On Thu, 25 Feb 2010 11:28:18 -0500 (EST) Ken Young <r...@cfa.harvard.edu> said:
> Wolfgang Spraul <wolfg...@sharism.cc> wrote: > > > If the FreeRunner would be bug free, I'm > > sure people would still use them in 10+ years, easily. > > The truth is that even though the Freerunner is buggy as hell, > some people will still be using them in 10+ years. Face it, we are > now in the same boat as the Apple Newton fanatics. We play with > phones, because we enjoy playing with phones. There is no viable > business model here. None. > > Openmoko Inc had a far better shot at success than any open phone > manufacturer will have again for the foreseeable future. When the > Neo 1973 came out, there were no mass-market linux phones available. > The competition was relatively weak back then. And still Openomoko > was not able to make a go of it. Perhaps better management would > have made a difference. But that doesn't matter now. If you go > to the maemo IRC channel these days, it's like an Openmoko reunion. oh indeed. the community has dwindled to like 5% of what it was - as the 95% (numbers out of arse again) are not as fanatical about having schemtics, cad designs and every single thing open - they want mostly open - open enough so closed doesnt get in the way of making apps and doing development - modifying even the base system (to a reasonable extent). thats what the vast majority are happy with. closed OpenGL-ES drivers become an issue to them - as they sometimes crash or dont work and there is little hope of debugging your app as its linking to a closed blob. they care about the practicalities of open source. i'm in that boat myself. :) > The people who want to make applications for a linux phone have > moved on. They were a significant part of the Openmoko community, > and they want a linux phone that works. If a gta03 were > to go on sale tomorrow, I believe it would sell more poorly than > the gta02 did. And the gta02 didn't sell enough units to keep Openmoko > Inc in the phone business. The gta02-core and gta03 are of interest > only to a proper subset of the people who were originally interested in > Openmoko phones. > > As Raster has pointed out, the idea that a group of hobbyists is going > to make a viable phone in their spare time, using parts which are > collecting dust in Sean's closet, is risible. The other well ok - you're harsher... i just wanted to inject reality into it - that it wont happen without a lot of money - or with hyper-expensive hardware that is probably well behind the existing "out there" mass market products > possible future for OM software is anti-vendor ports. It's hard to > imagine that the OM software running on something like the Palm Pre > will work more smoothly than the same software running on the OM > hardware, for which the developers did not have to reverse engineer > many things. So if the anti-vendor ports are successful, we'll > end up being able to turn something like the Palm Pre into a buggy > hobbyist toy like the FreeRunner. Hooray! ahahhaha :) tho palm pre would be relatively easy - it's openembedded. its omap3 where most of it is documented and open (excluding 3d unit). but... i get your point :) > Some in the OM community seem to suggest that if vendors *just knew* > that they could have the wonderful SHR software for free, they'd > design phones around it. I disagree. There is very little incentive > for vendors and telecoms to support open systems, and plenty of reasons > for them not to. From a vendor's point of view, selling a phone > that the user has full control of is a nightmare. If something > like the SHR stack ever actually entered widespread use, it would > be the perfect platform for malware. Users would be bricking their > phones right and left. Calls to service centers would go way up. > Phone networks would be subject to DOS attacks. well that's a bit extreme - as technically android and the nexus one or adp1 are pretty much this too. but you are right - this is a big fear inside companies - you can rave on about open and benefits all you like - they are scared of this kind of scenario and the bad publicity that comes along with it. you need to loll them in gently one little thing at a time so they gain confidence. let them get a little more open, see that it has no big bad side effects - of anything positive ones, then the next small little thing. tryin big-bang to do everything from hw to sw open is going to net you no love from an existing maker. doing your own i dont see as viable - so you need to take a new strategy. as i've explained already. :) > The only reason that PCs are general purpose computers is a historical > accident - PCs grew out of the hobbyist market, and hobbyists wanted > a machine they could program. There was no threat of external malware > in the early 1980s. The constant fight against PC malware is the price > we now pay for that heritage. Most PC users would be better off with > a machine that came with a web browser, a few tools for photo manipulation > and multimedia, and which could not have any additional software installed. > With smart phones, the industry has a chance to replay history. They > can make the platform closed, and largely prevent the whole malware > nightmare. They can reduce the universe of software configurations they > have to support. It makes sense for them to do that. > > Sad as it is for us, the most sensible approach for phone makers is > probably Apple's. > > I enjoy playing with my Freerunners, and my Neo 1973. Others do too. > But be honest with yourself - these phones are a dead end. At this point > we are like the nut-cases who want to run linux on their iPods. > > Ken > > > _______________________________________________ > Openmoko community mailing list > community@lists.openmoko.org > http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community > -- ------------- Codito, ergo sum - "I code, therefore I am" -------------- The Rasterman (Carsten Haitzler) ras...@rasterman.com _______________________________________________ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
