And Now For Something Completely Different...
Something I saw on my trip to London last month, in a side street just off Kingsway near the Holburn tube station... http://www.flickr.com/photos/stonemirror/2206831846/ Enjoy! ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
RE: Patents and OpenMoko
I'd get in touch with the Linux Foundation/Software Freedom Law Center and discuss their patent commons with them. Write me off-list, Sean, and I can get you in touch with the right folks, I think... -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Sean Moss-Pultz Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2008 12:00 PM To: List for OpenMoko community discussion Subject: Patents and OpenMoko Dear Community, Most of you know that OpenMoko is a fully independent company at this point. With this great opportunity comes many challenges. Today I would like to share one with you all and ask for some advice. We need to file patents for our hardware as well as software designs. While my personal views on software patents are inline with people like Eben Moglen, as a company, we are forced to play by the rules of the game. What I want is for a our company's patents to be freely available, for anyone, but for defensive purposes only. Are there any existing options available to us now? Does anyone know of existing companies or organizations with a similar strategy that we can seek guidance or partnership. Again, I want to emphasize that we only want our patents to be used in defense. And what constitutes defense is something that we want to be able to define (and potentially even redefine when new threats arise). Thanks in advance for the help. Sean ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
RE: Patents and OpenMoko
http://www.patent-commons.org/ is the one that I'm aware of ... This is what I was referring to... ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
RE: New wiki page - Problems of typical
If you look I specifically said VOIP over wifi. OpenMoko phones WILL allow this! My unlocked Nokia E65 also allows this. As he said, it's a carrier issue, not a phone issue. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
RE: Sean's impact being felt...
Worth mentioning in this context is that all this openness will be limited to devices which can pass Verizon's test criteria, which are, so far, unspecified. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of William Weinberg Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2007 9:23 AM To: List for OpenMoko community discussion Subject: Re: Sean's impact being felt... That's terrific news, but short term, OpenMoko and most other open efforts have limited access to the Verizon network, which is 100% CDMA. Sigh. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
RE: GTK vs QTopia vs Android - (was: Re: Android needsapplications) (will be: new vision for openmoko)
Very true. An extremely small amount of actual source code, none of it especially useful, was released with Android. The core libraries, as well as the Dalvik virtual machine, the tools, etc., were only released in binary form. The only sources provided were - the kernel - WebKit - the QEMU-based emulator Google has stated that they won't be making any further releases of code before phones running Android ship, so that seems to be pretty much all we'll see of Android for a year or so. You could get OpenMoko running on the Android emulator relatively easily, but I don't think you'd have nearly that kind of luck running the Android software on FIC hardware. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Ross Burton Sent: Friday, November 16, 2007 5:49 AM To: Michael Schmidt Cc: List for OpenMoko community discussion; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: GTK vs QTopia vs Android - (was: Re: Android needsapplications) (will be: new vision for openmoko) On Fri, 2007-11-16 at 14:30 +0100, Michael Schmidt wrote: If I understand it right, the neo phone has now three options for an operating system - the current openmoko GTK operating system - Qtopia from Trolltech - Android linux from google. Last time I looked, the full Android stack wasn't open source. They say it will be, but until it is Android is a closed platform running on Linux. Ross -- OpenedHand Ltd. Unit R Homesdale Business Center / 216-218 Homesdale Road / Bromley / BR1 2QZ / UK Tel: +44 (0)20 8819 6559 Expert Open Source For Consumer Devices - http://o-hand.com/ ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Gphone and 850, perspectives
I wouldn't have imagined I'd see a less productive contribution than the _rest_ of this discussion, but I guess it goes to show how mistaken one can be. I won't be hurt if you don't use GPS. On 11/8/07 8:08 AM, kenneth marken [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thursday 08 November 2007 16:44:45 Randall Mason wrote: iPhone doesn't have GPS, so how does that fit your mythical project? GPS works in the US. It is a US invention. It is owned by the US. It is run by the US. We donate it to the world. Why would it not work in the US? It works EVERYWHERE, that's why it's called Global Positioning System. donated, under the condition that you (as in the nation) have the sole right to turn it of at any time. lets never forget, its a military system, designed to guide weapons and soldiers. that its being used for civilian uses are a afterthought more then anything else. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
RE: Using Openmoko in Japan
You'll need to find some hardware to run it on, the Neo1973 won't function in Japan. It's a GSM phone, and Japan's system is pretty much completely WCDMA... -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jerry Huang Sent: Saturday, October 13, 2007 11:10 PM To: community@lists.openmoko.org Subject: Using Openmoko in Japan Hi all, I just subscribed the Openmoko mail list and find that it is an active community. I am more and more confident that the first open-source cellular phone will become the mainstream in the near future. I am a long-time Linux hacker working as a network engineer. I am a Chinese and is transferred to Tokyo this June. Is there any Openmoko enthusiasm in Japan? Probably we can have a meeting sometime in Tokyo to get familiar each other and study the potential to introduce the Neo1973 to Japan market. In my superficial understanding, Japan mobile phone market is a very different market than other countries. The cellular phone and the service in Japan are quite unfriendly to the non-Japanese users. There are many expats as me in Tokyo, who can't speak Japanese. Neo 1973 may be a gadget for them to drive into an open world. My email address is Jerry AT fusionsystems.org. email to me if you are also interested in Openmoko for japan. Regards, Jerry Huang ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
RE: Finger Graffiti
So by using fingers instead of a stylus we're not talking about the same use case anyway. That's certainly not clear to me. Are you policing this project for violations? Not at all, that's a silly idea; as I've said, I simply _am_ obligated to point out when a trademark held by my employer is being misused, and that's simply a condition of having the trademark. My credentials aren't at issue: I've got a long-standing involvement in the community, I've presented at both the Ottawa Linux Symposium and at GUADEC (of which ACCESS was a sponsor) this year, I'm on the GNOME Foundation's Advisory Board and I'm the chair of the Linux Foundation's Mobile Working Group and vice-chair of the Linux Phone Standards Forum's Architectural Working Group. I've been on this list pretty much since it existed, and as Sean can confirm, I've had a long-term interest in the project--he and I have chatted on numerous occasions, and while I'm still waiting for _my_ unit, I can hang on a while longer... Let me add that there was = interest expressed by Mickey Lauer at GUADEC week before last in using some of the Hiker Project components--which we have made available under an open source license--in OpenMoko, something I'd certainly encourage. Let's be clear: nobody's violated anything. I felt it was necessary to give a heads-up that heading too far in the direction you seem to be trying to stake out (i.e. Graffiti _shouldn't_ be a trademark or We're using the term in some slightly nuanced way and claiming it's a 'different use case') could be potentially troublesome, if the upshot of it were to wind up amounting to the creation of a test case of either of those notions. If, say, I _didn't_ point this out and, based on the discussion, someone started a handwriting-related project called moko-graffiti or something, that _would_ be troublesome. Just sayin'. I think I've pretty much made the issues clear, and there doesn't seem to be anything useful being added here. If anyone wants to delve further into this, they're welcome to email me off-list. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
RE: Iphone 3rd party development allowed...
