Joining the discussion late and breaking the threading... ;-)
Post by Nico RikkenHaving had recent contact with the Fairphone-team on this issue (as a
potential customer), they state that above all they are interested in
working with the community to get this sorted. Now that they have a
dedicated Software Developer in Kees Jongenburger hopefully they'll be
able to turn things around for future models. We know the difficulties,
but they clearly underestimated the impact of their hardware decision.
I must admit that I felt a bit bad complaining about their software strategy
when there is someone who does seem to care about the matter (at least now,
anyway). But I still feel that the initiative managed to store up a lot of
problems that they could easily have avoided.
As I noted a year-and-a-half ago [1], the publicity materials seemed to play
fast and loose with things like software sustainability and platform openness:
mocking up Skype running on a phone (or perhaps just taking a screenshot from
an existing phone) might work for much-needed stock images, but it sends the
wrong message on a number of issues (Skype being proprietary software, uses a
proprietary network, has various intelligence agencies and corporations
eavesdropping on conversations, is controlled by a single corporation who
happens to have a competing software platform and is shaking down Android
product vendors for patent licences).
Of course, a lot of the potential audience don't care about that: they just
want to be reassured that the materials in the phone are ethically sourced
before reaching for their usual toys, and they hadn't then (and probably
haven't now) widened their ethical concerns in the areas of privacy and
transparency. My impression is that those running the initiative either didn't
have such widened concerns, didn't want to tackle such things as well as the
other stuff, or just got some bad advice.
The sad thing is that good advice could have been had for a tiny fraction of
the effort that these people have gone to in the areas of materials sourcing
and fair working practices, which as far as I can tell, have been thoroughly
dealt with and require a commitment to social justice that involves dealing
with some fairly entrenched and, particularly in the case of the minerals
supply chain, some rather horrible problems.
I have to note that I wouldn't have been so aware of the dubious practices of
the hardware business myself if it hadn't been for Luke and others documenting
it on this list and elsewhere, or of the mishaps that plagued the first
attempt at the Vivaldi tablet, but those lessons have been out there for
people to learn from, and it seems now that either those responsible for the
groundwork just didn't have the community awareness or that they felt that
things would mend themselves when selecting manufacturing partners: itself a
compromise between the flexibility to get the software done the right way
(potentially treading on toes and "offending" existing suppliers), and the
flexibility to change their other practices to make the manufacturing
workplace generally fairer.
But then again, running a choice of a MediaTek product by just a few
knowledgeable people would have been enough to set the alarm bells ringing.
Maybe Fairphone would have made the same decision, anyway, and as the
notorious Stephen Elop speech [2] noted (dredged up recently in another blog
post of mine [3]), cobbling together MediaTek designs and throwing them over
the wall was (and undoubtedly still is [4]) common practice, to the point that
doing something else might have been a struggle.
But as we all know, you have to make and sustain investments to do the right
thing. If you look for short-term fixes, you get short-term solutions, and
that's what some of Fairphone's customers will be experiencing in the coming
months and years. Again, Fairphone have committed themselves to ongoing
investments in other areas, and it's a shame that they didn't consider the
technological realm worthy of the same consideration.
Paul
P.S. I just realised that this could have been another complete article. Sorry
to make it a long message for this list! :-)
P.P.S. For those who haven't read it yet, Bunnie's MediaTek reverse-
engineering article [4] below is long but interesting reading. You've got to
admire Bunnie's determination!
[1] http://blogs.fsfe.org/pboddie/?p=168
[2] http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/08/nokia-ceo-stephen-elop-rallies-troops-
in-brutally-honest-burnin/
[3] http://blogs.fsfe.org/pboddie/?p=835
[4] http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4297
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