Re: [Fsuk-manchester] open-source mobile-phones

[David Greaves]

Jon Spriggs wrote:
> The only phone which seemed to strive for Freedom was the Open Moko,
> which is no longer made. Even that had (I believe) a binary layer at
> the modem. The current "best" is Android, but even this has caveats. I
> think the developer phone (ADP) is "most free", and I've been lead to
> believe that members of the Software Freedom Law Center have a
> modified ROM which is "More Free", although I don't know where you can
> get that outside of working for SFLC.

Not even close :)

The current best is (IMHO) Nokia's N900 - a mobile phone which - out of the box
has 'xterm' and supports "sudo gainroot" and allows a full dev environment and
user kernels on the device?

Currently it runs Gtk/clutter but will be moving to Qt strategically.

http://maemo.nokia.com/n900/
http://maemo.org/

It's not 100% open by any means - but it is getting more open rather than more
closed.

Want the source: http://maemo.gitorious.org/

Also, as a comparison... Nokia take the attitude "You can redistribute our
binaries to our phones if/when you make your own distro" rather than sending C&D
letters.

Disclaimer: I spent the last six months working on "Mer"
http://wiki.maemo.org/Mer which takes the open parts of the new Maemo and ported
it to:
* N800/N810/770
* OpenMoko
* HTC pro
* Wii
* Beagleboard
* Touchbook
* SmartQ5/7

Check out our "Vendor Social Contract"
  http://wiki.maemo.org/Mer/Documentation/Vendor_Social_Contract

    * 1.1 No tivoization
    * 1.2 Open source kernel modules
    * 1.3 Redistribution of firmware/hardware support software and any
“differentiation” code is allowed

As part of our work, Nokia have persuaded Samsung to open the kernel driver for
the 3D parts of the OMAP GPU; they've also come to us and said "It takes time.
Which parts of the closed stuff should we focus on opening?"

Talk about "get it"....

We've also had Marvell approach us aswell as the Chinese company that makes the
Palm Pre and iPhones as they'd like to use Mer as the basis for their device 
OSes.

David / lbt

PS 300 'ordinary people' turned up at the recent Maemo Summit ... each of them
took away a brand new N900... not bad.

-- 
"Don't worry, you'll be fine; I saw it work in a cartoon once..."