I am sure Jobs and company are not blind to the strength of open source software and the boon it would provide if they made a freely available dev kit for the phone. As someone who worked at Apple for ten years, I can assure you that, for the most part, Jobs and company haven't got the slightest interest in open source software, other than a minimal amount of stuff available under a BSD-like license, allowing them to take it, do what they want with it, and then keep it to themselves. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
RE: An Update
...Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow. I wish there were a way to apply this to hardware, without the costs being astronomical. Unfortunately, this turns out not to be completely true, even for software. Given enough eyeballs, most localized programming errors are fairly shallow, but things like race conditions, etc., can be quite impenetrable, even with numerous eyeballs to call upon... ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
RE: Idea: Wake me during light sleep
If your PC is in range, it would be easy to send a message to your PC which could have an attached X10 transmitter to control your lights, or other appliances. You could set up a X10 theme through your PC to gradually increase the lights, turn on your coffee maker etc when the openmoko detects your light sleep mode. I'm not sure how the phone is necessary in this scenario. It seems you could do all of this without it... ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
RE: Emerging Telephony Conference Discount (fwd)
I've already registered, and paid, for this... =/ -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] on behalf of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wed 2/21/2007 4:42 PM To: OpenMoko -- OpenMoko Subject: Emerging Telephony Conference Discount (fwd) Seems that O'Reilly will offer a 40% discount to a group, if someone in charge registers us as a group. To the extent that those of us on the mailing list are a group, who's in charge? -- Forwarded message -- Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [SVHMPC] Emerging Telephony Conference Discount Any user group can do this ... they want just one person (chair, pres., organizer) of a group to register. Looks like some good benefits for groups to join. Paul -Original Message- Our user group get's a discount from O'Reilly for ETel: Emerging Telephony Conference: Use code xxx when you register, and receive 40% off the registration price. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
RE: Wifi again
This is a BIG hardware design mistake IMHO. I think you should go right out and build your _own_ phone. Tell us all about it when you get done. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
RE: given the OpenMoko Challenges...
I'm doing this to spare Sean the pain. This is really no different than the Can't you just add WiFi? discussion. This is reality and the laws of physics speaking: please pay attention. ... what are the chances of getting a camera? ^_^ Slimmer that slim to none. If Sean and the FIC folks have any sense at all--and I hasten to add that I think they do--the chances are a little worse than your getting struck by lightning. While winning a single-number bet at the roulette table. Look at it this way: jamming all the stuff that's already on the circuit board into some kind of reasonable configuration, routing leads, hundreds if not thousands of them, on a multilayer PCB, then getting the entire thing pre-fabbed, tested, fabbed, tested again, built for production, tested _again_, and tested some more, all takes time. A bunch of time. And when you just add WiFi or just add a camera, the work isn't _incremental_: you pretty much have to go back to Square One and start all over again. Now, that's if everything, by some utterly unprecedented miracle, goes well the first time. I will bet you any amount of money, at very high odds, that this will not be the case--only because I know from extensive personal experience that it _never has_. Then you've got to add time in to _fix_ things, re-fab, re-test, lather, rinse, repeat. And remember: you can't just add a camera. You've got to add a _button_: more leads, more components. You've got to retool the case to support the lens and the self-portrait mirror you're going to ask for next. You've got to test _that_, too, and that's a test you didn't have to do before. (None of this gets into the issue of cost. Because of the above considerations, even adding a cheap part at a late stage is abominably expensive. At Apple, years ago, we used to estimate that adding a $0.25 part added five buck to the final cost of a Macintosh. This would be worse. A ten dollar camera would, if you just backed all the way up and added it now, effectively double the cost of the unit, most likely, or close enough for government work. If you want to guarantee nobody sees a Neo 1973 for another six or eight months, go and put a camera on it. We'll never survive! Nonsense! You're only saying that because no one ever _has_! --Robin Wright and Cary Elwes as Buttercup and Westley in _The Princess Bride_ ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
RE: [ANNOUNCE] openmoko.org goes public
Congratulations! It might be worth mentioning (or not; I'm going to do it anyway) that the Hiker Application Framework, which ACCESS released shortly before Christmas as an open source project under the MPLv1.1 license, has a new home as well: www.hikerproject.org. We haven't yet got all of the features that the openmoko site does--I'm our sole resource working on this right now--but I'm planning on adding a wiki, a Subversion repository, etc. Mailing lists should be up within a week or so: I'm in New York this week for a Linux Foundation meeting, so I'm not going to have much bandwidth for the next little while to work on this... -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] on behalf of Harald Welte Sent: Wed 2/14/2007 9:02 AM To: announce@lists.openmoko.org Cc: community@lists.openmoko.org; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [ANNOUNCE] openmoko.org goes public Hi! It is my pleasure to announce that as of now, we have opened public access to Our main portal: http://www.openmoko.org/ Our public wiki: http://wiki.openmoko.org/ Our subversion server: http://svn.openmoko.org/ http://svnweb.openmoko.org/ Our bugzilla: http://bugzilla.openmoko.org/ Our 'developer file dump' http://people.openmoko.org/ Our GForge installation http://projects.openmoko.org/ Please also note that http://lists.openmoko.org/ now has a number of more mailinglists. To understand which list is used for what, I suggest reading https://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Development_resources#Mailing_Lists As indicated before, we are far from a finished end-user ready product. Also, please note, that given our current small team size, we will probably take quite a bit until we can respond to all your suggestions/comments and even contributions. We hope for your understanding and patience. Cheers, -- - Harald Welte [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://openmoko.org/ Software for the world's first truly open Free Software mobile phone ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Statistics
On 2/11/07 9:14 AM, Ryan Kline [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: (Wow, I actually partially answered a question. I'm only 13, what the heck?) Dude! ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
RE: OpenMoko at Oreilly Emerging Telephony Conference
I will be. (You're pointing to the ETEL 2006 pages. The 2007 npages start at http://wiki.oreillynet.com/etel2007/ and the Who's Attending page is at http://wiki.oreillynet.com/etel2007/index.cgi?PlanningtoAttend ) -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] on behalf of Jon Phillips Sent: Sat 2/3/2007 3:54 PM To: community@lists.openmoko.org Subject: OpenMoko at Oreilly Emerging Telephony Conference Heya, is anyone attending the Oreilly Emerging Telephony Conference in San Francisco? And, if so, is it worthwhile? I guess if enough people are going, good to have an OpenMoko BOF. Some of us will have phones by then so could have mini-hack-fest... http://wiki.oreillynet.com/etel2006/index.cgi?BOFs Jon -- Jon Phillips San Francisco, CA USA PH 510.499.0894 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.rejon.org MSN, AIM, Yahoo Chat: kidproto Jabber Chat: [EMAIL PROTECTED] IRC: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
RE: OpenMoko at Oreilly Emerging Telephony Conference
Same here. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] on behalf of Sean Moss-Pultz Sent: Sat 2/3/2007 9:53 PM To: Jon Phillips Cc: community@lists.openmoko.org; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: OpenMoko at Oreilly Emerging Telephony Conference On Sat, 2007-02-03 at 16:45 -0800, Jon Phillips wrote: GREAT idea. Whether or not we are attending the conference, enough of us live in the area that we should get together, if not at the conference then in a suitably friendly bar or restaurant. Perhaps we should find out when Sean is available, and see if we can work around that? Michael Yah, that sounds goodSean, what do you think? Sounds like a great idea. Can you organize something? I seem to be free just about any night now. -Sean ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
RE: Please no crossposting! Re: Information regarding theMessaging Support in OpenMoko
