Open Source Phone on the Way

prostoalex writes "Dr. Dobb's Journal reports on GPE Palmtop Environment's aim to create a full stack of open source software for mobile phones. Mobile operator Orange and France Telecom are contributing to the project. The goal is to have a fully featured mobile handset with applications like instant messaging and email, with only a portion of the price."

"New" my foot.

closed, but open source. [trolltech.com]

Dup. And the first real Open Source effort.

Well, honestly, every year (over the past couple of years at least) has seen several companies or groups claiming to be the first Open Source cell phone effort.

The GPE project is no exception. They are predated by about a couple of years by OpenEZX [openezx.org]. It appears to have been around since 2005.

GPE might be bringing more applications to the party. And more P.R.. But they just aren't the first.

Oh, and this article is basically a dup of the previous announcement: http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/02/05/ 130208 [slashdot.org]. Granted, this is a reposting from Dr. Dobbs. But it's basically the same info.

Last year, it was Trolltech. And as you note, it isn't fully open. Furthermore, it's closed in arguably the most critical fashion. Namely, the device driver. Unfortunately, Trolltech selected a Broadcom chip. And if you've ever worked with Broadcom, this is a very bad sign. Their software quality sucks big time. So there are probably buffer overflows and other problems in the driver which just won't ever get fixed.

Then there have been the Java phones that have been touting BS about being an "Open Source" phone (one of them actually won an award a year ago as an "Open Source" phone at JavaOne). The only thing Open Source is the application layer, not the OS or the low level hardware. But again, each of them issues a Press Release proclaiming to be the first Open Source phone, and the media gobbles it up.

I've forgotten the other claims. But every 6-12 months, there's yet another group and another announcement.

So, yes, this is a lot of hoopla. And IMHO, it's a discredit to the GPE group to be making this noise. They should be honest if they want credibility.

But IMHO, this is all yesterday's news. The most interesting thing currently going on is the Open Source Software and HARDWARE effort being done by The Homebrew Mobile Phone Club [slashdot.org]. The effort here is to release everything, including schematics, so that anyone can use COTS parts to build their own cellphone, from scratch.

But regardless of who was first, it is very nice to see all of these efforts going into finally opening up the cell phone market. This is a far cry from where things were 5 years ago.

Re:And then there's OpenMoko

http://www.openmoko.com/press/index.html [openmoko.com]
http://www.openmoko.com/press/index.html#pictures [openmoko.com]

which is a truly open platform based on all GPL'd software.

The first hardware using OpenMoko, the Neo1973 Smartphone by Taiwan's FIC, will be available to the public soon.

http://planet.openmoko.org/ [openmoko.org]

Walter.

Re:

That's Trolltech's Greenphone, GPE is a different project:

GPE is committed to the Open Source idea. All GPE core components are released under GNU licenses, applications using the GPL and shared libraries using the LGPL. Those allow for the most free usability of the GPE system.

http://gpe.handhelds.org/ [handhelds.org]

Inevitable Commodity Item

In five years when the hardware costs 38cents for these there is no doubt that vendors will avoid paying a hefty fee for the software or they won't be able to compete. I just hope Google gets around to building free wireless internet. Kids will not know what a phone is in 10 years.

Re:Inevitable Commodity Item

Kids will not know what a phone is in 10 years.

That's just silly. Kids still know what a vinyl record and 8 track tapes are....Second thought strike that.

Call me Old Fashioned, but...

Call me old fashioned, but when I read the title Open Source Phone on the Way, I immediately thought of one of these [slashdot.org] and thought, "What's to open source? There are plans all over the internet already."

Interesting thought

I'm curious - would it be possible to tweak something like this to do end-to-end encryption? (To make sure certain government agencies with three letter acronyms aren't listening in). Something like fast symmetric key encryption, using Diffie-Hellman key exchange?

Re:

I'm curious - would it be possible to tweak something like this to do end-to-end encryption? (To make sure certain government agencies with three letter acronyms aren't listening in). Something like fast symmetric key encryption, using Diffie-Hellman key e

Re:Interesting thought

No, the NSA'a computers monitor the communications, the people monitor the computers, which have a list of keywords likely weighted. once a conversation gets too "heavy" a human monitor gets involved.
Um... at least that's how I'd do it.
-nB

No not everyone

But I'm a really interesting person!

i.e. who just happens to run a company competing with some company in some powerful senators state.

