I don’t want open source. People could add an internet browser and defeat the purpose of the phone. Most people want to open source everything out of some weird sense of ideology.
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It doesn’t work this way. Open source means that you can install your own version of the MuditaOS on your phone - not that everybody else must use it. Your choice.
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Oh yeah I know that. I would have to go out of my way to install the modified OS. But for some people who are buying phones like this because they want to feel totally secure in the fact that they cannot go on the internet, “computer savvy” people would be tempted to install a modified version of MuditaOS with an internet browser.
That’s worst case scenario obviously. I don’t think it’s a huge concern but it’s still a concern. But with the E-Ink screen and the way the phone is interacted with, if the OS was open sourced people probably wouldn’t add a browser anyway
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@b11 You get a point with the E-ink display. It would be really hard to implement a web browser with this display, and this screen size.
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While I generally do not support comments that are critical or unnecessarily negative, I feel this brings up many good points. I am not one that initially cared about an open source phone or not, but I see lots of exciting possibilities and cool options I didn’t realize were possible by doing the open source thing! And feel this post brings up interesting points. I look forward to seeing what the team decides to do. Just want to add my voice FWIW. If it is practical, open source would be so cool!
Finally, the most important thing I have to express is my gratitude for all that your team does. I sincerely appreciate your mission and am so excited!
I also have to commend you and your team for handling all the negativity and crucial and skeptical, sometimes aggressive comments on your social platforms throughout this launch. You handle everything with class and that definitely hasn’t gone unnoticed as far as I’m concerned. 
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These are really good points you bring to the discussion. The two points I can relate with most are about open sourcing the software and some kind of Signal client. As a long time Linux user, I LOVE that Mudita is developing an application that will work with Linux as well as other operating systems but keeping the phone’s software closed-source would not bode well for the focus Mudita is placing on transparency. Additionally, your points about the inherent insecurity of SMS are really good. I’ve spent almost the last 3 years convincing my friends and family (almost all of whom have now switched) to use Signal because of its security and privacy and this is what makes me most uneasy about pre-ordering this device. I LOVE everything about it, except having no way of using Signal.
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This may not be the place for this, but what is Signal?
I recently learned one of the key features and big extras getting me really excited about the phone (meditation timer and tracking over time) were not going to be designed in a way that would allow me to use them. I remembered this thread and how others mentioned users could support apps/mods we might want to make and hope now more than ever that this does happen!
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- Call Records
- Tethering via BT
And maybe, just maybe:
- MMS (for long text messages, not for pictures)
- Simple e-mail client (no automatic refresh)
- Simple e-reader
- Czech localization O:-)
Hey @morx if there is bluetooth (i had to check that with another post) I guess that it could be a possibility 
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I have just registered to this forum to strongly back the proposal of an open sourced OS. I was comparing different minimalist smart/feature phones (Punkt, The Light Phone, etc.): having a (true) FOSS OS would instantly make up my mind for technological and ethical reasons.
I couldn’t list all the advantages that this strategy provides in this post and I suggest that you check for yourselves how this strategic choice could be a total game-changer for your company; stick to a scrutiny of well-working professional and business models of FOSS, this should suffice to convince you. I must specify: if you go into this direction, make sure to apply a true copyleft license (e.g. GPLv3 / AGPL / EUPL-1.2 - the latter being available in all EU languages) for the full benefit of an community-based R&D / “maintenance” and to federate a truly thriving, enthusiastic community of contributors. Please don’t get fooled by MIT or other permissive licenses: these won’t give you the whole benefit you could expect.
A “libre” OS will be a HUGE factor of promotion in itself since open source communities are all about sharing and crediting innovators; your brand will quickly gain recognition (and it is the brand, the factor of recognition and trust, that matters in every open source business model). Just make sure (i) to be privacy-responsible - as you should being an European player- and (ii) to prepare diligently your community strategy, outreach and “management” (having a forum like this one is already a step in the right direction).
Check at companies like NextCloud GmbH for a working business plan around libre licenses. If you speak German, there is a very good (and serious) legal book on the subject: https://www.beck-shop.de/jaeger-metzger-open-source-software/product/26549144 (by way of example, for additional features, I would appreciate to be able to sync / store my phone data on my self-hosted Nextcloud instance - do you really want to carry all these developments yourselves?)
If your brand is serious about ethics, libre licenses on softwares - first of all the operating system - are inevitable for the consistency of your brand.
Your company can PM me if you wish to delve into the subject in more details; there are some legal and business insights I could share if you have specific questions.
NB: I read that “Mudita” also means “the pleasure that comes from delighting in other people’s well-being”; quite a good brand for a true free and open sourced approach.
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@agent_libre
Being a total advocate and user of FOSS in most if not all aspects of my digital life, I can definitely understand your strong feelings for it.