Well, you're not wrong, certainly: people use MMS even though it _is_ horribly broken (and expensive, etc.) I guess the point I'm attempting to make here is that in addition to the challenges in just getting a working phone out the door, you sign up to take on what seems, to me, anyway, to be a pretty substantial educational exercise. If there's going to be a substitute or replacement for MMS that the average consumer will get, then I withdraw (most of) my comments around disconnects. My main point--which I think still stands--is that people have certain expectations of what cellphones will be able to do... -Original Message- From: Sean Moss-Pultz [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wed 1/31/2007 5:46 PM To: David Schlesinger; Jon Phillips; Harald Welte Cc: community@lists.openmoko.org; Robert Michel; [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Suresh Kumar Sugguna Subject: Re: Please no crossposting! Re: Information regarding theMessaging Support in OpenMoko On 2/1/07 4:30 AM, David Schlesinger [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Also, who uses MMS? Only pretty much the majority of actual cellphone users in Europe, based on the market research and carrier requirements I've read... IMHO, only because nobody has given us anything better. We're trying to do that. So I asked the guys to ignore MMS for the now. If this is an issue I'll put resources on this in the future. Right now, I'd much prefer to see solutions that use GPRS such an IM / Email / ... Seems like the typical user would just email and attach media and/or just s/ftp Typical _Linux_ user, maybe. This is the sort of thing which (in my view) represents something of a disconnect between the goals of having as open a phone as possible and selling a lot of phones... You might be right. But I personally feel that MMS is fundamentally flawed. Costs aside, it's just not the way I think media should be transferred. The benefits are just too low for the end user. We're trying to fix this. Really guys, we're trying to rethink lots of things with OpenMoko. I don't want to do the same things just running under FOSS. We'd be missing out on a huge invitation to innovate both as a company and a community. Why not use the flexibility and rethink how we want these devices to work -- as end users -- not just for geeks but for everyone? I'm not saying we'll get things right the first time. Just that we're going to try our best ;-) _This_ opportunity is what makes me excited about OpenMoko. Not (simply) the fact that it's FOSS based. -Sean ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
RE: Please no crossposting! Re: Information regarding theMessaging Support in OpenMoko
Now, that doesn't mean that I am a representation of the *average* user... I promise you, you're not. A _person_ is intelligent; _people_ are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals, and you know it.--Tommy Lee Jones as K in _Men in Black_ We *must* be able to easily/effectively communicate with those other %99+ of devices out there...even if they are inferior. Indeed. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: idea: World Clock
On 1/30/07 8:31 AM, Joe Pfeiffer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller writes: Isn't very complex either - Linux system time is UTC and can be synced through nntp while network access exists. Do you mean NTP? What, you don't set your watch by USENET...? (talk.what-time-is-it.now...?) ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Phone enhancements
On 1/29/07 3:44 AM, Jan Van Vlaenderen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: When the GPS senses you are zigzagging on a street, the phone could shutdown your engine too :-) Even people that are not able to drive a car can be stopped. A lot less problems in my town on sunday morning ;-) You¹d have to be doing some serious zigzagging: resolution of GPS at street level is about 50 meters... ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Phone enhancements
My recollection was a little out of date. Units without WAAS correction seem to get something like 10 to 25 meters resolution... Units with correction do better... See http://www.doylesdartden.com/gis/gpstest.htm On 1/29/07 6:57 AM, Graham Auld [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Bryce Leo Sent: 29 January 2007 14:31 To: community@lists.openmoko.org Subject: Re: Phone enhancements You'd have to be doing some serious zigzagging: resolution of GPS at street level is about 50 meters... Exactly the point!! if you're zig zaggin that much you definately need to have the cops get called! But on a serious note, how could it be 50 meters? That's about 165 feet... in certain cases about 3 different roads... Most of the Garmin products are at 1m/3feet resolution. I'm sure that most consumer devices are within about 2m/6ft. Do you have numbers that I don't in this case? Bryce Leo I'd have to agree on this one, I use GPS systems in several areas and generally see resolutions between 2 and 10 meters on average with 5-6 sats in use. Granted to detect zig zags you'd need to be quite careful with how you used the data, telling the difference between weaving and dodging pot holes... Maybe I should light the touch paper and suggest this be a use for the famous accelerometer that's been mentioned so much ;-) Graham ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: idea: World Clock
Speaking as someone who travels (a _lot_) widespread and configurable support for time zones would be a very attractive feature. For example, if there's a portion of the status bar (or equivalent) that's user-configurable, being able to throw a second widget or gadget or whatever in there to display the time in a second timezone would be a nice feature. (OT: R. Buckminster Fuller had the habit of wearing three watches when he was on lecture tours or otherwise traveling: one for where he'd been, one for where he was going, and one for the time at his home...) Multiple timezone support on Microsoft's current mobile OS's is horrific: you basically have to dig down through the settings to get to a pop-up menu item which, monolithically, transmutes everything on the system to an alternate timezone, at which point you can back all the way out and enter your appointment, say, in the zone you want. Then you have to deep-dive through the settings again to change it back. There's no supplied world clock application. Outlook desktop support is laughable as well, in different ways. ACCESS' Garnet OS (nee Palm OS) is much better--you can create appointments in their native timezones, and there's a world clock included--but still not quite as good as it could be. On 1/29/07 10:27 AM, Andrew Turner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Well, what if you just entered the phone number - based on the country code region/area code, the time is displayed at that location. That's a nice idea. Or when you go to your address book and show a user, it shows the time for that person. Also a good idea, but it should be configurable (as should contact display in general, ideally). With limited screen real estate, you may not be able to (or want to) display all of a fully populated contact record, so configuring the display, ideally on a per-record basis, is a plus... And while you mention it - re: Alarms, the *best* interface feature for an alarm I've ever seen is on my current mobile. After you set the alarm, it confirms by saying, Alarm will ring in 8h 40m. That is such a comfortable feeling to confirm the alarm is set right (that it's not for PM by saying 20h ;) See, that's an excellent idea. If you can get confirmation of something in an indirect or secondary way, that's a really good validation of the input... ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Possibilities for commercial software?
On 1/28/07 10:15 AM, Paul Wouters [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Fri, 26 Jan 2007, David Schlesinger wrote: I still don't see how trying to limit people's choices is more free than letting them make their own choices. You are leaving out one important issue here. The free market is in fact already forcing non-free decisions on you. You can try to avoid all of those forced decisions, but like you said, you wouldn't be able to live a normal life. Life has always been full of compromise. I don't see that changing any time soon, I'm afraid. Look at how apple used BSD code to trap users into not running their own software on the apple hardware. Is it their freedom to enforce that upon us? Or has freedom been taken away from us? Look at Fairplay/itunes, and realise that Fairplay is proprietary code, which is probably using a lot of BSD code in there. Is that the freedom we wanted to give when writing BSD code? I guess it is, which is why I am a GPL person, despite the fact that I do own an OSX laptop. I don't see that Apple's trapped anyone: no one's being made to buy Apple hardware or run iTunes at gunpoint. If you want to run any of a variety of Linux-based operating systems on your Apple hardware, there's nothing to stop you. Yellowdog and Ubuntu, at least, work right out of the box on PowerPC systems. If you want to take advantage of the features of OS X, then, yes, you need to run OS X. This seems unsurprising to me. OS X is proprietary, in large part. Apple likes it that way. That's their right: they invested a lot of time, money and effort into it. I can't presuppose whether or how much BSD code is in either Fairplay or iTunes, but if there is, that's a freedom that the license grants. Just as free speech demands that you tolerate the speech of others even when it offends you, this sort of thing can potentially happen. Freedom can sometimes include the freedom to do things that make some people unhappy and gratify others. You can't really complain about the use which someone makes of an outright gift. If you don't like Fairplay, don't buy your music from the iTunes Music Store. I don't, for a bunch of reasons: I rip CDs and buy tracks from eMusic, and throw 'em all into iTunes on an old Mac Cube I have. There's possibly a bunch of BSD code on my iPod, for that matter, who can tell...? My iPod still does a good job of aggregating my MP3s and iTunes still does a good job of organizing my MP3s and pulling down the podcasts I want to listen to. I could make it all work on a Linux system with nothing but open source software--at the cost of some personal effort, which could range from a little to a lot--but what I get out of the box from Apple works just fine. Am I somehow less free for using the iPod, and iTunes, for this purpose? If so, how does this diminished freedom manifest itself in