Hello everyone!
Here's something a bit unusual. Some of you may know that for my work at I'm closely following several technologies that could have a transformative effect on how we can support our our operations.
One of these technologies is nura.eco (formerly known as PostmarketOS/pmOS), who "develops free and open-source software to extend the life of consumer electronics" to "promote a healthier, more sustainable society". As you'd expect given this mission, they have good reasons for not accepting AI contributions, reasons that many people with concerns over AI would recognise.
I like Nura because being able to run mainstream Linux and a full-stack EMR or HMIS system on a normal phone without Internet or even a Wi-Fi router would be really, really nice. Modern phones are incredibly powerful, and the biggest thing stopping them from being deployed as lightweight servers instead of NUCs like this that we normally use, is the fact that they're Android-only and not mainstream Linux. The CL260 is almost the same size. Not even mentioning the price difference and the ease of importing them into almost any country!
What would be really nice is to have Nura running on a recent Fairphone, and as you can see in this table, or this detailed page, it's not really there yet. Apart from being conflict-mineral-free, Fairphones would also be nicer because they should be more reparable than the Samsungs we generally see, although the supply chain & global market availability of parts is currently nowhere near as mature unfortunately.
Here's where it gets interesting. Jorijn van der Graaf, a 22 year old software developer, recently added support for the fingerprint sensor, an offline charging mode, emergency calling, main camera support, and many others... in his spare time, and, yes, using AI.
This led to quite some discussion in the small community around Nura/pmOS which led Jorijn to post this article explaining his motivation and his approach. It's clear he's thought deeply about the tradeoffs and isn't a mindless AI booster. Long story short, "I made the decision that a fully working Linux phone now with AI is better then one done manually over 5 years".
I think there's something of a divide opening up on the open source community caused by this kind of thing, and given why I want a mainstream Linux kernel working on the FP6, you can guess my inclinations. But it's not an easy decision and I suspect there is no one 'right' answer.
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