Michael Shiloh wrote:
Openmoko has departed the cellphone business and no longer makes the FreeRunner, although you can buy them and there is still very large community support.
Quoth the man who has worked for them and have been burned... :-(
Actually, that fact matters very little, if you think about it. If Nokia goes out of business one day after you bought one of their phones, does that matter to you? For that matter, if Nokia issue a new model of their phone, priced exactly the same as the previous one, one day after you bought your phone, does that matter to you (beyond the "damn" effect, of course). A cell phone is a consumer product. Once you own it, it's yours. If the Neo Freerunner is a good phone, then the fact that FIC is no longer contemplating a new version does not really matter to you.
Having said that, I have moved off the Freerunner myself (except as a portable battery powered Linux machine). It had something to do with the fact that my GSM receiver stopped working, but also with the fact that it suffers the classic "market pioneer" syndrom - it's not very good :-(. It is bulky, heavy, has a small screen (with too high a resolution), and doesn't have a high enough battery life. It's a wonderful dream, and I still hope someone realizes it. Furthermore, the FOSS model triumphs again, in that, despite FIC not being "the one" to produce a completely free phone, the next one to come along and try will have a better starting position, with much more mature software to work off of.
Shachar -- Shachar Shemesh Lingnu Open Source Consulting Ltd. http://www.lingnu.com
_______________________________________________ Linux-il mailing list Linux-il@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
