Open Source Phone on the Way 66
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. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Interesting thought (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Interesting thought (Score:4, Informative)
Um... at least that's how I'd do it.
-nB
reducing duplication of efforts? (Score:3, Informative)
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:"New" my foot. (Score:2, Informative)
Open source doesn't mean unlocked device. (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Abandoned and Expired Patents Should be Added (Score:2, Informative)
Re:And then there's OpenMoko (Score:4, Informative)
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.