[liberationtech] Fwd: [b2g] open-source vs proprietary RIL stack

[Lee Fisher]

FYI, Mozilla clarifies policy on B2G RIL blobs.

[The platform might become a handset option, someday, in some countries, 
starting with Latin America, AFAIK. Today you can dual-boot it on a few 
Android v4 phones.]

https://wiki.mozilla.org/B2G/RIL
https://github.com/mozilla-b2g/android-hardware-ril

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [b2g] open-source vs proprietary RIL stack
Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2012 17:28:13 -0700
From: Andreas Gal <gal at mozilla.com>
To: dev-b2g at lists.mozilla.org <dev-b2g at lists.mozilla.org>


A wanted to send out a quick clarification about the RIL (radio 
interface layer) stack. We are implementing an open-source RIL layer in 
Gecko. Some silicon vendors might opt to offer their OEMs to use a 
different commercially hardened non-open source reimplementation of our 
RIL stack. Such blobs are pretty common in the OEM space, and its a way 
for chipset vendors to differentiate at the software level and convince 
OEMs to use their chipset over some other chipset.

I don't want to discuss on an open list whether our first device will 
use our open source RIL stack, or a propriety one. It doesn't really 
change much for us either way. We will continue to develop our open 
source RIL stack. Some OEMs might opt to use our stack instead of 
proprietary ones, and some silicon vendors might not provide their own 
proprietary stack to begin with. Also, as our stack is improving over 
time, at some point there won't be sufficient room to 
innovate/differentiate, and I would expect all phones to fall back onto 
our open-source stack eventually.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Andreas
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