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   GNU Home  / Philosophy / Essays & articles / About free software /
   Practice /

Android and Users' Freedom


    by Richard Stallman

   To what extent does Android respect the freedom of its users? For a
   computer user that values freedom, that is the most important question
   to ask about any software system.

   In the free/libre software movement, we develop software that respects
   users' freedom, so we and you can escape from software that doesn't. By
   contrast, the idea of "open source" focuses on how to develop code; it
   is a different current of thought whose principal value is code quality
   rather than freedom. Thus, the concern here is not whether Android is
   "open," but whether it allows users to be free.

   Android is an operating system primarily for mobile phones and other
   devices, which consists of Linux (Torvalds' kernel), some libraries, a
   Java platform and some applications. Linux aside, the software of
   Android versions 1 and 2 was mostly developed by Google; Google
   released it under the Apache 2.0 license, which is a lax free software
   license without copyleft.

   The version of Linux included in Android is not entirely free software,
   since it contains nonfree "binary blobs" (just like Torvalds' version
   of Linux), some of which are really used in some Android devices.
   Android platforms use other nonfree firmware, too, and nonfree
   libraries. Aside from those, the source code of Android versions 1 and
   2, as released by Google, is free software--but this code is
   insufficient to run the device. Some of the applications that generally
   come with Android are nonfree, too.
     __________________________________________________________________

   Support the Free Your Android campaign.
     __________________________________________________________________

   Android is very different from the GNU/Linux operating system because
   it contains very little of GNU. Indeed, just about the only component
   in common between Android and GNU/Linux is Linux, the kernel. People
   who erroneously think "Linux" refers to the entire GNU/Linux
   combination get tied in knots by these facts, and make paradoxical
   statements such as "Android contains Linux, but it isn't Linux."(1)
   Absent this confusion, the situation is simple: Android contains Linux,
   but not GNU; thus, Android and GNU/Linux are mostly different, because
   all they have in common is Linux.

   Within Android, Linux the kernel remains a separate program, with its
   source code under GNU GPL version 2. To combine Linux with code under
   the Apache 2.0 license would be copyright infringement, since GPL
   version 2 and Apache 2.0 are incompatible. Rumors that Google has
   somehow converted Linux to the Apache license are erroneous; Google has
   no power to change the license on the code of Linux, and did not try.
   If the authors of Linux allowed its use under GPL version 3, then that
   code could be combined with Apache-licensed code, and the combination
   could be released under GPL version 3. But Linux has not been released
   that way.

   Google has complied with the requirements of the GNU General Public
   License for Linux, but the Apache license on the rest of Android does
   not require source release. Google said it would never publish the
   source code of Android 3.0 (aside from Linux). Android 3.1 source code
   was also withheld, making Android 3, apart from Linux, nonfree software
   pure and simple.

   Google said it withheld the 3.0 source code because it was buggy, and
   that people should wait for the next release. That may be good advice
   for people who simply want to run the Android system, but the users
   should be the ones to decide this. Anyway, developers and tinkerers who
   want to include some of the changes in their own versions could use
   that code just fine.

   Fortunately, Google later released the source code for Android 3.* when
   it released version 4 (also with source code). The problem above turned
   out to be a temporary aberration rather than a policy shift. However,
   what happens once may happen again.

   In any case, most of the source code of various versions of Android has
   been released as free software. Does that mean that products using
   those Android versions respect users' freedom? No, for several reasons.

   First of all, most of them contain nonfree Google applications for
   talking to services such as YouTube and Google Maps. These are
   officially not part of Android, but that doesn't make the product ok.
   Many of the free applications available for earlier versions of Android
   have been replaced by nonfree applications; in 2013 Android devices
   appeared which provided no way to view photos except through a nonfree
   Google+ app. In 2014 Google announced that Android versions for TVs,
   watches and cars would be largely nonfree.

   Most Android devices come with the nonfree Google Play software
   (formerly "Android Market"). This software invites users with a Google
   account to install nonfree apps. It also has a back door with which
   Google can forcibly install or deinstall apps. (This probably makes it
   a universal back door, though that is not proved.) Google Play is
   officially not part of Android, but that doesn't make it any less bad.

   Google has moved many basic general facilities into the nonfree Google
   Play Services library. If an app's own code is free software but it
   depends on Google Play Services, that app as a whole is effectively
   nonfree; it can't run on a free version of Android, such as Replicant.

   If you value freedom, you don't want the nonfree apps that Google Play
   offers. To install free Android apps, you don't need Google Play,
   because you can get them from f-droid.org.

   Android products also come with nonfree libraries. These are officially
   not part of Android, but since various Android functionalities depend
   on them, they are part of any real Android installation.

