Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Communications Software Linux Hardware

Open Source Phone on the Way 66

Posted by Zonk from the can-you-hear-me dept.
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."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Open Source Phone on the Way More

Open Source Phone on the Way

Comments Filter:

  • "New" my foot. (Score:2, Informative)

    by utopianfiat ( 774016 ) on Saturday February 10, 2007 @02:01AM (#17960052) Journal
    closed, but open source. [trolltech.com]

    • Re:"New" my foot. (Score:1)

      by utopianfiat ( 774016 ) on Saturday February 10, 2007 @02:04AM (#17960074) Journal
      sorry, meant "proprietary"

    • Dup. And the first real Open Source effort. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by btarval ( 874919 ) on Saturday February 10, 2007 @05:21AM (#17961056)
      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.

      • The most interesting thing currently going on is the Open Source Software and HARDWARE effort being done by The Homebrew Mobile Phone Club . The effort here is to release everything, including schematics, so that anyone can use COTS parts to build their own cellphone, from scratch.

        But in the mobile phone industry, isn't everything patented up so tight that by the time the patents expire, nobody is using the technology anymore? For example, all AMPS (analog) networks will have moved to D-AMPS ("TDMA"), and all IS-95 ("CDMA One") networks will have moved to IS-2000 ("CDMA2000"). And isn't adoption of new mobile phone hardware, at least in North America, dictated by how well the holders of exclusive FCC licenses can lock down its capabilities?

        • No. (Score:0)

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 10, 2007 @04:36PM (#17965170)
          That's why these groups are using COTS technology. The manufacturers of the chips have already licensed any needed patents.

          Besides, no serious effort is targetting *DMA. The problem there is that those carriers want the applications locked down so that they can charge a lot more money for a lot less deliverables.

          All new innovation is being done with GSM. This is an open worldwide standard.

          The U.S. carriers who don't provide GSM are about to lose out on all the techical innovations currently underway. Anyone who knows about the first-mover advantage when new innovation takes understands quite well what the results will be. In short, a widely expanded (and more profitable) GSM market.

          In 10 years time, the locked-down and locked-out *DMA technology will be shunted off to the side, trying very hard to play catch-up. And losing, because they just don't understand what open innovation is all about.

      • Homebrew link (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 10, 2007 @09:47AM (#17962200)
        The link you gave for the Homebrew Mobile Phone Club is broken, but here's a working one [hbmobile.org].

      • Re:Dup. And the first real Open Source effort. (Score:2)

        by Lumpy ( 12016 ) on Saturday February 10, 2007 @11:14AM (#17962766) Homepage
        so that anyone can use COTS parts to build their own cellphone, from scratch.

        You know that is an incredibly relative term. yes you can build a cellphone from scratch, problem is it's the same size as the motorola brick phone from 1987 and has a 20 minute battery life if you dont have the add on battery belt pack. Ad expierimenters we dont get access to the tools needed for the newest chips and board fabriaction. soldering a 144pin BGA chip at home is an incredible Pain in the ass and the manufactureres are hell bent on using BGA for most of the new and interesting semiconductors. You cant make a 8 layer circuitboard at home. I have made a 3 layer one at home and will not do it again as it was an incredible pain in the ass that required expensive chemicals and processes that pissed my wife off more than anything else I have done... Go cook a few circuitboard in your oven at home and see what the wife thinks about the smell!

        They have some neat ideas, but the providers are so incredibly holstile it really limits the homebrewing capacity. I had a Cingular rep once tell me he would shut down my account because I was running an unlocked phone. and the other proble is the only things you can homebrew decently is GSM and you are stuck with crappy,crappier, and crappiest for your providers to choose from.

        Cingular,Verizon,Tmobile,etc... they do not want you to have a open phone.

        • Wrong on all counts (Score:0)

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 10, 2007 @05:59PM (#17965982)
          Wow - you just have absolutely no idea of what you're talking about. But you seem to have a rather hardline opinioned view of these matters.

          First of all, the "brick" you refer to isn't even an alpha version yet. The current plans of the SVMHPC are to reduce this in size to a normal phone. They are working on the case design right now, and have CAD STL files that they are making. It costs them about $10 per case (see techshop.ws), so it's quite cheap to prototype.

          As far as the BGA and soldering goes, again, they are using existing suppliers of these boards. One is already in production, and another has signed up for a different GSM chip (Gumstix, if you want to know). And there will be others.

          But, with the BOM and other published items, any fool can take that to a contract manufacturer and have them build it. You do know that there are online Contract manufacturers who will do this, don't you?

          Finally, regarding the Carriers, these efforts are all GSM based. As long as you don't screw with the IMEI number, and don't screw with the network, they don't know and don't care. All they care about is making money. And, since the Homebrew club is using certified GSM chips, there's no way to mess with the IMEI number or to mess up the network.

