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tags: Privacy/security, Replicant news, Paul Kocialkowski
date: 2014-09-02 19:38
title: Replicant homepage and roadmap for the future
---
For a long time, the entry point for Replicant on the web was our blog, which
holds status reports and news about the project. However, it did not fit well
for providing easy access to relevant material about the project, nor did it
give our (growing) community the attention it deserves. This is why we decided
to launch a new [homepage][1] for the project, highlighting what really
matters, in style.
We believe it is a good thing to have, in order to clearly spread the word
about Replicant and ease the understanding of our message. The new homepage
provides a clear explanation of [what Replicant is about][2], provides
[answers to some common questions about the project][3] and most importantly,
holds [a detailed overview of the core freedom and privacy/security issues][4]
that we face on mobile devices today, as well as [recommendations][5]
regarding these topics.
Regarding progress in development, a few things happened recently and a lot
more is on the way: time to take a step back, look at what’s in the works and
what is next on our roadmap.
After attending [RMLL/LSM ][6]in Montpellier, France, most of the development
time was spent on completing a full rewrite of [Samsung-RIL][7], the software
in charge of the various aspects of telephony and mobile data on the Samsung
devices we support. This rewrite brings many advantages in terms of stability,
features support and also provides a sane and clear base to make external
contributions easier. While this is an important contribution to achieve
software freedom on mobile devices, these Samsung devices are severely flawed
as they don’t allow running free bootloaders.
For some time already, we have decided to focus our development effort on
better devices, that can run free bootloaders, in addition to a free system
such as Replicant. First, we decided to bring [Replicant 4.2 support to the
Goldelico GTA04][8] and have already made good progress since the start. It is
not currently usable as a daily phone, but we are confident about the future.
The next step in the process is to work on supporting Allwinner devices,
starting with cheap Chinese tablets. We are proud to be collaborating with the
free software community built around the Allwinner Sunxi platforms: [linux-
sunxi][9]. Our goal is to provide generic Replicant support for these
platforms, so that as many devices as possible can be supported, with little
effort required to support a new device. Thanks to the work of the linux-sunxi
community, many of these devices can already run a free bootloader and have a
community-maintained kernel available, providing a solid base for Replicant on
Sunxi devices. In addition, we have spotted a few widely-spread devices that
would also be good candidates for running a free bootloader and a free system:
stay tuned as we will start documenting these devices soon!
In the meantime, we are more than ever willing to make Replicant as
privacy/security-oriented as we can, especially by targeting devices that
either don’t have a modem at all (Wi-Fi-only tablets, such as the many Sunxi
ones) or are not proven to have bad modem isolation.
As of today, Replicant is still a one-man effort and while all these new
directions are very exciting, it takes a lot of time to actually turn them
into reality. Since we prefer to focus on these new directions, Replicant will
stay based on version 4.2 of Android, even though newer versions are available
upstream. Porting Replicant to a newer version requires a lot of effort and
doesn’t bring any significant advantage when it comes to freedom.
Regarding the devices we already support that do not match the free
bootloaders criteria, we are not going to drop development for them, but the
majority of what was possible to achieve on them is already there and while we
could keep adding support for more and more of these devices, we believe that
development time is better spent on these new exciting directions!
[1]: <//www.replicant.us/>
[2]: <//www.replicant.us/about.php>
[3]: <//www.replicant.us/about.php#faq>
[4]: <//www.replicant.us/freedom-privacy-security-issues.php>
[5]: <//www.replicant.us/freedom-privacy-security-
issues.php#recommendations>
[6]: </2014/06/replicant-at-the-15th-libre-software-meeting-in-montpellier-
france-this-july/>
[7]: <//redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki/Samsung-RIL>
[8]: </2014/06/replicant-4-2-on-the-goldelico-gta04/>
[9]: <//www.linux-sunxi.org/>
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