More so, you have really strong and understandable arguments for open-source software in general.
However, I am afraid most of the people who recommend an open-source Mudita OS miss out on one very central aspect of Mudita’s product philosophy, which (according to my understanding) is mainly about restricting/limiting the things you can do with your phone. On purpose. Opening the OS for third-party developers would actually oppose that philosophy. I would even say that it is not even in the interest of the target customers of the Mudita phone.
Let me elaborate:
Why are people so interested in the Mudita phone, when they could easily dumb down their smartphone? They could just as well uninstall most apps and be left with a smartphone that can only make phone calls and write SMS and play music. Yet there are many people here, who would prefer to have a phone that does not even have the possibility to install any other functions apart from calling/texting/music.
It is about strictly removing distractions. Not allowing them. Use your phone for calls/sms and then stop using it.
It is limited in its functions on purpose! Because every additional app could be a new potential source for distraction. A new potential time sink that Mudita customers so eagerly try to avoid and escape.
When you open up the source code of the OS, there sure might be some useful third-party functions added in the beginning. But it would only be a matter of time, until a developer would offer the “Snake” game, a basic web browser, a messenger or whatnot to the platform. This would undoubtably happen sooner or later.
Now you could say, “well, just because these apps are available, nobody forces you to install them, right?” You could say the same thing to smartphone users. But that requires a lot of self discipline. That is why Mudita phone is limited by design, so you don’t even get tempted to play with new features.
Again, I’m a strong believer in FOSS and I use it wherever I can, but for the Mudita Pure I really hope, that they will never open up the sources to third-party developers.
If however you were coming from a solely privacy/trust concerned perspective, I am on your side. Having independently audited source code would definitely be a strong selling point for Mudita. But you would have to make sure, that third-parties can not edit the OS and flash it to the phone.
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To my mind, the decision for a closed OS would be perfectly in line with the decisions made on the hardware level: no mobile data, no Wifi, no vibrant color screen etc. It is all about preventing you from being distracted and ruling out being tempted to install new distractions.
Therefore, for me a non-expandable OS would even be a selling point.
As I get it, the Mudita Pure promotes first of all digital minimalism and secondly security and privacy. I have no doubt that the MuditaOS will value privacy. What I mean is that the focus of the Mudita Pure is on being a digital minimalistic phone. At least that is how I understand Mudita’s product philosophy and that is why I support the project.
If you care more about privacy than about a feature-restricted phone, why not just use a LineageOS smartphone/Librem/Pinephone/etc. ?
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I understand your concern, albeit marginal. In view of the global balance of benefits, this issue seems yet very narrow since this would mostly concern advanced, highly-impulsive developers.
As the project leader - the temple guardian -, Mudita is free to decide how its stable OS releases will look like, i.e. how the “app store” is organized and how complicated installation of third-party apps should be. In addition, extra technical barriers are very common in successful FOSS projects, e.g. Collabora / OnlyOffice (artificial upper limit for simultaneous users) or Mattermost (Community Edition only available once Entreprise Edition is downloaded). Eventually, Mudita could even leave gentle # messages within the code lines for those advanced developers who are losing it and going out of their way (# you are about to create some distraction for yourself, # don’t you want to keep your mind still?).
As far as I am concerned, Mudita is not here to build up yet another technological jail; it’s about providing by default a benevolent, useful and non-attention-seeking framework - a caring philosophy, not another mind’s prison. The box can always be broken, shouldn’t we accept that such is the nature of things? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2Wcu6aGyz8
On a more commercial approach, believe E-Ink feature phones have the potential of being more than a niche product; there is a cultural shift in the air, many of us want our attention back, not just for a week or two or by using a secondary phone. Under the circumstances, not going full FOSS (copyleft licenses) with all the community-based advantages (R&D, promotion, bug fixing, trust on privacy, possible leading OS, etc.) would definitely be a huge and sad mistake for this well-thought project.
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If you do would it not just be a matter of time before a 3 party comes in and makes social media apps some API workaround to get users access. Now a user would have to make that decision to not install that media. I thought the idea or appeal was to take those options away?
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Sorry, but the arguments against open sourcing the OS looked far-fetched in here.
- Mudita is a hardware product / producer, first and foremost; virtually every user will follow the company’s stable OS releases. Should someone decide to apply unstable releases or another OS, this is quite a pro-active move to get rid of the default design - there is nothing to be made against it (and neither should they be, imo).
- As far as I am concerned, Mudita’s minimalist concept does not seem to rely on fears and constraints: it offers a default framework to foster a peace of mind, not a locked prison to prevent all sins against oneself. This is both a philosophical question and a marketing one: are we targeting grown-ups seeking a space of tranquillity or restless (yet highly-skilled) teenagers in need of compulsory withdrawal?