          I suppose one can come up with lots and lots of reasons why this won't happen. Or you can get off of your butt and help make it a reality. Other people are already making this happen. Whether you're a part of it, or just a fudknocker, is up to you.

      • Re:And then there's OpenMoko (Score:4, Informative)

        by walter_f ( 889353 ) on Saturday February 10, 2007 @12:06PM (#17963100)
        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.

        • No - OpenMoko isn't a truly open platform (Score:0)

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 10, 2007 @02:11PM (#17964026)
          OpenMoko falls into the same class as EZX; GPL'd software on a tightly closed hardware platform. Some of the Openmoko developers are actually under an NDA(!), which raises questions on its own.

          Regardless, it falls into the same category as the GP said; another Open Source effort, and not a first.

          While I agree that OpenMoko is a good effort, please provide correct information next time.

    • Re:"New" my foot. (Score:2)

      by oohshiny ( 998054 ) on Saturday February 10, 2007 @11:41AM (#17962928)
      GPE is not from Troll Tech.

      Furthermore, Troll Tech's mobile products cost money for phone makers, and furthermore exclude non-Troll Tech GUIs from the platform.

      Troll Tech has had its chance at the mobile market and they blew it. It's time for a better open source attempt.

  • Inevitable Commodity Item (Score:3, Interesting)

    by KrackHouse ( 628313 ) on Saturday February 10, 2007 @02:03AM (#17960066) Homepage
    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.

  • Call me Old Fashioned, but... (Score:5, Funny)

    by camperdave ( 969942 ) on Saturday February 10, 2007 @02:09AM (#17960110) Journal
    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 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Raul654 ( 453029 ) on Saturday February 10, 2007 @02:13AM (#17960138) Homepage
    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:Interesting thought (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ArcherB ( 796902 ) * on Saturday February 10, 2007 @02:25AM (#17960228) Journal
      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?

      Yeah, I'm sure the NSA has nothing better to do but listen to your phone calls.

      Seriously, I had no idea that half the population works for the NSA. They must because it would literally take half (or more) of the population to watch the other half. When do we get the half time show and switch sides?

    • Re:Interesting thought (Score:1)

      by Oblong_Cheese ( 1002842 ) on Saturday February 10, 2007 @02:39AM (#17960306) Homepage
      If you were using VoIP or some other packet data voice service, then yes (given the right software). If you were communicating using GSM or WCDMA, then no.

      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. Encryption to protect from eavesdroppers who are labelled with three letter acronyms simply doesn't exist within the mobile phone protocols in use today. If it did, you would already be using it.

      • Re:Interesting thought (Score:2)

        by jrumney ( 197329 ) on Saturday February 10, 2007 @06:32AM (#17961324)

        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 uses the same speech codecs as commonly used in VoIP (EFR, AMR, AMR-WB), all you need to do is encrypt the data between speech encoding and sending the encoded data over the network. The only real difference between packet networks and cellular is that the transport layer is a fixed bandwidth dedicated channel with no congestion issues.

    • Mikey key exchange (Score:1)

      by gorgonite ( 79857 ) on Saturday February 10, 2007 @04:43AM (#17960876)
      You can use mikey, RFC3830, implemented by minisip (www.minisip.org)

    • Re:Interesting thought (Score:2)

      by vhogemann ( 797994 ) <victor@NOsPAM.hogemann.com> on Saturday February 10, 2007 @07:51AM (#17961662) Homepage
      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 it's compression, you won't be able to apply any crypto to it.

  • No opensource mobile phone (Score:0)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 10, 2007 @02:14AM (#17960148)
    :-(

    It's only "Open source mobile phone software".

    • Re:No opensource mobile phone (Score:1)

      by Oblong_Cheese ( 1002842 ) on Saturday February 10, 2007 @02:42AM (#17960328) Homepage
      It's a step in the right direction.

    • Re:No opensource mobile phone (Score:5, Insightful)

      by retro128 ( 318602 ) on Saturday February 10, 2007 @03:39AM (#17960584)
      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].

  • For more information... (Score:5, Funny)

    by PCM2 ( 4486 ) on Saturday February 10, 2007 @02:15AM (#17960156) Homepage
    ...check the dupe. [slashdot.org]

  • Now a phone! (Score:4, Funny)

    by ArcherB ( 796902 ) * on Saturday February 10, 2007 @02:21AM (#17960202) Journal
    Good, because I'm running out of things to run Linux on around here!

  • Yeah... (Score:0)

    by true_hacker ( 969330 ) on Saturday February 10, 2007 @02:28AM (#17960244)
    Yes, but does it run Linux? (Sorry guys..had to be said)

  • Grammar Nazi (Score:-1, Flamebait)

    by popo ( 107611 ) on Saturday February 10, 2007 @02:40AM (#17960310) Homepage
    "for" only a portion of the price.

    Editors? Editors?

  • iPhone (Score:2, Interesting)

    by adambha ( 1048538 ) on Saturday February 10, 2007 @03:08AM (#17960448) Homepage
    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.