   Even the programs that are officially part of Android may not
   correspond to the source code Google releases. Manufacturers may change
   this code, and often they don't release the source code for their
   versions. The GNU GPL requires them to distribute the code for their
   versions of Linux, assuming they comply. The rest of the code, under
   the lax Apache license, does not require them to release the source
   version that they really use.

   One user discovered that many of the programs in the Android system
   that came with his phone were modified to send personal data to
   Motorola. Some manufacturers add a hidden general surveillance package
   such as Carrier IQ.

   Replicant is the free version of Android. The Replicant developers have
   replaced many nonfree libraries, for certain device models. The nonfree
   apps are excluded, but you certainly don't want to use those. By
   contrast, CyanogenMod (another modified version of Android) is nonfree,
   as it contains some nonfree programs.

   Many Android devices are "tyrants": they are designed so users cannot
   install and run their own modified software, only the versions approved
   by some company. In that situation, the executables are not free even
   if they were made from sources that are free and available to you.
   However, some Android devices can be "rooted" so users can install
   different software.

   Important firmware or drivers are generally proprietary also. These
   handle the phone network radio, WiFi, bluetooth, GPS, 3D graphics, the
   camera, the speaker, and in some cases the microphone too. On some
   models, a few of these drivers are free, and there are some that you
   can do without--but you can't do without the microphone or the phone
   network radio.

   The phone network firmware comes preinstalled. If all it did was sit
   there and talk to the phone network when you wish, we could regard it
   as equivalent to a circuit. When we insist that the software in a
   computing device must be free, we can overlook preinstalled firmware
   that will never be upgraded, because it makes no difference to the user
   that it's a program rather than a circuit.

   Unfortunately, in this case it would be a malicious circuit. Malicious
   features are unacceptable no matter how they are implemented.

   On most Android devices, this firmware has so much control that it
   could turn the product into a listening device. On some, it controls
   the microphone. On some, it can take full control of the main computer,
   through shared memory, and can thus override or replace whatever free
   software you have installed. With some, perhaps all, models it is
   possible to exercise remote control of this firmware to overwrite the
   rest of the software in the device. The point of free software is that
   we have control of our software and our computing; a system with a back
   door doesn't qualify. While any computing system might have bugs, these
   devices can be bugs. (Craig Murray, in Murder in Samarkand, relates his
   involvement in an intelligence operation that remotely converted an
   unsuspecting target's non-Android portable phone into a listening
   device.)

   In any case, the phone network firmware in an Android phone is not
   equivalent to a circuit, because the hardware allows installation of
   new versions and this is actually done. Since it is proprietary
   firmware, in practice only the manufacturer can make new
   versions--users can't.

   Putting these points together, we can tolerate nonfree phone network
   firmware provided new versions of it won't be loaded, it can't take
   control of the main computer, and it can only communicate when and as
   the free operating system chooses to let it communicate. In other
   words, it has to be equivalent to circuitry, and that circuitry must
   not be malicious. There is no technical obstacle to building an Android
   phone which has these characteristics, but we don't know of any.

   Android is not a self-hosting system; development for Android needs to
   be done on some other system. The tools in Google's "software
   development kit" (SDK) appear to be free, but it is hard work to check
   this. The definition files for certain Google APIs are nonfree.
   Installing the SDK requires signing a proprietary software license,
   which you should refuse to sign. Replicant's SDK is a free replacement.

   Recent press coverage of Android focuses on the patent wars. During 20
   years of campaigning for the abolition of software patents, we have
   warned such wars could happen. Software patents could force elimination
   of features from Android, or even make it unavailable. See
   endsoftpatents.org for more information about why software patents must
   be abolished.

   However, the patent attacks and Google's responses are not directly
   relevant to the topic of this article: how Android products partly
   approach an ethically system of distribution, and how they fall short.
   This issue merits the attention of the press too.

   Android is a major step towards an ethical, user-controlled, free
   software portable phone, but there is a long way to go, and Google is
   taking it in the wrong direction. Hackers are working on Replicant, but
   it's a big job to support a new device model, and there remains the
   problem of the firmware. Even though the Android phones of today are
   considerably less bad than Apple or Windows phones, they cannot be said
   to respect your freedom.

Footnote

    1. The extreme example of this confusion appears in the site
       linuxonandroid.com, which offers help to "install Linux [sic] on
       your Android devices." This is entirely false: what they are
       installing is a version of the GNU system, excluding Linux, which
       is already present as part of Android. Since that site supports
       only nonfree GNU/Linux distros, we do not recommend it.
     __________________________________________________________________

   First published in The Guardian.
     __________________________________________________________________

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   Updated: $Date: 2021/10/01 17:02:52 $