- The question to me isn’t whether MuditaOS should be open-sourced, but HOW it should be open-sourced (copyleft, copyright assignment agreement, code of conducts / guidelines, principles for stable releases, rules/practice/design for integrating third-party apps, etc.).
Mudita has shared their intentions quite well with the community so far (thanks, btw). I am convinced they would be capable of managing an energising and diverse community of contributors and of applying meaningful rules and designs for stable OS / software releases.
Fear < Love 
-> the obvious choice
Keep it up, team!
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I fully second the opinions stated in this thread. Frankly, I would not get this device unless the software it runs is open source. It’s the only choice for a company caring about ethical values. The users should have the ability to know what they run on their device and adjust or repair something if they find it necessary.
Moreover, it provides users a security of long term support, as regardless of the fate of the company, anyone could fork the software and maintain it. It would ensure something of your creation and ideas will always last and can be built upon.
And for people afraid that someone will implement a web browser and thus destroy the point of this device - I guess they never tried to actually implement a web browser haha
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I disagree. This software is new, and serves a specific purpose. There is little incentive to open it up to the public given how there already are alternatives (Tizen, postmarketOS, Lineage, /e/, Kai…), and Mudita’s end goal is not to develop software.
Also, look at Apple, their software is based on Unix kernel some of which are open-source. However Apple’s software is not open. Granted, Apple’s ethics are questionable, but their products are top notch. I want Mudita to deliver quality as well.
I do agree, however, with the long-term support confidence in the software; but that can come with the comfort of keeping it proprietary - money comes in, in return people’s salaries are covered.
If Mudita decides to release the software as open-source they will have a difficult time managing the community around it for a while (unless some team members already have such experience), plus risk strong competition.
I recommend that Mudita focuses on assuring income for the company by protecting its IPs until they can see that it makes financial sense to open the code source. Remember that Mudita is still in the beginning, and we all support their values here.
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Seconded. @Filip_Popescu I agree with your entire post except your comment about Apple making top notch products. But we won’t get into that discussion here. =)
Focus on making a quality, reliable product, and having a launch as awesome as possible.
Changing a project into open source has some deep implications and requires deliberation. It might be possible given the right circumstances, but it may not always be desired. That doesn’t make it relatively better or worse.
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They can take care of that after the product is released. Openness and top quality are orthogonal, if anything, they compliment one another.
Apple products seem top-notch only on the surface, because their closed nature makes many nasty things going on there invisible to the users.
And I don’t think they would risk strong competition. It’s non-trivial to assemble phone hardware that works flawlessly.
Moreover, they say their OS is based on FreeRTOS, so their product is kind of made possible by the open source community. It would be nice if they gave back to the community.
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Good morning (UGT) all! I’d also like to share my 2cc, as I think are are a certain number of arguments that have been omitted here. First though, I’d like to share to the Mudita team how awesome I think their work is. You guys did an awesome job trying to build really cool technology, and that’s something I deeply appreciate.
Now, firstly, I think most of the classical reasons to support making MuditaOS free software have already been quoted. Most tie back to values that Mudita has already shown with hardware: ethically sourced, and with privacy and user respect at the core. Both the privacy, security and bug-fixing advantages have already been discussed. Therefore, the rest of my arguments will focus elsewhere.
My second point is that having read the forum, blog, and product presentation, there seem to be at least two different communities here. The first is people just looking for a high-quality wise phone. All they expect to do with it is calling and SMS; an e-ink screen and SMS threading are probably the two features that will bring them over, and that’s done. The second community we see more in this thread is the low-tech part of the hacker community. We don’t want a smartphone because it tracks us, the hardware is impossible to repair, etc… Those users are usually harder to please as to the feature set they want: each individual want this or that functionality this way or that, and they’re ready to pay for it in money and hacking time. Half the apps on my “smart” phone are self-coded. None of them require the internet other than for an occasional sync. This is where making MuditaOS free software would actually have, IMHO, a strong initial revenue advantage: you would immediately be a favorite of this community. Most people I know from this environment have been looking for an open-source wise phone for years now, with no success. Look at how many of the above posts say: if I can read the code, it’s an instant buy. I second that. I personally know a dozen people who second that. Recurse…
My third point is about what exactly would happen if that were the case. Community management has been mentioned above, but most people arguing against or even for seem to imply this would mean having some kind of app store, or that it would make the software somehow less safe. Why would that be the case? What most of us want is just the ability to obtain the code and flash the result. Mudita has no need to manage or accept mergebacks. If it appears that most people are running a custom version with this special feature independantly added, they can integrate it. Or not! Same for “apps”, or any part of the OS really. Making it FOSS would not enable competition, as the hardware is closed. It would not downgrade security, as people can stay safe with signed updates, or custom compile. It would not require necessarily more work, as how much the company decides to integrate work from the community - and hence the amount of work required, and saved by having others code - is completetly up to them. As a side note, why Github ? FOSS simply requires you to give us a copy of the code to download. If you want to make the developpment process public, then yes use a public git repo tool like cgit. If you want to enable forking and mergebacks from the community, then use a community developpment tool like gitea, gitlab, github… But it’s definitely not a requirement. And an app store seems like a horrible idea to me. If I want another feature, I’ll patch the sources before compiling and flashing them.
