Replicant

Replicant is a short-term strategy to provide an free (as freedom) operating system for phones, because it is based in a Google short-term strategy to provide an own operating system for phones named Android. Google's medium-term strategy will be to move towards a own independent system (Fuchsia or other name), with all source code belongs to the company (without external components as kernel with free "viral" licenses as GPL) and with an own license adjusted to its commercial interests, and it will cause the disappearance of Android (and with that of Replicant).

The free software community needs to develop its own free-as-freedom Google-independent operating system for phones, but this is a much bigger job than Replicant development and we have already seen that Replicant has less community support than this initiative deserves. In the medium term, I suggest an initiative to develop Debian / Devuan ("the universal free operating system") as an OS for mobile phones through 2 action ways: [1] making Debian / Devuan easily installable on different mobile phones (Samsung Galaxy smartphones, GTA4, some OLinuXino/BeagleBoard-based phone, and others) using only free software (i. e. according to Replicant's ethical guidelines), and [2] developing the applications and configurations necessary to have the features that are expected of an mobile phones OS: manageable graphical interface for small touch screens, send and receive phone calls, send and receive SMS, Internet connection, GPS support, ideally multiple SIM support,... About Debian on phones, see http://wiki.debian.org/Mobile and http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=93878&page=18 and http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=99364