TL;DR
- Librephone is an effort to reverse engineer proprietary code needed for your phone to run.
- While projects like LineageOS prioritize open-source code, some binary “blobs” have so far been necessary.
- The project will start by identifying a target handset with minimal proprietary code.
Privacy is a big concern for a lot of smartphone users, and while platforms like Android offer oodles of different settings for managing your data and who gets access to it, at the end of the day you’re still placing your trust in Google. You’ve got other options, though, with projects like GrapheneOS offering alternative firmware that doubles down on privacy while further minimizing your data’s exposure. And now we’re learning about a new effort that looks to address one of the biggest issues with open software projects like that.
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