Hi I guess parts of the answer to the question are already spread through this thread:
http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.handhelds.openmoko.community/62745 Generally speaking I think having an option to what runs on a device is heaven, but only if you are a developer or interested in linux and are willing to have some rough edges or at least have someone who can help out; I say this as my parents and parents in law both run linux and they don't miss anything, but I can also solve most of their problems. The biggest problem I see with the GTA04 is the very limited amount of active developers and the reliability of the distri- butions. I don't think it can handle much more losses on the developer side or it would simply die (as Christoph stated currently there is only one preorder for a GTA05...). I think it is a good decision of the developers to keep supporting the GTA02s as much as they can, as these are the closest users to go for a GTA04. I though still think there could be a demand eg: - as a high security level phone (I know from a big German pharamceutical company that they had banned the iphone for a long time due to security reasons (they took blackberries; I don't know if they are better)), but the phone would have to be rock stable and I guess if you would need to be able to a couple of standard android apps to make the buisinessmen's live better - as a very specific extensible device: we recently had some nice projects reported; one was for monitoring aircrafts, another for home automatisation. So I think if we had a nice looking web page with very curious projects like you find it for rasperry or arduino people might start thinking about investing 555EUR. - a phone for the elderly? why not. make the telephony part rock solid, have nice big buttons and have some features which allows them to chat with their grandsons (maybe jitsi could replace facetime), and add some advance bring me home feature. in the talk from openplanb[1] which is involved in freeing public transport data, there was one statment when an elderly couple got stuck late at night in the middle of Berlin and wanted to go home but no public transport would get them there, so they asked the very appropriate question, what would bring them closest and eg have a taxi waiting. but there is no app for this currently on any operating system. so somegthing like this might get them to spend 555EUR. these are just my 2cents from someone who is really taken to be part of such a great community and has learned a lot but has also some fear that there may be an end to this. br robin [1] http://openplanb.tumblr.com/ _______________________________________________ Openmoko community mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