my life? I'd say that spending an hour, say, to pull down and configure the various pieces I'd need to manage my library, subscribe to my podcasts, and sync my iPod would diminish my freedom: it'd be an hour (or more) in which I could have been doing something else. What's the benefit of spending that hour, in practical terms? (This is all assuming I didn't want to go whole hog and make the iPod itself run Linux, too, which would increase the time by a couple orders of magnitude, maybe.) So to answer your question, are you more free due to BSD code in apple products, or less free? I believe you are less free. I don't see how it impacts my freedom at all. If Apple and all of its software, BSD-derived or not, were to vanish from the universe tomorrow, the range of free software available to me would be pretty much the same as it is today. Again, if I'm less free as a result of this, or society at large is, there has to be some concrete diminishment of some range of possible actions for me, or for somebody. What is it can't be done as a result of Apple's (supposed) use of BSD code in Fairplay that could be done if they didn't use BSD code there, but wrote it all from scratch? (Yes, you might argue that I can't for instance, fix bugs on my iPod. In practical terms, my more likely recourse--since all my tracks are backed up in iTunes--would be to reinitialize the iPod and reload my library on it. It'd likely be faster than tracking down the problem, fixing it, and then rebuilding and reinstalling the OS on my MP3 player... Vanishingly few end users are capable of doing this, so this freedom is even more theoretical for them...) ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
RE: Free Your Phone
Here's my understanding of this comment, to clear things up: the story is that he was in front of a really enthusiastic crowd, and the comment was a joke about the way the crowd was looking up to him. Totally not an arrogant statement. Even if I don't agree with every one of his other opinions, I still think it was a pretty funny comment, and not inappropriate at all in the context. Linus Torvalds is possibly the least arrogant person I've ever encountered. People say _I'm_ arrogant, but I know better than that. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
RE: GNU discussion (was re:Free your phone)
This is simply untrue. The fact is, as originally stated, that the BSD preceded the GPL (by two years or ten) and that free or open source software certainly existed well before the FSF did. I received system distributions for DECsystem-10s in the 70s, entirely in source form... The freedom to become less free is a paradox. Now, _this_ is simply untrue. I thought I'd let it slide the first time, but it seems to be becoming a slogan with you, so allow me to correct your misapprehensions. A trivial counter-example, familiar to any law student who's gotten past his first couple of days of contract law: As an adult, you are _free_ to sign any (presumably valid) contract you choose to. Once you've signed, however, you've abandoned the freedom to take or leave the conditions placed upon you by that contract. So, where's the paradox, Mr. Crossland? (You've let us know you're not a developer; it's becoming clear you have no greater level of understanding of legal issues.) ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: GNU discussion
On 1/27/07 3:33 AM, Mikhail Gusarov [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Please don't think your opponents are ignoramus. Nearly everyone here knows very well both the position of BSD people, and essences of GNU homilies. Personally, I'd be a lot more impressed if Mr. Crossland were able to articulate any of these viewpoints in his own words, rather than repeatedly feeding us pointers to canned propaganda. The page Mr. Crossland cites actually offers no particular rationale as to why GPL is better than BSD, other than dark mutterings about the possibility of someone's using code in non-free software. Is that not a freedom one can legitimately choose to allow to others, Mr. Crossland? Or is the freedom described by the FSF the only allowable kind...? ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: OMG wiki license
On 1/27/07 3:26 AM, Jon Phillips [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thu, 2007-01-25 at 16:21 +0100, Harald Welte wrote: On Thu, Jan 25, 2007 at 07:29:47AM -0500, Richard Franks wrote: then there is no copyright issue as the contributors have implicitly put their words into the public domain? This is not true and for sure in the US, where the instant someone contributes, their contribution is governed under copyright. Correct. You can't implicitly put anything into the public domain under US copyright law: you'd have to make a specific and concrete declaration to do so, or (more usually) simply wait for the copyright on it to expire... If you're interesting in folding all the Wiki content under the FDL, and you want to avoid running afoul of potential copyright entanglements, you're going to have to start over from scratch, I believe. You're also going to need to have each participant explicitly agree (probably when their account is created) to get explicit agreement that they abandon any interests they hold in any content they create on the site and assign copyright to such content to The OpenMoko Project or whatever. You might well also want a statement to the effect that any content they submit must not be derivative of material held under copyright elsewhere and be free of other encumbrances, etc., etc... This could get complicated, see...? ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
RE: GNU discussion
If I am free to beat someone up that does not mean the sum total of freedom for society is increased. Sorry, pointlessness alert. There's _never_ a freedom to beat someone up, and--outside of the very limited contexts of, e.g., law enforcement or military activities--no one can grant one, so let's put this straw man to rest right away. Beating someone up is assault and battery, which are either misdemeanors or felonies, depending on the degree of severity, and you're never free to do either one. Granting the freedom to extend a piece of code in whatever ways one's ingenuity allows, and do what one likes with those changes, doesn't take anything away from the original situation. If Apple takes BSD code and makes it do interesting things it couldn't before, you no worse off than you were before they did so, whether or not they share the source code for those changes with you. Who do you imagine is getting beaten up? How are you less free as a result? If Apple's changes--and unwillingness to share--offend you, don't buy anything from 'em. If others don't mind, do you feel that you know better and should be able to restrict _their_ freedom to buy Apple's products...? ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
RE: GNU discussion
If others take code under the BSDL and put it into a closed system, freedom doesn't go away at all. It just doesn't necessarily extend any further. It has gone away for the users of that system. ...who are, of course, being forced to use said system at gunpoint. Really, what's it to you? If people want to use a closed system, for whatever reasons, why do you feel you need to stand in their way, or re-educate them? I asked you some time ago--and never got a response--whether you wanted to take the stance that I was unethical for using Photoshop and Illustrator (or, maybe, whether Adobe was unethical for selling them to me). Come up with any sort of answer yet? It seems to be pretty much the same issue. Why is your particular (and more restricted) version of freedom the only acceptable one? (See if you can come up with a more coherent example than the freedom to beat people up, okay?) What's he to Hecubah, or Hecubah to him, that he should weep thus for her?--Wm. Shakespeare, Hamlet ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
RE: GNU discussion
How are you less free as a result? Apple's iPhone, for instance, contains open source software, but because it's totally reliant on un-free software I can't add VoIP via WiFi to it for instance, effectively nullifying the freedom aspect of the free software component for its users. All the effort that went into that free software to make it free is nullified for me as a user and Apple (a large purveyor or largely un-free software) gets a leg up (boosting it's ability to compete against free software) that it wouldn't have had if that software had been licenced under the GPL, effectively making the society I live in less free. This is nonsense, I'm afraid. All the effort that went into that free software to make it free (which doesn't seem quite sensible, but I think I get what you're attempting to communicate) is entirely unaltered: it's there in precisely the state it was when both you and Apple found it. Apple, by dint of hard work and creative effort (not to mention significant expenditure of time and resources) made it do other things which it could not before. You, however, want to have your cake and eat it, too. You seem to feel that because someone gave both you and Apple what amounts to a gift, that Apple, by virtue of having done something with that gift throught their own initiative, now owes _you_ a gift. If you insist on being able to add VoIP to your phone, don't get an iPhone, it's as simple as that. Apple invested in being able to compete. They should be able to realize a return on that investment; if they can't, they won't make the investment in the first place. If you want to make a similar investment in the same source code that Apple began with, there's nothing stopping you except your own energy and abilities. (Note that Apple invested well beyond the level of simply writing software: they developed hardware on which to run the software as well, and you have zero rights in that hardware in any case.) Apple's use of free software to create a closed device doesn't make society in general a bit less free. It doesn't restrict anyone's options beyond what they were previously, it doesn't take previously free software out of circulation. There's no basis to your argument here. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
