[BjoernKW]

I find that kind of argument for EU regulation quite depressing. So, just because other vendors aren't capable of producing decent hardware to run Linux on, the EU should force competitors to open up their hardware to those vendors?

Unfortunately, this seems to be a common line of thinking, not least within the EU corridors of power themselves: Instead of nurturing competition and their own tech industry or create an environment where such an industry can thrive, they somehow try to regulate it into being.

This way, Linux on smartphones would still remain a very niche proposition for hobbyists and enthusiasts. Regular consumers probably wouldn't flash their expensive Apple or Samsung phones just to run Linux on them.

Without a vendor selling a complete product, alternative smartphone operating systems will largely remain a pipe dream.

[southerntofu]

As a counter-argument, i don't understand how it's even legal to sell hardware without the proper manual and schematics.

If you're worried about competition, hardware specs is what fuels competition, both for hardware manufacturers (so clients can make an informed decision about what they buy) and for software vendors (so clients have a choice).

The software competition/interop problem is very well summed up in this article: https://www.haiku-os.org/blog/mmu_man/2021-10-04_ok_lenovo_w...

Just imagine if you bought a house and the schematics were under an NDA you have no access to. You would have to contract a specific company to perform any repairs/adjustments, and said company could proclaim your house EOL any day and stop providing support for the many cracks and leaks its bad designs created in the first place. That would be a nightmare situation, don't you agree? Why is the equivalent supposed to be acceptable when it comes to phones?

[piaste]

> Unfortunately, this seems to be a common line of thinking, not least within the EU corridors of power themselves: Instead of nurturing competition and their own tech industry or create an environment where such an industry can thrive, they somehow try to regulate it into being.

Then why haven't "vendors [..] capable of producing decent hardware to run Linux on" sprung up in the unfettered entrepreneurial utopias of Shenzhen or SV?

This has nothing to do with Europe's (very real) difficulties in establishing a local tech industry. The OP wished for the EU to enforce the opening of phone hardware because he does not see any path for this to happen organically anywhere, and the EU happens to be the only entity that might be both capable and willing to knock down technological moats.

[jokethrowaway]

Because it's a hell of a task, regardless if the outcome will be open or closed.

The closest thing I can think of is Apple taking BSD and making Darwin.

Which company would be happy to risk so much, in such a busy market as mobile OS?

[southerntofu]

> Because it's a hell of a task, regardless if the outcome will be open or closed.

Disclaimer: i'm no hardware engineer

I believe this is utterly false. There is a strong distinction between selling open hardware (the real stuff, not just open board design) and selling closed hardware.

If all you care about is board schematics, it's not hard to buy various chips and assemble them into functioning hardware. It's then often (though not always) possible to use the various binary firmware and drivers provided by the vendors for a certain platform (say Android device tree, or Windows driver) and make the hardware usable under a specific system.

Now, if you're trying to do real open hardware and have 100% schematics available, good luck: it's technically possible to acquire an open hardware micro-controller/CPU (though you have to look for it), but then you need open hardware GPU and network card and i don't think that even exists (at least not fulfilling our 2022 feature expectations).

These problems are detailed in various sources. My two favorites are an article about Lenovo hardware support in HaikuOS and a recent talk about operating systems design for interfacing with hardware:

https://www.haiku-os.org/blog/mmu_man/2021-10-04_ok_lenovo_w...

https://www.usenix.org/conference/osdi21/presentation/fri-ke...

[throwaway0129u]

> There is a strong distinction between selling open hardware

Correct. The entire supply chain evolved for proprietary stuff. There are NDAs and roadblocks everywhere.

Most chip vendors are very happy to assist close phone manufacturers in implementing drivers, optimize battery usage etc. and do not cooperate with any open source effort.

[kaba0]

Apple is actually did a really great job opening up (the bootloader of) their recent M1 laptops, in a safe manner (according to marcan himself). It is not an accident that the Asahi project can develop so fast.

[urthor]

> Instead of nurturing competition and their own tech industry or create an environment where such an industry can thrive, they somehow try to regulate it into being

Fair and efficient markets don't exist in a vacuum.

In a free-for-all, everyone would be insider trading, stealing, and defrauding.

Integrated, non-modular technology platforms are not competitive marketplaces. You cannot introduce a competitor to the Apple App store or iOS because it's a monopolistic integrated platform.

Society has to continually keep creating laws that turn non-marketplaces into marketplaces. Just as it has always done.

[kaba0]

According to Adam Smith himself, competition only works in well-defined markets. Creating a phone, as it stands today require being a hardware vendor yourself, or ordering in such high quantities that hardware vendors would actually care about you, while simultaneously you are a huge software vendor who simultaneously managed to capture enough users to make it worthwhile for third-parties to target the platform.

Remember, not even Microsoft managed to pull it off and not for lack of money or try. There is simply an inherent local minima/maxima for these 2 platforms.

How do we expect a third competitor to show up? It’s like expecting a 4 years old girl to compete with heavy-weight MMA champions. The rules around a market are the only reason capitalism could work, otherwise we would only have paper-clip machines sacrificing everything for profit.

[throwaway0129u]

> Instead of nurturing competition ... regulate it into being.

Regulation is exactly how you nurture competition. That's what a government is supposed to do.

Instead the US not only allowed but actively encouraged the google/apple duopoly to control the whole market.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture for clarification.

[asddubs]

IMO it's more of a question about e-waste and sustainability. the moment a vendor stops providing updates, they should have to open the hardware to be flashed with other operating systems