Slashdot Mirror
The Death of the Greenphone
phobos13013 writes "Trolltech announced this week that they will discontinue development on their Greenphone platform. The Greenphone was advertised to be the first phone with a user-modifiable environment. Trolltech CTO Benoit Schilling stated that they are not really a hardware company and so will focus their efforts on FIC's Neo 1973, now available. However, Schilling hinted at a future Wi-Fi-enabled endeavor (possibly a VOIP phone)."
The timing of this move and both the economical and legal reasons ( i.e. telecom issues ) for it happening are very questionable. On this day Microsoft reports the strongest quarterly earnings in years and vmWare gets a boost in profits too whose server virtualization Redmond is all over. Yesterday facebook.com reports microsoft will now control facebook's ad buys and delivery of its ad syndication which by todays standards in transparency and oversight actually means microshit will fully control facebook's user data and therefore the content integrity of facebook user profiles.
Look at the dates. Look at *what* is in Slashdot's cited article to see this professionally sick pattern of behavior ( brackets contain words I use for emphasis ) --
'' Trolltech has discontinued its Linux-based "Greenphone" development platform. Touted upon its introduction as the first _Linux-based_ mobile phone with _user-modifiable firmware_ ( big time SoA opportunity ), the device will be superseded by various third-party products, including not only open phones, but also portable media players, navigation devices, and home automation equipment, the company says. Trolltech made a big splash with the Greenphone at _LinuxWorld 2006_. As the first Linux-based mobile phone with user-modifiable firmware, the phone was designed to provide wireless carriers and [componentized, service-level] third-party [access to] [Service oriented Architecture] ''