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The Opportunity of Mobile Linux in Danger
Eugenia writes "I just posted an editorial on the state of Linux for cellphones. Currently, there are 6 different initiatives and alliances, all completely incompatible between them, and in my opinion this kills a great opportunity for a unified 'Linux platform' that can compete with Windows Mobile and Symbian S60. As for the existing released Linux phones, only MiZi Research has an SDK freely available to create a GUI application for it. Motorola sells thousands more handsets than MiZi does through Samsung, and yet they don't release their EZX SDK. C|Net also wrote today: 'while Linux had a lot to offer in comparison with proprietary systems, such as improved scalability and flexibility, it is lacking in other areas, industry watchers said. Ovum telecommunications analyst Tony Cripps said that Linux-based smart phones are currently inhibited by the lack of a standardized application environment for third parties to write to, unlike Symbian's offerings.'"
that even in the OSS community there are still too many pissing matches that sound remarkably like "It's my way or the highway."
Why go fast when you can go anywhere? O|||||||O
Currently, there are 6 different initiatives and alliances, all completely incompatible between them, and in my opinion this kills a great opportunity for a unified 'Linux platform' that can compete with Windows Mobile and Symbian S60
Now, if only we had this unified 'Linux platform' for the desktop, then maybe we could compete with Windows XP.
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
The reason linux distros are so different, on PCs or on cell phones, is that open source apps don't need a standardized environment and linux is made to work with open source apps. If your application uses autoconf, it's pretty darn easy to port to any distro. But have you ever tried installing matlab, lexmark printer drivers, or games? Closed source software like that has arcane installers that only work on red hat and have to be reverse engineered for other distros. The people who want linux to "standardize" are the people who want to sell closed source apps. "Standardization" would hurt those who use only FOSS because it would greatly reduce choice in your distros. FOSS is the core function of linux (that's the GNU in GNU/Linux). Linux should not cripple itself to make room for non-free software.
Haven't all these manufacturers heard of GPE, Opie, or even Maemo? Those ought to be easily adapted to run on phones instead of just PDAs.
I think the real reason they're all going proprietary (and not providing SDKs) is because the service providers don't want there to be an easy way for anybody but them to make applications for the phones.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Welcome to the PalmSource/Access vision. Here you will have a choice of writing programs with GTK, Java or Palm 68k interfaces. The result should be to allow their devices access the full Palm and Java range of programs out there as well as leaving a new open route with GTK (and GStreamer) which should be fairly source compatible with other GTK based systems (e.g. Maemo from the N770). Of course nothing has been released yet so it remains to see how this will pan out in practice.
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
First let me say how I'd like a Linux smartphone to work. I'd like to plug it into my computer with a USB cable and see various peripherals. A hard drive, that goes without saying. A network adaptor with a DHCP server; a web server on port 80 with the phone's web-based configuration; a database server on port 3306 containing the phone book, call logs and sundry housekeeping information, e.g. remaining talktime; a gateway to the outside world {via GPRS or 3G}; and assorted other servers, possibly including a SIP / IAX gateway. Two sound cards: one being the phone's own mic and speaker, and the other being the phone line.
..... you would have to keep a close watch on how much talktime you bought while developing applications, for fear of eating it all up}.
Since the business of charging for a call is handled by the base station and not the handset, there are no implications for making things open that benefit the subscriber at the expense of the telephone company {though I can think of some that might benefit the telco at your expense
But it's unlikely to happen without government intervention, because keeping things closed and proprietary benefits the handset manufacturers {to a limited extent} and the telcos {to a greater extent}. The easier it is for the likes of me and thee to muck about with our phones, the harder it is for the corporations to charge us money for cheesy applications.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
I assumed from the headline that the story would be about the opportunity for Danger Inc., the company that developed the Sidekick handsets and operates its data services, to leverage Mobile Linux on a future version of their device.
It actually may not be a bad idea for them -- their current platform of a custom J2ME implementation on ARM7 doesn't seem to have much of a future. Few developers are producing software for it due to its differences from other handsets (and its restricted distribution model). It's falling behind even less expensive handsets in the market in terms of hardware support for things like Bluetooth and EDGE.
Opening up the platform and making it a tiny Linux box could give Danger a whole new market for the device: techies who don't care much for Blackberries or Treos.
But as long as Paris Hilton and P. Diddy are happy with theirs, that may never happen.
In a tragic side-note, Tony Cripps was gunned down in an apparent drive by shooting by Billy Bloods...
Damn it, I warned you it was a bad joke.
Linux effectively has Gnome and KDE, and the two work together very well. That means at most two toolkits, with an active effort to integrate them.
.NET, Avalon, and Vista.
That makes the situation better than, say, on Mac OS, which has Cocoa, Carbon, some Classic, and a lot of incompatible third party toolkits. And Windows has a baroque mix of 16bit and 32bit applications, various levels of Win32, and soon