  • reducing duplication of efforts? (Score:3, Informative)

    by straponego ( 521991 ) on Saturday February 10, 2007 @03:16AM (#17960474)
    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?

  • this is an open phone (Score:0)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 10, 2007 @03:18AM (#17960486)
    http://openmoko.com/ [openmoko.com]

  • Yes but... (Score:0)

    by gwbennett ( 988163 ) on Saturday February 10, 2007 @03:48AM (#17960640) Homepage
    does it run Linux?

  • iPhone? (Score:1, Redundant)

    by tedpearson ( 910434 ) on Saturday February 10, 2007 @03:59AM (#17960702)
    Excellent! Now we just need an open source iPhone!

  • Open source doesn't mean unlocked device. (Score:3, Informative)

    by gd23ka ( 324741 ) on Saturday February 10, 2007 @04:01AM (#17960714) Homepage
    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. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by edavid ( 1045092 ) on Saturday February 10, 2007 @04:39AM (#17960862)
    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 irrelevant. But it is the big trend with some free software projects (gnome, GPE being some of them) to just copy, add no innovation but just say "hey we're free". A free copy of a bad idea will still be a bad idea.

  • An excellent idea (Score:2)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Saturday February 10, 2007 @04:59AM (#17960970)
    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 that Linux Greenphone...

  • anybody working on an opensource gsm protocolstack (Score:1)

    by itsme ( 6372 ) on Saturday February 10, 2007 @05:28AM (#17961076) Homepage
    that would be interesting to build.

    and it would give current gsm hardware manufacturers an incentive to improve the security of their current implementations.

    willem

  • Lol (Score:1)

    by Rav3L0rd ( 1062012 ) on Saturday February 10, 2007 @06:06AM (#17961234) Homepage
    Opensource is about to kill many technologies in near future. Now why would you have real mobile phone a pay for calls, when most of your friends (in future) are having computer with this...

  • orange and france telecom = same company (Score:1)

    by xkillkillx ( 987532 ) on Saturday February 10, 2007 @06:26AM (#17961298)
    France Telecom has been branding its internet and mobile product with ORANGE since they bought this mobile carrier a few years ago. I'm glad they support OSS, but that doesn't look like them. France telecom has a king size record at screwing its own customers and doing whatever it takes to prevent competition on the ISP market. They got sued and had to pay huge fines. It's probably like in every other big company with smart, nice R&D people and evil marketing forces wasting everything.

  • what is really needed is a multi-use cell phone (Score:0)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 10, 2007 @09:15AM (#17962064)
    if there is a wireless inteternet connection in range, then use that if not then use a traditional wirless provider. Also, it should be easy to load software onto a cell phone, ie.. a removable card. I don't like being locked into a vendor for reliance for software on these handheld devices, ie.. there has got to be a way for my linux box to communicate with the handheld cellphone.

  • Will The Police Forces accept this? (Score:2)

    by redelm ( 54142 ) on Saturday February 10, 2007 @09:21AM (#17962102) Homepage
    A device might well be developed. I fully expect it will get banned in the US -- the FCC will do so at the request of the Department of Homeland Security. DHS will be worried about unspecified "possible security exploits."

  • Abandoned and Expired Patents Should be Added (Score:2, Informative)

    by Patent-Monkey ( 1036772 ) on Saturday February 10, 2007 @10:40AM (#17962558) Homepage
    It'll take a bit of work to assemble everything relevant to cell phones, but we've got a tool that shows which patents are expired or abandoned. Here is a list of expired or abandoned cell phone patents [patentmonkey.com] we've got as a starter and will add to it as we go. Some aren't that great, think of it as a 'bargain bin'. :P I agree that cell phones have many possibilities and we should use the patent system as an advantage for this.

  • oops, I did it again (Score:1)

    by m0llusk ( 789903 ) on Saturday February 10, 2007 @11:31AM (#17962856) Journal
    Launch of OSS For Mobile Phones [slashdot.org]

    The French money is new since this other post, but no great changes have happened with this project has changed since then. Hardware support includes a number of phones at this time, but none that I have or would prefer to buy and it seems some popular phones are out of reach.

  • Hahahaha... *... not funny. (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 10, 2007 @06:57PM (#17966600)
    I was going to post a joke about running Openoffice on my cellphone.

    Come to think, I'm running it on a Pentium 166Mhz with 128MB RAM (yes, I'm not joking). Upgrade? Hah! I'm on the government (not in the US). It's that machine or a pencil. And yes, we have money. We just aren't allowed to spend it. Next time you say who uses still this or that so old machine, remember there must be someone in a poor underfunded government dept. using a 486.

    Installing Linux is not an option, because there's a lot of in-house made, Windows-based legacy in the way...

    So, yes, I really want to use Openoffice on my cellphone -- and a secure way to put it on my intranet...

Slashdot Top Deals

<<<<< EVACUATION ROUTE <<<<<

Close