Re: Jami on Raspberry Pi

[Ivan Ivanov]

Software freedom status of RPi and other "SBC" (single board computer)
devices is well explained on Free Software Foundation page:
https://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/single-board-computers

Single-board computers with fatal flaws

Boards in these categories either require nonfree software to even
boot, or enforce signature checks on their bootloader to prevent
replacement with free software.

Boards based on the Broadcom VideoCore 4 family, such as the Raspberry
Pi, require nonfree software to startup, although signature checks are
not enforced. A free proof-of-concept replacement firmware has been
developed, but it is not in a usable state, and development has
halted. Until the nonfree startup program is fully freed, these boards
are useless in the free world.

By default, the GPU requires a blob running in this same startup
firmware. However, Broadcom also supplies an "experimental" free
software stack, which could run without blobs, if the startup firmware
were free.

The startup program also implements accelerated video decoding,
primarily using highly optimized proprietary code as well as some
dedicated video decoding hardware blocks. There are intentional
restrictions, apparently due to software patents, blocking the use of
this code without a license key (a form of DRM). Nevertheless, video
decoding can be done with free software on the CPU, with a performance
and power cost.

There is an additional concern for the Raspberry Pi Camera Module,
produced specifically for use with the Raspberry Pi. In order to
access the Camera Module, it requires the use of a binary-only driver
on the Raspberry Pi. This driver refuses to work unless authentication
of an ATSHA204A chip present on the camera board succeeds. This is a
crypto chip capable of solving challenge-response requests using a
captive secret key within it, essentially it is used to prevent
hardware cloning and confirm that the camera board was not
manufactured by a third party. In other words, it is a form of
hardware DRM. If necessary, you can use a USB webcam supported by free
software instead.

вс, 19 апр. 2020 г. в 16:56, Jérôme Lanteri <address@hidden>:
>
> Raspberry Pi is the hardware, you are free to install open source
> software anything on it.
>
> And in fact, there is allready anything open source disponible on it...
> what ever from Debian like (ubuntu) to Archlinux distro, but maybe not
> BSD like (not sure, need to try) or what ever can be compile on ARM CPU.
>
> So, proprietary drivers is the one from Android OS (don't use this one
> then... i never useed them to). All the other are open source with
> github references for most of them.
>
> If not for some exception (i don't know which one, but tell me), please
> do share the list of driver you have to use where no open source exist
> to replace (i'm very curious to see that, i'm feeling a dumb around this).
>
> Well... there is not only RPi hardware to use also, there is many ARM
> devices like ODROID devices or any other famillies at cheap prices.
>
> Jerome
>
> Le 19/04/2020 à 00:15, Ivan Ivanov a écrit :
> >> Hi Guys,
> >>
> >> Do you have a build of Jami server that can be installed on the
> >> Raspberry Pi 3 or 4?
> >>
> >> Cheers
> >> Paul
> >>
> > Ideally, such a critical infrastructure as privacy respecting server -
> > should be compiled from source (what if someone would add a backdoor
> > to that binary package? by the time you'll know that, it could be too
> > late). That said, Raspberry Pi is perhaps the worst single board
> > computer according to Free Software Foundation because of a huge
> > amount of proprietary drivers where the backdoors could be also
> > hidden. When I learned that, I simply resold my RPi to some sucker,
> > and now waiting for EOMA68 release (yes, it is less powerful single
> > board computer, but running on 100% open source so you could really
> > entrust such a critically important stuff to it)
> >