Re: [Trisquel-users] Freedom by "burning bridges"

[dguthrie]

I think that the modem is physically part of the system on chip. I really  
wouldn't try to physically break Amy circuits, because capacitors can be  
dangerous and you could break something you did not intend to.
Seriously, this is not a solution. Get a PDA if you want yo use the phone in  
that way, or a Replicant tablet. Then just have a flip phone or something.

Regarding Android:
Google develop Android and release a huge batch of source code yearly. This  
is the Android Open Source Project, and is the Android platform and not much  
else. It cannot be run on any device as is except the emulator provided in  
the Android SDK. Google provide patches for an ancient kernel, usually 3.4 or  
3.10.
This is given to Android device manufacturers and mobile phone companies,  
sometimes slightly before it is public ally released. They then port it to  
the device, and port the kernel with badly-written blobbed drivers, and even  
some proprietary GPL-violating drivers like the Qualcomm out-of-tree driver  
for graphics. They then license the Googleapps (Google Play services, Chrome  
etc) and add other bloatware.
CyanogenMod takes the AOSP source code, and develop extra features, and  
replacements for the abandoned applications. They port this to as many  
devices as possible. They use publicly available kernel sources and add  
proprietary drovers like the one from Qualcomm to get certain features to  
work. It gets rid of some spyware installed by the manufacturer but they  
recommend the Google Apps and provide packages to install them.
Replicant takes CyanogenMod and makes it as free as possible. The only  
firmware loaded is modem firmware because it is too complex to  
reverse-engineer.