Hi there,
I would like to know if it is possible to help improve the fairphone…
Is the whole phone open source (software AND hardware) ?
Are the schematics available ?
Are the drivers/software source code available to everyone ?
Is there some kind of bug tracking tool where I could pick up bugs to fix ?
Are there plans to migrate to Android L ?
in other words: how can I help ?
The Fairphone 1 and Fairphone 1U are not open hardware. They are modified versions of a pre-existing, proprietary asian phone. The Software is partially open source, other parts are proprietary e.g. to mediatek, the chipset manufacturer.
For the next Fairphone we don’t know theese things yet.
The open source parts are available. I believe this is where.
If you encounter any problems you should post them in the right category/topic on the forum. Problems that many users experience will be moved to the bugs category where the moderators will invite Fairphone Officials to join in the discussion. (Since they are buisy they can’t check all topics on this community run forum).
If you want to be able to find more bugs you can join the beta testing program, but I guess there is currently no sense in joining because the latest beta version is very close to being rolled out to the public anyway.
Unfortunately with the current Fairphone Android upgrades beyond 4.2.2 are very unlikely.
That’s not really the answer I was looking for 
I’d love to see a FULL open source version (maybe not hardware but just software)
not updating it beyond 4.2.2 is a no seller…
there are dozen of devs who could help improve the phone and make the updates happen more often…
why wouldn’t you work with cyanogenmod people ?
I can’t see any reason why the software wouldn’t be fully open source. I mean the added value of the phone is definitely not it’s HW or some special software, but the fact it is a (cheap) fair phone…
Work on an open source version, and you’ll have a secure phone with brand new features. And of course the phone’s lifetime will get bigger…
no updates ? the phone will get deprecated and will end up in the trash… I guess that’s not the original plan.
I personally won’t buy it if it’s not up to date…
Android is a shame in terms of security, keeping old versions is just crazy (not that crazy for other manufacturers like samsung who stop the updates to force you buy a new phone…).
PS: when I asked about a bug tracking tool, I wasn’t thinking about posting the issues to you. but helping you fixing the existing issues.
the project is nice, but you can make it beautifull.
open sourcing it will of course reduce the workload of your developers.
Cyanogenmod people are good at reverse engineering. You should work with them to reverse engineer the closed source part…
the fairphone won’t make it unless it gets regular updates. it just makes absolutely no sense without updates…
people are willing to help. please think about it…
I’d love that too and I believe Fairphone would love it aswell. But since they are a small team they can’t build the whole phone from scratch and depend on others.
But I allready told you: The first model Fairphone was a modification of a pre-existing phone and the manufacturors of the chipset don’t license their software and firmware openly. We allready know that with the new Fairphone the chipset manufacturor will be switched wich will definitly result in a more open source OS. But I have no idea if it will be fully FOSS.
For the new Fairphone they are looking for FOSS OS alternatives as you can read here. But for the current Phone I don’t think an official partnership with Cyanogen Mod is possible.
You can however install Cyanogen Mod 11 on your own.
No it definitly wasn’t. The Fairphone team didn’t expect that a partnership with mediatek would have such drastic downsides but unfortunately it did.
But you learn from mistakes and we all expect to see what Fairphone has learned with the new model.
I believe Github (the link I included) has such a bug tracking tool.
As paulakreuzer explained, there is no fully working cyanogenmod for the FP1/FP1U, however there is a port of one developer from Sept. 2014, check the Fairphone Section on XDA if you like to know more why that is so hard to do.In general, the issues seems to be the badly documented MediaTek chipset, the bad quality of the drivers and general support from MediaTek.
Luckily the FP2 will use a Qualcomm chipset as far as we know, and the bad situation is well known at Fairphone, so that will hopefully change. The source code from some of Fairphones own app, like the Launcher and the “Enjoy Peace App and Widget” can be found in Github, however they do not seem to be updated anymore. I already asked one developer about that and will report back here if learn anything new.
Just to make something clear: If you want to talk to the FP team directly, you should contact them through support. They don’t visit the forum very often.
Personally, I would forward you to the existing CM project. Maybe you can contribute there?
Or you could have a look at our Bug reports category.