on the same
20070608 base code delivery from TI

If

the FreeCalypso firmware is based on the 20070608 base code from TI

and

OM's historical firmwares are based on the 20070608 base code from TI

then

the FreeCalypso firmware is not based on OM's historical firmwares.


Therefore, the statement regarding the recently released moko13
firmware update was not false.

[Mychaela Falconia]

Post by Bob Ham
then
the FreeCalypso firmware is not based on OM's historical firmwares.
Therefore, the statement regarding the recently released moko13
firmware update was not false.

The person I was refuting did not say that the new fw is not based on
OM's historical fw, he said that it is not based on "the original
licensed firmware for Openmoko devices". A reasonable interpretation
of that "original licensed fw" phrase is "firmware which TI licensed
to OM", which would be the 20070608 build of TI's TCS211 fw. FC is
based on the latter, hence the statement is false in this reasonable
interpretation.

It is true that FreeCalypso fw is based not only on this TCS211 fw
from 20070608, but also on a more recent TI source (TCS3/LoCosto) that
was released free to the world in the spring of 2012 by Dr. Amol Sarva,
the CEO of Peek Inc., as that company was closing, but both of these
starting sources were equally essential to allowing FC fw to become
what it has become (a deblobbed fw rebuilding from source, with
bugfixes and improvements over the original blob-laden TCS211 version
which OM must have used), and neither of the two sources can be said
to be more primary or more essential or more critical than the other.

However, the specific configuration of FC Magnetite fw that is featured
in the moko13 release is very conservative in that wherever some code
from the TCS3/LoCosto source has been used to replace some formerly
binary-only code from TCS211 (L1 and main.lib), that new code has been
massaged to compile into a perfect match to the original blob, as
verified through disassembly, modulo some bug-fixing changes like
fixing the floating inputs bug described earlier, so those parts are
still effectively TCS211-based despite using the new source - we just
regained the ability to study and modify those parts by deblobbing
them. The more aggressive change of fully replacing the TCS211 blob
version of the G23M protocol stack with the new TCS3 full source
version (TCS2/TCS3 hybrid config) is not included in moko13 (this
hybrid config still needs to have its bugs shaken out), but is planned
for the next release.

Once FreeCalypso makes the transition to the hybrid config with this
entirely new G23M PS version, then you can correctly say that it is no
longer based on the same TI baseline as OM's historical fw, but not
until then.

I hope that my explanation clarifies this firmware situation for
everyone. I am sure that some people are going to argue that my
continued maintenance of and improvements to OM's firmware are illegal
because I am not an NDA-bound employee of that company and thus have
no right to work on the code they got from TI, but then you need to
remember Openmoko The Company *no longer exists*, hence it would not
be possible for *anyone* to be an employee of that no-longer-existing
company. So if your lawyer tells you that the no-longer-existing
status of Openmoko-Inc means that no one in the world can legally make
improvements to their firmware and your only legal option is to
forever use their ancient firmware from 2009 or earlier with bugs in
it, then so be it. For the rest of Humankind who are not so deathly
afraid of lawyers, the new and improved firmware is freely available.

M~

[Bob Ham]

Post by Mychaela Falconia

Post by Bob Ham
then
the FreeCalypso firmware is not based on OM's historical
firmwares.
Therefore, the statement regarding the recently released moko13
firmware update was not false.

The person I was refuting did not say that the new fw is not based on
OM's historical fw, he said that it is not based on "the original
licensed firmware for Openmoko devices". A reasonable interpretation
of that "original licensed fw" phrase is "firmware which TI licensed
to OM"

A reasonable interpretation of this situation is that your reasonable
interpretation of the words of the person you were refuting, is a
misinterpretation. That is, you misunderstood what they meant. It's
not a big deal.