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Cellular Companies Join to Improve Linux
TrdrJoe writes to mention a Reuters article about a group of cell companies joining up to develop an open-source Linux-based OS for many of the market's phones. From the article: "Linux software currently occupies only a tiny proportion of the mobile market, mainly in China, while market leaders Symbian and Microsoft dominate the space. The attraction of Linux for handset makers is that as the code is not owned by any one company competition is likely to be fierce between firms supplying ready-to-use embedded Linux versions for phones, driving down fees, whereas Symbian and Microsoft can keep prices higher."
Its about time that bigger companys realize that they dont need to screw over a buncha people to make money.
Microsoft has to be screaming obscenities left and right. Free software attacks every single one of their real cash pipelines and Google attacks the rest. (except for hardware) Everyone know there isn't any real money in hardware unless your name is Apple. The only reason Apple makes money in hardware is because of their cult following who will fire the wallets at them like canon balls.
"Cell Companies" is to "Improve Linux" as "Gang of Escaped Lobotomy Patients" is to "Improve MIT".
If you watch TV news, you know less about the world than if you just drank gin straight from the bottle.
In North America, the vast majority of mobile phones are subsidized by a network operator. Developers of operating systems for mobile phones generally allow a network operator to use lockout features to control what software may be run on a subsidized phone. Such systems include "Get It Now" in implementations of BREW on phones sold by Verizon and "Mobile2Market" in Windows Mobile smartphones. The features exist purportedly to improve the "security" of a network, but in practice, network operators use them in order to require that all applications be purchased at jacked-up prices from a network operator's online store, and so that free software or other freeware self-published by a hobbyist developer (who generally cannot afford the code signing fees) cannot compete.
Will this Linux OS for mobile phones support the same kind of lockout, where the hardware verifies an approved kernel and the kernel verifies approved apps?
So am I going to save $50 on the next cell phone that I buy because my handset manufacturer didn't have to pay a licensing fee for the phone's operating system? Highly doubtful.
Am I going to have better features and/or functionality because linux is running instead of Microsoft phone OS? Again, highly doubtful. Maybe it'll be a little easier to be extensible or perhaps more flexibly upgraded but really, on a cell phone is this a big deal?
From what I can gather, the only ones who really benefit from linux on the handsets are shareholders of the manufacturers themselves, as they'll be able to save $x on y phones every year, thus adding to their bottom line.
Meh, this is a nonissue. The headline should have been, "Cellular Companies Look For Ways To Save Money".
The surest sign of intelligent life in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us. -- Calvin & Hobbes
Some operating systems win, some operating systems lose.
Some operating systems thrive, some operatings systems are dying.
Linux wins again!
Who forms the head?
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Even back in 2005 when I dug this article up for a report, MS had roughly 1/5th the "Smart" Phone market linux did (5% compared to linux's 26%). If Microsoft is screaming over this, they've been doing so for quite a while.
But can they run Linux??
Oh, wait, um....
"But this one goes to 11!"
...they don't lock up the hardware so that only "approved" versions will run, like TiVo. In that case, what's the point?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Last I heard, Cisco was making plenty of $$$ selling hardware. I realize they're in a different space...
I worked with one of the people who was working on the linux phones at Motorola. The potential these things have is amazing. He said that at one point, he was running a web server off of his phone. Of course, as has been pointed out, the ability to hack your own phone is often limited by the carrier.
But will it support Linux? No, seriously – specifically, what I mean is, will it support syncing to a Linux desktop, or will Linux only be as far as the phone itself? Because even though I don't have a cell phone, I'm a Linux user, and I suspect that if Linux had more/better official support for "weirder" peripheral devices such as cell phones it might catch on with even more people than are already using it.
:-)
(A week or so ago I had to install the software for a Motorola cameraphone onto a friend's [Windows] laptop... didn't work at all, and what was really annoying was that there wasn't any Linux program available that supported his specific phone. Probably wouldn't matter for him, but it really annoys me because there wasn't any way to – even temporarily – set up a Linux system to download the pictures that were on there so we could at least get that done, and worry about the rest later... sorry if it doesn't make any sense to anyone else
Creative misinterpretation is your friend.
Fingers crossed...
Companies and people pooling their resources together on a project that profits all of them. Data is not something that has to be restricted like Microsoft and RIAA/MPAA want you to think.
"If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas." -George Bernard Shaw
These companies are combining their resorces to make a linux distro for there phones quickly. The cost could have been multiplied due to each company getting there own os running and not sharing the data(should source code be refered to as data or information?). By following the methods open source software is based on, a single os will be developed and lots of money may be saved.
...therefore, I'm all for it! Well, just kidding, I'm sure he's not a bad guy, but really, who wants to use Windows on their cell phone, after putting up with it on their desktop for so long? Microsoft has done a great job of marketing "Windows Mobile" as if it were really just a scaled down "mobile OS" version of Windows XP, through its interface skin and marketing materials (although any reasonable person like Mac user little ole me won't like it). The need for a robust OS that is user-friendly enough to be used on phones and other devices is so overdue that people like myself are practically ready to write it themselves.
