On Friday 12 January 2007 10:14, Sven Neuhaus wrote: > TomTom Go is Linux based, perhaps you can get them to offer their product > for the OpenMoko? > I would be very interested in a solution for the OpenMoko at that price > range.
Some might find this too philosophical, but nonetheless, a rant. Not specifically talking about TomTom, but the problem with an OSS mapping solution tied to a vendor who provides the (costly) data is that the software is not really open, not in the libre sense. It turns to more of a gratis addon that is connected to proprietary data, which, in essence, turns the whole into a proprietary product. You could of course argue that you could change the client to adapt it to other (your/free) datasets, but then the vendor wouldn't be intereseted in supporting these changes (e.g. fork), since then it woudl threaten its real income source, the data. Don't know about TomTom, but the ones I have seen are so bad in terms of data independence and code quality, that it makes you wonder you should do all of it yourself and rely on some freely available data (such as openstreets). So sure, we could have TomTom, and any other (if not in license then in spirit) proprietary stuff in the Neo1973, but then I would feel the purpose of OpenMoko has been defeated (it would become just another motorola EZX phone - an OSS base for mass-adopted proprietary products). Congrats to readers that got this far in this email and sorry for any mental strain I might have caused :) _______________________________________________ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
