Slashdot Mirror
Motorola's New Open Source Resource
illogict writes "Among with their new A1200 GNU/Linux-based mobile phone, Motorola unveiled yesterday its new community-based development platform, http://open source.motorola.com. It is primarily aimed at developers who are willing to contribute to Motorola's GNU/Linux-based mobile phones, either directly on firmware, or creating programs (native or Java) who are aimed to work on those phones. It currently features phone kernels, SD-TransFlash card reader drivers, Java MIDP3.0 draft. Such commitment on open source-development could be seen as a good step, and may show the way to other companies."
Hmmm, open source for a proprietary, niche HW platform. Sounds like they're too cheap to hire their own developers and are using the Open Source buzzward in hopes for some free SW development.
So, there was some debate about whether you can package proprietary drivers with open source. So, can you package open source drivers with proprietary hardware?
Open source generally implies users installing the OS on their own devices. I don't really see this happening on a large scale with Motorola since it'll come pre-bundled. So on has to wonder, what's the point of open sourcing stuff?
Motorola showed actual thought and innovation for the V3 RAZR and it's ilk. Thin flip-phones makes so much more sense. I hope they can do it again with the software.
Other than an old Ericsson T39m, the V3i is the best phone design I've ever used. That is, except for the software - which is.. quirky, to say the least. Games consoles get much of the attention in terms of reverse engineering and modding, each generation is designed to be more locked down and 'trustworthy'. However phones seem to have fared infinately better against the modding crowds and this sucks. Mobile operators get away with charging 15p for a 20 byte SMS and other restrictions that would leave Sony/MS XBox division drooling.
I wish it were possible to rip the Motorola supplied firmware and replace it with something buggy but useful. I wish I could sync to anything and actually run real software, that does real things like access bluetooth and the camera. I wish my current phone could run programs written in C, C++, Perl, Python, Ruby, Java, C# and AIML. I want my phone to make a Star Trek communicator noise every time it opens. I want it to work in landscape mode and allow input from a bluetooth keyboard and to log GPS. I want it to do all the things Motorola didn't think of or didn't have the budget for.
So please, if anyone from Motorola is reading, do this properly. Open up more than just a few smartphones or far east only models. Let your geek users break from the shackles of MIDP across everything. I note from TFA that you've released an open source mmc+sd driver, that's a great move - make it the first of many.
Thanks
Alex
I downloaded the source code for the A1200 and e680/a780. There IS NO WAY you can create a native graphical application with the tarballs they offer. Whoever submitted the news on Slashdot is an idiot and he didn't try the tarballs. The modified Qt/EZX toolkit is NOT included in these tarballs.
In other words, Motorola gave us NOTHING more than they didn't before. They just released a fancy web site about it. And we, Linux phone users, STILL CAN NOT create graphical native apps!