RE: GNU discussion
As you point out, with Apple taking BSD software and 'competing against BSD', the market share for vanilla BSD is reduced. You can't however know whether in the medium-long term this is an 'overall good' which sped up Freedom through other interactions in the future or an overall bad. Apple geeks may migrate more easily to vanilla BSD because they are exposed to the standard terminal, and are frustrated at the limitations they find. More importantly (and very relevantly to this list) you can't compete for consumers on a basis of Not as good, but _more free_. If completely open phones are going to achieve any sort of dominance, then the same kind of work will have to go into project to support the capabilities that consumers want. More likely, this will prompt other phone manufacturers to try to find ways to compete with the iPhone in as reasonable a time as possible. Some of those ways will likely be based on Linux, and will likely wind up being a mix of proprietary and open source software, but the net outcome will be that there will be a larger amount of more capable open source software available in the product space, and more open source software being used in more devices like the NEO. It's pretty crazy for folks to be saying, But...those guys are _competing_ with BSD! Of course they are, that's what they _do_. And to compete back, BSD would have to get better. But BSD doesn't have goals of this sort: someone would have to take the initiative to make it happen. Wishing won't make it so, and somehow keeping Apple from doing it on their own won't either. But the suggestion that Apple's doing something wrong or something they shouldn't do by competing sounds...well, kind of like the stuff Microsoft likes to say about Linux, y' know? He who sets out to slay monsters must be careful that he does not become a monster himself in the process.--Friedrich Nietzsche ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
RE: GNU discussion (was re:Free your phone)
(offlist) Not. I would really appeciate some evidence of this... Fine. You're correct that the GPL and the BSD came out in the same year. In any case, there was, as I've said, plenty of free software (although few licenses) a decade and more before any of this. Now that I've agreed that I was incorrect on that fairly minor point, how about you provide the evidence to support your contention that copyright was intended to benefit the general public when they could not make copies of their own? Also, perhaps a response to my question as to how I'm being unethical by using Photoshop and Illustrator. I'm likewise still very interested in understanding how it's more wrong to respect the wishes of an artist as regards the publication of his or her material than it is to tell a friend that you feel they ought to purchase a copy of the material in question in accordance with those wishes. Not to mention an explanation about where I got left in your ethical analysis when you decided it was less wrong for you to hand your friend a copy of my photograph, gratis, for use in his magazine, than it was for him to rob me of the fee I ask for the use of that photograph. Your turn. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
RE: OMG wiki license
This all seems reasonable and appropriate as a way to move forward... In fact, there's no particular real-world danger of a legal case. First of all, no one stands to make or lose any money on the content in question, so any action would be purely symbolic. Secondly, the way to start if one wished to exercise one's control over one's own material would be to send a cease and desist message to whomever ran the wiki to have the material taken down or better-attributed or whatever... -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] on behalf of Richard Franks Sent: Sat 1/27/2007 1:42 PM To: OpenMoko Subject: Re: OMG wiki license On 1/27/07, Jon Phillips [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I don't see a legal case being made out of this. Right, but better to protect ourselves. Also, companies, like FIC/OpenMoko have to take every precaution. So, if we want our content included, we need to be cautious as well. Agreed - but I think the risk here is so minimal, that we can decide upon a license and push the deadline back one week, which would give contributors a chance to add the new license to their own pages. Pros: * We may get revised/improved/edited content by increasing the number of people involved. * Intent or nuance will not be accidentally changed. I also thought about going through and deleting a page, putting a GNU FDL 1.2 statement at the top of the page, and then summarizing/redoing the old content. This way, any future contributions are protected. Cool? Yet again, I propose we do this at 11:59 PM PST SAT JAN 27 so we can knock this out. What do you think? Unless we have any parties - FIC, individual contributors or editors - who feel that extending that deadline by one week would be putting them under additional risk, then I'd say +1 week is an appropriate response to a pragmatic estimate of the extreme unlikelihood of the occurrence or significance of the threat. Richard ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
RE: Will the OSDL/MLI have a yearly report as well? Re: LiMo foundation
Linux Organisation membership and organisation politics is not my business, but from the linux-user point of view it is a little confusing that OpenMoko/Neo1973 isn't mentioned here: http://old.linux-foundation.org/lab_activities/mobile_linux/mli Not too confusing. It's not a recent page, and the information on there was provided by members (of which FIC is not currently one, although we've invited them to participate...) Or let it me say in that way, it would be nice to read about OpenMoko/Neo1973 in a yearly report of OSDL/MLI, at last in the report about year 2007. No doubt, but such a yearly report would be a recap of MLI's activities, like DCL's, not a general survey of what's been going on outside the group in the world of Mobile Linux at large so much. Remember: we only first heard of OpenMoko and FIC at Open Source in Mobile 2007, back in November, and--frankly speaking--there's not really much concrete substance to say about it as yet. Can you, or Sean, when it doesn't take to much time, say something about OpenMoko and OSDL/MLI? Not much, really, for the reasons cited above. OpenMoko seems like a worthy and interesting effort, and we'd welcome the participation of FIC in the Linux Foundation or in LiPS whenever they're prepared to join us. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
RE: Possibilities for commercial software?
Two guys I know invested time into porting their game from PalmOS to phones. It didn't sell at all but was pirated quite a lot. Proprietary software developers often refer to unauthorised copying as piracy. This terms implies that copying is ethically equivalent to attacking ships on the high seas, kidnapping and murdering the people on them. If you don't believe that sharing is just like kidnapping and murder, you might prefer not to use the word piracy to describe it. Perhaps you might care to look into the definition of piracy. While it doesn't particularly have anything to do with either kidnapping or murder, _theft_ (or unauthorized taking if you prefer) is certainly at the core of it. What Ortwin has described is theft. The term piracy is apropos. Why do you appear to think stealing and profiting from the work of others, or at the very least taking legitimate profits away from those who are entitled to them, is ethical? And why are you attempting to suggest more politically correct terminology for criminal activities? Why would anyone want a neutral term for having had something stolen from me...? ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
RE: Will the OSDL/MLI have a yearly report as well? Re: LiMo foundation
Not too confusing. It's not a recent page, and the information on there was provided by members (of which FIC is not currently one, although we've invited them to participate...) Please don't take this a meaning anything other than we have zero free time Oh, believe me, I understand completely, very likely better than most people on this list: I've actually _shipped_ commercial operating systems, and for a few companies... ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
RE: Possibilities for commercial software?
Grey areas. Actually, I don't think it's grey at all. The decision maker, as far as how a work can be published and/or sold, is the copyright holder. Copyright is the _right_ to _copy_. If you're not the copyright holder, and you haven't been granted a right to copy by the copyright holder, then copying the work is an infringement. I don't see it as unethical for authors to choose to sell their works. If people don't like the price or the terms under which the works are offered, they shouldn't buy them. If enough people refuse to buy particular works because they dislike the terms, the owners of those works will suffer, and they'll be incented to change those terms to ones which are more attractive. I _do_ see it as unethical to copy works for the purposes of redistribution where you have no right to do so simply because you _can_: technical ability does not equal an ethical privilege. In specific terms, it's illegal republication and an infringement under the copyright laws of pretty much every country on the planet. Please remember: copyright is what protect GPL code, every bit as much as it protects the music on Sony-BMG CDs with bonus root-kits. If anyone wants to start inveighing against copyright law, they should keep in mind that they'll be arguing in favor of removing anyone's ability to redress misuses of GPL'd code in courts of law at the same time. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Possibilities for commercial software?
