Because the baseband chipset protocols and drivers are extremely patent encumbered. Any FOSS project will have to rely on on proprietary blobs for this part, and licensing deals from the existing patent holders, Quallcom. Nokia, Ericsson etc. .

You can see this is sort of adverserial to the FOSS way of doing things.

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autoexec 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

The licensing should (in theory) have FRAND terms and so might not be impossible. Couldn't someone just create their own chips? In the worst case, could someone be able to come up with a new protocol and start a new network (assuming they had the money?)

	▲	kube-system 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		You can create your own chips but you will have issues obtaining a license to use spectrum in some countries. Often, licenses for spectrum where the device is licensed instead of the end user, require the device itself to comply with spectrum use requirements....since the user isn't licensed.

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fsflover a day ago | parent | prev [-]

> You can see this is sort of adverserial to the FOSS way of doing things.

Example of the real-word problems with creating a FLOSS phone: https://puri.sm/posts/breaking-ground/