This brings me to a slight sidetrack about Signal. Firstly, most people don’t seem to realize that signal doesn’t encrypt SMSs, it actually sends it’s own messages over IP to a propriatary centralized server. So without internet access, it doesn’t work, and it’s in no way private, as they collect all the metadata of your comms, which is what matters anyway. If you want true privacy, use an E2E decentralized communication protocol like Matrix; and if you want to do that without an internet access, well tough luck because GSM is just too old. The addition of a signal client in MuditaOS would be a downside for me, and I’d probably try to compile a version without it. When we communicate, even be it using a pen & paper later, we leave tracks. Those are unavoidable, and securing the phone infrastructure can certainly not be done by one device: the whole thing needs to be rebuilt. I’d rather we stick with well-known, debuggable, audited standards instead of centralizing for one custom solution.
Back to the main point of making this FOSS, I’d also like to mention that whatever you guys decide, your software will be broken. No iPhone has resisted jailbreaking. No Android custom overlay has resisted rooting. If you close sources, people will RE them. If you don’t provide a tool to flash the OS, people will write it. It will be leaked. But, if you enable the community, they will give back: it’s win-win. If you lock us in, we won’t: it’s win for us, and loose for you. A simple example: your app provides the ability to sync to “Google/Apple calendar & contacts”. What you probably mean is that you have cal/cardDAV support. Now, if I want to sync with my own server, and I dislike GUIs and want to use a CLI client ? Either I have the sources and I can get coding and be all happy, or I don’t, and I’ll spend some time sniffing the USB traffic and then get coding. But in one case you’ve made me happy and I’ll sing your praises to all my network and share the tool and maybe it’s going to be good enough that you can integrate it. In the other, I’m going to use the device as long as it works, then go somewhere else, and tell my friends not to buy. Etc… And just to be clear because writing doesn’t allow for tone: I’m really not trying to be threatening or anything! I love you guys. These are just facts I’ve observed from spending a long time with people who like to make their tech work just like they want. You were unhappy with the current phones, so are we. Your base product is almost perfect with regard to what we need, and it cannot be better than that as all individuals are different. But giving us the power to make it exactly as we do want it, that makes it perfect. And makes you heroes, and unique on the market. It shows you care about your users, and value your community, accepting that you cannot possibly cater to it’s whole diversity, but that you can enable it.
This leads to the final part of this post: users have a common base expectation for features wich you provide: phone, messaging, calendaring…
But there are many, many things that an offline phone can still do to make your life easier without taking up your attention. And the very people who want those specific feature matrix are ready to code it! What a shame it would be to not harness that (in fact, the problem of diversity of the requested feature matrix an resulting workload has popped up in several other threads around here). Here are a few examples of what I’d like to see in my phone software wise (because HW-wise, the e-ink display is just the killer feature), and would code if given a chance, either as a job, or for me in my free time:
- Proper PIM with calendar and contact sync from multiple sources. This only available when plugged in to a laptop is fine.
- Event displaying/reminders. My phone can be wise/offline and still remind me of where my next meeting is, or that it’s auntie foobar’s birthday.
- Voice notes.
- Custom ringtones and vibration patterns (morse code!) based on contacts. I love the idea of whitelisting contacts in do not disturb mode, it’s one of the reasons I keep my “smart” phone. But I also like knowing if it’s family, my SO, or an unknown numer calling without even looking at my device.
- Presenting your contact card as a QR code. It avoids printing paper cards, and if you’re social enough and meet new people regularly, it’s a life saver.
- Completely disabling the bluetooth stack. Security-wise, it is such a mess that I BIOS disable it everywhere, and remove the code for it in-kernel.
To conclude, software-wise, you guys have provided the basic survival minimum, and that’s exactly what we want to buy. But after that, it’s all about individual customization, and along all the other previously mentioned advantages and arguments (the ethical argument is actually much more important to me, but it’s been gone through relatively thoroughly above), giving us the power to customaize is an absolute selling feature.
Cheers!
P.S.: Please announce your definitive decision before closing pre-orders: it would be such a shame to not get the 20% because we’re waiting for an anwer 
P.P.S.: If as your next device, you guys want to make an e-ink wall calendar with regular caldav sync over wifi, you’ll probably find it a big success!
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