On 1/26/07 10:33 AM, Dave Crossland [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The original point was: It doesn't make sense to equate copying digital information with stealing physical objects. No...? If you were to come into possession tomorrow of a copy of the yet-to-be-published seventh Harry Potter book, and you reposted it on the web, would _that_ be equivalent to stealing a physical object? Or would it be _worse_? Of course, if you have an agreement not to copy, it is wrong to break that agreement. But it is more wrong to not share with your friends. Most people have an intuitive understanding of this, and share unauthorised copies. So, if I've paid $500 for a media asset management package, it's more wrong for me to tell a friend, I'm sorry, you have to buy your own copy than it is for me to steal $500 from the author of the package, is that what you're saying? The agreement not to copy is based on copyright law, and this was originally created to benefit the public when they could not make their own copies. Now that we can make our own copies, a law prohibiting copying does not benefit us, so we break it. Most people have an intuitive understanding of this. What? How did copyright law _ever_ benefit the public when they could not make their own copies? Uncontrolled copying would have benefited the public by making more copies available, and more cheaply, but at a cost of bankruptng authors who would never get paid for illegitimate copies. Copyright law has _always_ been about protecting authors, i.e. creators, from the undesirable economics effects of uncontrolled copying of their work. Period. Your statements on copyright law are completely contrary to actual fact. How can we escape this moral dilemma, where we are being unethical with either choice? How is respecting an author's wishes regarding his own work unethical? To quote Inigo Montoya in The Princess Bride, You keep using that word, but I do not think it means what you think it does. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Possibilities for commercial software?
On 1/26/07 11:01 AM, Dave Crossland [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If it's not the author's wish that the software be freely copy-able, which is certainly a desire the author's quite entitled to have I am less certain, and judging from most people's actions, I think you are in quite a minority with this belief. I mean, most iPods are full of unauthorised copies, even if some of their tracks are licensed from the iTunes Music Store. Weren't you the one who was asking whether an error, commonly made enough, became correct? If everyone does it, it can _still_ be wrong. (People need to be very careful about their intuitive understandings. People frequently intuitively understand that they haven't had so much to drink that they shouldn't be driving. Typically, they're mistaken.) you simply have no right whatsoever to make (i.e. publish) copies of a copyrighted work and give them away. It's illegal. I'm astounded that breaking the law this way presents no ethical problem for you. It is illegal, but the law is not an authority on ethics. It is, at best, an attempt to achieve justice. You seem to be saying, If copying is forbidden, it must be wrong.' No, I'm saying, If copying goes against the author's expressed or implied wishes, it's wrong. If the copyright notice says, All rights reserved, then the author's reserved the rights, and it's unethical for you not to respect their wishes in that regard. But the legal system - at least in the US - rejects the idea that copyright infringement is theft. You are making an appeal to authority, but misrepresenting what that authority says. This is a quibble. If there's value in the work, i.e., if the infringement has an economic impact, then the infringement can be dealt with just as severely as the theft of a physical asset. The judicial route is different, but you're straining at gnats here. The idea that laws decide what is right or wrong is mistaken in general. To say that laws define justice or ethical conduct is turning things upside down. If you copy software (music, books, other media, etc.) without permission of the author, there most certainly _is_ an ethical problem: you're stealing the possibility of selling a properly paid-for copy from the author. I'm not sure you can steal a possibility. Well, if you can establish that, in the absence of a free but infringing copy, a person would have bought a copy sold in accordance with the author's wishes, you've stolen a sale. If that makes you happier. Again, you're quibbling. Okay, 'splaina me this: I travel a lot. I take a lot of photos when I travel. I actually sell photos here and there as stock for magazines, advertisements, etc. You'd seem to be of the opinion that the instant I post a reasonably high digital image someplace where you can get at it, if you happen to have a friend who likes my photo enough to want it in his magazine but doesn't want to pay me the asking price, it's more wrong for you not to share it with him than it is for him to weasel out of paying me. (Please correct me if I'm getting any of this wrong.) I'm not sure how the relative balance of more versus less wrong between you and your pal impacts my not getting paid for your friend's use of the photo which I took and which I own, by the way. I'm still out the fee. Or do you believe that it's unethical for an author to a) want to be paid for his work No, it is totally legitimate for them to want payment, and for us to pay them. So, you've been paying the artists for all those unauthorized copies of songs on your iPod, or buying the CDs on which the songs you've decided you like appear...? and/or b) be able to set the terms under which his work is made available...? No, I am not against this. Afterall, without authors being able to set the terms under which their work is made available, we would have no free software :-) Absent copyright law, you'd have no legal means to _keep_ it free. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
RE: Developers phone also fit for early adopters?
He's not an idiot, he's just being bluntly vocal. Sorry, David, _I'm_ bluntly vocal, that was simply abusive. There's a difference, but I've never known either one to speed up a hardware platform project. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Possibilities for commercial software?
On 1/26/07 10:47 AM, Dave Crossland [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Your argument may be 'but every software for the phone really should be free - people will write it'. However, if someone hasn't come up with an absolutely free, modifiable mapping software, I should just be able to get the proprietary, closed version. It should be easier to do that than to look in the marketplace, conclude 'oh, this doesn't exist', and not get an OpenMoko phone because of it. You are expanding free to free to give up your freedom, which destroys the meaning of freedom with something like a Russell paradox. I'd say you're instead limiting free to mean free according to the doctrine of the Free Software Foundation. (Should I only be eating in restaurants which will give me copies of their recipes, for the asking, in the name of freedom...? It's gonna limit where I can go...) Why can't a person have the freedom to run proprietary software on _their_ open phone if they choose to? No one's requiring _you_ to, presumably, if you choose not to. Does the general community need folks like you to protect us from ourselves? (And you never answered my question about the ethics of Photoshop...) The amount of applications available for the phone is not the goal; the goal is to have a 100% free software phone. But that's at a base level, I don't recall any stated goal of making sure that everyone who ever gets their hands on one _keeps_ it that way! You don't feel people should be able to customize their phones other than in approved ways? (Slavery is Freedom...?) However, if I were trying to live off of it, it would be very hard to make it free and open source. Even in areas such as being a waiter where tips are expected and there is a known steady stream of customers giving tips, tips alone aren't sufficient. You can also charge for specific improvements, and for support, and many people have earned a living from free software in this way. Is that the only acceptable business model in your view? If someone comes up with a legitimately innovative piece of software, you seem to be saying that they'd be unethical to simply charge folks who are willing to pay the asking price binary-only copies of that software. I still don't see how trying to limit people's choices is more free than letting them make their own choices. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
RE: Possibilities for commercial software?