Of course, this doesn't make me a fan of cell phone companies, I think they're the worst when it comes to thinking of users' needs. Now if Linux Mobile were just a little bit farther along, we'd be all set...
Thinkingman.com New Media
Where is '|' key on this tiny keyboard?
If losing your data is 'just plain unacceptable', then why did you get that PDA? The reason I ask is that it should have been made clear to you that if e.g. your battery runs fully out, you also lose all your data that isn't written away to your slot-in memory card on a WM2003 device.
That's one of the 'big' features of WM5; persistent storage (that is, writing out data to flash memory)
These days a cell phone is a microprocessor with an attached two way radio. When is someone going to hack it so that they can communicate cell phone to cell phone? That is with a range greater than blue tooth and without a cell tower? Do that an you can have your own mesh network running as a Beauwolf cluster without having to pay the telephone companies.
One thing I can promise you is what this WON'T result in:
A) The ability to manipulate the phone hardware
B) The ability to control how your phone interacts with the network
C) The ability to do anything useful with Bluetooth or any of the other peripherals
D) The ability to anything cool at all, really.
Wireless companies are dead-set against locking the consumer out of decisions on how hardware which lives on their networks operates.
This isn't going to be nearly as great as you think it will. Mark my words.
+++ATH0
There are already a few Linux phones out there..
4 .iso
see:
http://linuxdevices.com/news/NS9996556326.html
You can even test drive Qtopia via a LiveCD.
Download here (114MByte):
http://qtopia.net/iso/qtopia-4.1.1-2006_04-20_111
Simon.
From past experiences with Motorola's disaster of a Linux based cellphone platform EZX, I have no faith in cell phone companies to deliver what consumers would actually want out of a Linux based phone. I hope I'm wrong, it seems all this announcement will lead to is another closed platform, where the full benefits of using Linux as an operating system will be ignored. Microsoft's current Windows Mobile platform, while having its share of problems, works very well for what I want to accomplish: easy Calendar and Contacts synchronization, Push E-mail, a fairly stable platform for which to develop applications, and all the server and backend support necessary for such mobile to desktop integration. I would be much more impressed with this announcement if the companies involved would have included some of those currently trying to bring this functionality to Linux and open standards, such as Novell and Google, or at least a notice of commitment to creating an open platform supporting open standards instead of focusing on Linux as just an enabler for a low cost cellphone development.
http://www.s4biturbo.com/
the problem now is that phones are getting more complex. this complexity makes their reliability suffer much like a regular windows phone. i remember the earlier phones where the purpose is just to call and you don't have to reboot or the phone suddenly stopped working.
i am not sure if linux will be helping but i hope they will get reliability right. my phone now locks from time to time and needs rebooting. there are times when applications crash (though a reboot is not needed.) but it is quite annoying and a hassle.
Live your life each day as if it was your last.
I hope that the cellular companies will release their future firmware as an open source licence. We will be able to modify it, improve new functionnalities, cutomize it ! The firmware of my current cellular (sony ericsson) has a lot of bugs and many functionnalites are missing that I cannot add with the J2ME apps. An open source firmware will be usefull for everybody.
har har. But seriously, this isn't what most people here think it is.
You WILL NOT be able to hack your phone. Consumers will never be given
complete control over their phone, no matter where they got it from or
what OS it runs. If you could, people would never upgrade and the
manufacturers wouldn't make any money.
Don't forget that TiVo is built on Linux and KDE will/has widget support. Motorola IMO could do a better UI; we have two of their cellular phones and I think they could use better GUI/menu system. Maybe if they focus less on the kernel and spend money outsourcing the looks improvements can be had. If Apple does a cellphone it'll look as good as iChat AV.
Smartphone prices are about to go down and mobile companies don't want to be locked into another Microsoft tax (or Symbian tax). On the other side, they realize that Symbian itself is not the best solution for the future where mobile hardware will become faster and contain more memory (nevertheless some novel ideas from symbian should be reused).
They seem to be doing the right thing. Founding the organization which will be responsible for developing the system they will all use. Cohesion and standardization of the platform should be the most important objective. I certainly hope they will use development model used by Fedora, Ubuntu or other similar linux distributions. Maybe partnership with some of them could bring the experience neede to get the project up faster, so I hope they will go for it. Best model IMO is to have paid developers which cooperate with volunteers on most important OS parts, with the possibility of hiring some of them.
Most critical part will be the userspace framework. It depends on it's design whether this OS will suck or not. For GUI one doesn't need to go with the X-windows model here at first, a much simpler GUI would be sufficient for now with porting some simpler toolkits to it. Maybe they should try with an EGL-based layer above a graphical driver and modesetting system, it will enable OpenGL capabilities in the future. Concern is how this will be compatible with current GNU/linux. I hope they will reuse anything they can from existing projects, but even if not, mobile/desktop applications don't overlap in many ways anyway.