Re:

This depends on how the voice signal is processed at the stations. Remember that your conversation has at least one intermediary, in the case that the both persons are in the same cell.

So, if the station processes your voice data-stream to further increase

Re:

You can use software to encrypt your conversations sent over packet data networks (in any of the various ways that this is achieved), but you cannot encrypt in hardware any conversations communicated according to the GSM/WCDMA standard.

Why not? Its use

For more information...

...check the dupe. [slashdot.org]

Now a phone!

Good, because I'm running out of things to run Linux on around here!

iPhone

With a nice piece of hardware like the iPhone this project could be 'toyed' with in many ways. Then again, it may not matter. [roughlydrafted.com]

And let's not forget that an open source project many not be the first choice for a top-dollar piece of hardware.

Re:

American views on the goodness of the iPhone aside, if it is using anything even remotely like BB5 on Nokia, then you'll forever be at the whim of Apple for certificate signing. Nothing *useful* will run without a nod from the man.

reducing duplication of efforts?

I'm going to take the rare step of admitting that I could be wrong on a lot of this. People who know more about these issues are invited to correct me.

This looks like a good thing, but I've noticed that there are several different similar efforts out there. There's Maemo for the Nokia tablets, OpenMoko for the Neo1973 (which is the closest I've seen to what I want in a phone), the Motorola Linux stuff, and this. I'm sure there will be some cross-pollination, but this seems like something that a consortium of phone makers or maybe Google could really push along quickly. How? Either by providing build servers which would build executables for the target environments, or providing emulators. Yeah, it's going to be hard to emulate the actual telecom functionality, but I think a majority of applications for these devices will not use those.

The reason I mentioned Google is that I believe they're doing something similar already, though a quick search didn't turn up what I remembered. IBM, Intel, or OSDN might be other good candidates.

Or are these different platforms using such different APIs for things like graphics toolkits that I'm smoking crack here?

Re:

Openmoko can be build on Openembedded, afaik, which can be run on your desktop-- be your own build server. Isn't that the whole idea?

Open source doesn't mean unlocked device.

Just because they're using open source code and even give you whatever
source they have to give you, doesn't mean the device is "open" as in
you can change any binaries or config settings, add or remove software
etc. All the GPL forces them to do is to publish their source code
modifications / additions where it applies. It doesn't force them to
deliver the binaries on a device that allows modification of that code.

A phone ? No.

For me IM, email, has nothing to do on a phone. I want a phone to make phone calls, that's all. This device will be at the same time too big for a phone annd too small for a device with hand entry and screen to read.
the fact that it uses free software is i

An excellent idea

No other device on earth cries out to let people imrpove the heck out of it like phones do.

The only question I have is, would carriers really let a truly open source phone onto thier networks?

I'm also wondering what relation this might have (if any) with t

Re:No opensource mobile phone

I'm not really sure an "open source" phone is possible. These things are too miniaturized to be able to build in your garage. There are guys out there [revejo.org] who build their own GSM phones, but these things are not something you can carry around in your pocket.

Hopefully, Open software for phones will fall a "build it, and they will come" path. Coming from the US, I hate how every phone is branded to a particular company. You have to jump through hoops to unlock it to use with another provider, if it's even possible at all. The phones are almost always crippled, too - Verizon disables a lot of the Bluetooth functions on their phones unless you pay to unlock them. If you want a new software Feature X on your phone, you pretty much have to throw it out and buy a new one with Feature X on it. Buying a phone is a game where you have to choose between what you want and what you can live without. Choose carefully, because you're going to be stuck with the phone for two years unless you want to pay $500 for it to go month to month. It's total bullcrap.

It'd be really nice if companies would start rolling out phones designed to work on an open platform, like what FIC did with the Neo1973 [openmoko.com].

Working on it...

Looks like we already have something -- currently doesn't have as much as the iPhone, but it's hackable and it's slightly cheaper (though this may be due to coming without a contract).

That would make me the third person to mention this so far. I have to sa

Correction...

Apparently Slashdot's "plain old text" now actively strips out HTML tags? Bad Slashdot. Bad.

I meant to say something like: "Looks like we already have something [openmoko.com]...."