It may seem obvious to you that copyright law is about protecting authors... Only because it says so, right there in the US Constitution: Congress is granted the right to enact statutes To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries. As I said, it's about securing for authors the exclusive right to control who gets to make copies of their works. The GNU Foundation benefits from, and relies on, copyright law every bit as much as the members of Metallica do. If it weren't for copyright law, someone who (ab)used GPL-licensed code and refused to release the sources for their modifications could do so with impunity. That case to which you refer reportedly took place in the Sixth Century. Not BC, admittedly, but I still think it's of extremely limited relevance here. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: GNU discussion (was re:Free your phone)
Gosh, why does this fail to surprise me? Didn't you get to say your piece already? Why don't you harass the Ubuntu folks with this, hm? There are many more folks calling it Linux than GNU/Linux, and very few people who seem to care strongly about your over-developed sense of history and ethics, but you seem to be hgving trouble accepting that. One _more_ time: you are dragging down the signal-to-noise ratio on the list with this persistent silliness. I thought you'd developed a little maturity and decided to drop it and stay on topic, but I see I was over-optimistic. It's got nothing to do with ethics: it has to do with someone's obsessive (and at least four lengthy web pages on the subject counts in my book as obsessive) need to get the credit he feels he deserves but has been cheated out of by common parlance. Better still, tell you what: since you're all about the ethics here, go and get the folks at GNU to change the name of their system to GNU/Mach and _then_ come back to talk to _us_. Ethics should start at home. On 1/24/07 8:15 AM, Dave Crossland [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 23/01/07, David Ford [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: - Free software existed before GNU - Free software philosophies and movements existed before GNU - Free software will continue to exist after GNU - Free software philosophies and movements will continue to exist after GNU - GNU is not the One True Way (tm) of free software, never was, and never will be I feel it is misleading to describe code distributed in the 1960s and 70s as 'free software' - because software freedom was not recognised or enshrined. It would be like labelling early farmers as organic. It's okay for you to disagree, but this doesn't give you the right to keep browbeating people into accepting the religion of GNU. This is a matter of ethics, not religion. When you call it religion, do you mean it is purely arbitrary and not worth thinking about? Do you dismiss all ethics by calling it religion? ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: GNU discussion (was re:Free your phone)
Could you just drop this line of discussion, or pursue it off-list...? If they refer to it as Linux they'll be in line with pretty much every major _Linux_ distribution out there. On 1/24/07 6:11 AM, Dave Crossland [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi Sean, On 23/01/07, David Ford [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You must be reading a different link. Sean's email most clearly states in the form of a user's manual that will give credit to GNU. He also clearly stated We'll just call it OpenMoko. Could you confirm that if FIC writes that OpenMoko is based on a popular free software operating system, that will be described as GNU/Linux instead of Linux? ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: GNU discussion (was re:Free your phone)
On 1/24/07 9:51 AM, Declan Naughton [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 1/24/07, David Schlesinger [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Better still, tell you what: since you're all about the ethics here, go and get the folks at GNU to change the name of their system to GNU/Mach and _then_ come back to talk to _us_. I might ask about that alright. You do that. Let us know how it works out. When the FSF gets their _own_ little confusions about who's the 'principal developer of what sorted out, they'll be in a (slightly) more tenable position to wander in and make demands of others. Until that happens, this demand of yours seems entirely hypocritical, given the genesis of the (soi-disant) GNU kernel. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Free This Mailing List! (was Re: GNU discussion (was re:Free your phone))
On 1/24/07 10:20 AM, Declan Naughton [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: As far as I am aware, OpenMoko is not using the GNU/CMU Mach kernel.. No, they're certainly not. However, GNU _is_ and they're failing to give appropriate credit to the principal developer of their system. So on what basis are you demanding that OpenMoko give credit to GNU when GNU refuses to give credit to Mach...? As I've said, that's nothing more than self-serving hypocrisy. Physician, heal thyself. Do you folks intend to keep this discussion going until you either get your way or the heat death of the Universe takes place...? ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Free This Mailing List! (was Re: GNU discussion (was re:Free your phone))
On 1/24/07 11:03 AM, Declan Naughton [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 1/24/07, David Schlesinger [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 1/24/07 10:20 AM, Declan Naughton [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: As far as I am aware, OpenMoko is not using the GNU/CMU Mach kernel.. No, they're certainly not. However, GNU _is_ and they're failing to give appropriate credit to the principal developer of their system. So on what basis are you demanding that OpenMoko give credit to GNU when GNU refuses to give credit to Mach...? As I've said, that's nothing more than self-serving hypocrisy. Where did I, or anybody else, DEMAND that OpenMoko give credit to GNU? Dave Crossland's demanded it on a couple of occasions. Go back and reread his latest messages, particularly his message of 6:13 am this morning. GNU refuse to give credit to Mach? They only call the microkernel GNU *MACH*! No, this is _absconding_ with credit which belongs to someone else, specifically the CMU Mach team; naming someone else's work after yourself doesn't constitute giving them credit by any reasonable stretch of the imagination. GNU simply took advantage of the unlicensed state of Mach, relicensed it unilaterally under the GPL and re-christened it. If GNU's contribution to GNU/Linux is significant enough to merit endless discussion of giving them credit on mailing lists which are dedicated to other topics, why is CMU's contribution to GNU (so-called) not given equal shrift? Why this Oh, I'll ask about it... hand-waving? Does your commitment to freedom only extend to efforts on behalf of the FSF...? Let GNU resolve their own issues with giving appropriate credit before you start insisting that others do the same for GNU. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: OpenMoko and Multimedia
On 1/24/07 11:47 AM, Koen Kooi [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'd certainly push for gstreamer... As would I, but sometimes you've just gotta get things out the door... I'd assume that when FIC gets hardware out, someone'll make it run gstreamer in pretty short order. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
RE: GNU discussion (was re:Free your phone)
I like to be accurate and know what I am talking about, and I like others to be too :-) It simply never ends, does it? Feel entirely free to call it GNU/Linux, Bob/Linux, Jim/Linux or whatever you like, okay. But _please_ stop proselytizing. Have you ever noticed how folks with a zealot-like position assume, that when you disagree with them, that it represents some failure of adequate (or maybe adequately _repeated_) explanation on their part...? I get it, okay? I disagree. Telling me that GNU is a principal developer doesn't make it so and opinions clearly vary here. So, why don't you let those of use who choose to use a more commonly accepted, no less accurate, and more generally understood name simply do so? I can just see some poor fellow asking a sales-droid what the actual difference is between Linux (I've _heard_ of _that_!) and _GNU_/Linux. So, it's something _different_ than Linux? Yes, it's more conducive to personal freedom and encourages community better. Does it make the phone _do_ anything different? Other than encouraging freedom, no. Um, mm-kay... I realy just wanted a cell phone... Maybe I should get a Microsoft one instead; I've _heard_ of that. I don't what what this GNU stuff is, but I never heard of it, so I don't know whether it really works or not... Are you sure you don't have one that just runs _Linux_...? Sorry, nope. Ya _fascist._ ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
RE: GNU discussion (was re:Free your phone)
Feel entirely free to call it GNU/Linux, Bob/Linux, Jim/Linux or whatever you like, okay. But _please_ stop proselytizing. Dude, why so prickly? I am not sure why this discussion is making you so agitated..? We are having a discussion, and if you want it to stop, just... stop? :-) I'm not agitated, I simply (as do others) view this whole discussion as off-topic, divisive, unproductive and out-of-place here. Why on _this_ list? Surely, you'd have more impact with your crusade if you went and pestered the Ubuntu folks to make _their_ site say _GNU_/Linux for Human Beings. Not to mention getting the SuSe folks to change their product name to SuSE _GNU_/Linux, and the Red Hat folks to change _theirs_ to Red Hat _GNU_/Linux, and the Mandriva folks, and the Knoppix folks, and the Gentoo folks, etc., etc., etc. There have been literally dozens of messages on these threads, the plurality of 'em from you, and after the first half-dozen or so, there's been nothing new to say. Does the popularity of an error makes it the truth? It sure makes it not worth clogging up an unrelated mailing list with endless messages about it. Is there other misinformation you're going to feel impelled to correct us on? Why don't you invest in finding a better PR agency for the FSF instead? (The fact is that the principal designer of the GNU system hasn't managed to get an actual working _system_ worth talking about put together so far, and no change in sight, in spite of having had since 1983 to work on it. The kernel isn't even GNU development, it was lifted pretty much wholesale from CMU's work on Mach, simply relicensed under GPL and re-christened GNU Mach. So Avie Tevanian and the guys from CMU clearly deserve credit: the putative OS should be the GNU/Mach System in order to give credit to its principal designers...) I would want to suggest that in fact Australians speak English, and to discuss the history and origin of Australia. And it would be just as off-topic if you were discussing the history and origins of Australia on this mailing list as it is for you to be insisting that folks refer free software _your_ way here... Now now, you are sailing close to Godwin's law :-) Apparently, you've never met an actual cell phone customer. Your sales-droid would have lost them a third of the way into the second sentence. Remember: by definition, half of the folks out there are of below average intelligence. They still buy cell phones. You should drop this, and stick to the subject matter of the mailing list: the FIC phone and the OpenMoko platform. As others have pointed out, you're reducing the signal-to-noise ratio with this. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: How licensing discussions can tear communities apart
I would like to propose the creation of alt.flame.open-source-license. I See A Great Need. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: WiFi
What is the rationale behind the exclusion of WiFi? The long and short of it is that there¹s no sufficiently low-power WiFi chip available which has an open driver, or at least there wasn¹t when the hardware design got nailed down. It¹s too late in the process to add one now, but maybe in some future version of the hardware. (Whereby we illustrate the need for an FAQ, if only to answer this specific question...=D) ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: porting PalmOS apps?
On 1/21/07 5:52 AM, Joe Pfeiffer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I wouldn't say the API is as bad as you do, but it's certainly *different*. Only from Linux. It's actually very similar to the pre-OS X Mac OS APIs... Making legacy apps written for the Garnet OS (née Palm OS) run on Linux is decidedly non-trivial. An emulator for this is going to be part of the ACCESS Linux Platform... ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
RE: WiFi
Done: http://www.linuxtogo.org/gowiki/OpenMoko/QuestionsAndAnswers Hurray! The power of the open source community! =D ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
RE: Free Your Phone
Both my girlfriend and father are aware of Free Software and what it means. This is due to me coming across the FSF out of curiosity about GNU, and then passing that knowledge onto them. That's nice. I simply doubt that they'll be making cell phone purchasing decisions based on that knowledge. Runs free software doesn't appear on the checklist of features that the average person is looking for or cares about. That's unlikely to change. But you're presupposing that people are incapable of treating Freedom as a factor when the rate a product or service. There's very little stopping people from judging the Freedom aspect of a product or service apart from awareness of it. I never said they were incapable, just that they _don't_. If people factored freedom into their general buying decisions, Western nations wouldn't be running the kind of trade deficits with China that they currently do... Out of interest can you define your use of political agenda? In this instance, an agenda based on one party's apparent dissatisfaction with not getting the credit they assert they deserve, and which has nothing to do with software development or any piece of software's being more or less free. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Free Your Phone
On 1/20/07 1:18 PM, Dave Crossland [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 20/01/07, Koen Kooi [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Dave Crossland schreef: Can the FIC marketting department call it 'the OpenMoko GNU/Linux Distribution'? How much GNU software must be present to call it a GNU/linux distribution? Do I still need to call it gnu/linux if I use uclibc and busybox? Looking back at the annoucement, I see: * gcc 4.1.1 * binutils 2.17.50.0.5 * glibc 2.4 * glib 2.6.4 * gtk 2.6.10 So IMO this is clearly a GNU/Linux system. More than it's a GTK/GNU/Linux system...? Or an X/GTK/GNU/Linux system...? Or a list your favorite twenty components/X/GTK/GNU/Linux system...? This is silly stuff, in my opinion. If the Free Software Foundation wants to call something GNU/Linux that badly, let 'em put together their own distribution and call it whatever they like. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Visual Voicemail
On 1/19/07 8:20 PM, Austin Taylor [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Visual voicemail requires back-end support from the carrier. Think like a hacker. Why couldn't we scrape it? Um, because, all other things being equal, you'd have to parse out an audio stream to get at the information you'd need...? Just guessin'. Me, I try to think like an engineer. You can use a chisel for a screwdriver, but it'll never be a good one. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
RE: Neither iPhone or OpenMoko are revolutionary
Yes, Bluetooth's PAN profile is intended to enable pico/mesh networking... -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] on behalf of Koen Kooi Sent: Thu 1/18/2007 10:41 AM To: community@lists.openmoko.org Subject: Re: Neither iPhone or OpenMoko are revolutionary -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Doug Shawhan schreef: Magic fuel cells aside, I predict 802.11x will not be a big deal for mobiles until someone comes up with beautiful, free peer-to-peer voice app Or, even better, a mesh voip solution. I was working at a festival last year (50k visitors, 2k staff) and phone service was down (surprise!) for all but one network. With mesh networking you could make calls within the mesh easily, and with enough endpoints, outside the mesh as well. AFAIK you can do mesh-like networks with BT as well (bridget piconets), but I think you'll get hit with the limited range. regards, Koen -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (Darwin) iD8DBQFFr79CMkyGM64RGpERAp6eAJ9vqn09Gqz6hVdHK2MO30RklT+sTQCgufte wjSpljJw7rDCqFXy56ujqlE= =aPLY -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community Ye ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Neither iPhone or OpenMoko are revolutionary
On 1/18/07 11:23 AM, Renaissance Man [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You still don't get it. Y' know, you're right. I don't. I clearly am not intelligent enough to appreciate the worldview-shaking impact of saving a few bucks on my cell phone bill. I don't suppose further repetitions of this revelation are likely to change that, either. I think you're wasting your time here trying to convince me, honestly. Sorry For The Inconvenience. Now I can go to the movies. By _myself_.--Avon Long as Ezra in _Trading Places_ ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Neither iPhone or OpenMoko are revolutionary
On 1/17/07 5:17 PM, Renaissance Man [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 18 Jan 2007, at 12:57 am, Richard Franks wrote: I disagree - VoIP via WiFi is an obvious evolution rather than revolutionary. But you're looking at it from a geek's point of view instead of a typical end-user's point of view. Anything that allows me to go from spending £45 plus a month on mobile communications to effectively zero, including talking to my parents who live on the other side of the planet, is revolutionary. You can go out and buy a Nokia 800 or a Sony Mylo today for the price of a NEO and do VoIP right this instant. If it's changed the world, I guess I must not have been paying attention. Killer app: a computer program that is so useful or desirable that it proves the value of some underlying technology See above. Nobody's killed, or died, over a Nokia web tablet (something which can't evidently be said about Nintendo game consoles...) I couldn't think of a better example of a killer app than sticking a piece of software on a device that lets people speak to each other around the world effectively for free. Ditto. The revolution won't have people saying, oh man, I want one of those, because it's open source. They'll be saying, oh man, I want one of those because I can communicate with a mobile device for a pittance (open source will simply be one way of doing it). Okay. As much as I hate to inject any sort of air of reality into these proceedings... The revolution evidently has a bunch of people who don't see that the value of half (or ninety-five one-hundredths) of a loaf exceeds that of no loaf at all. As has been noted, it's a lot easier to post an email message saying, Just add Wifi! as though it were some sort of syrupy substance you could pour into a tank on the device, but there's actually more to it than that. Just adding WiFi affects power management at a hardware level significantly, for starts--that WiFi additive stuff doesn't help your mileage a bit--not to mention complexifying your entire board layout, which is doubtless cramped to begin with. Do you understand that rerouting and retesting a board, retooling an assembly line, updating unit-level testing (you want this to _work_, right...?), etc., etc. all takes time...? It does. A bunch of time. Not to mention going back to square one on any regulatory certifications you have in the works, etc., etc., etc... So, I doubt just adding some WiFi would have the effect on the schedule of just adding a month. I'd put my money on it adding four to six of 'em. Is it worth waiting for? I dunno. If you want VoIP that badly, buy the 800. I'd like to have this line of discussion officially declared silly, please. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
RE: yet another fantasy idea: nextel-like walkie talkie feature?
Push-to-talk, at least the version currently marketed by Sprint/Nextel on cellphones, is based on Motorola's proprietary iDEN network; I don't know that there's a great deal of information available on using iDEN, plus it'd require a dedicated additional network stack beyond GSM... ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
