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)."
My first contact with fisting was, of course, in San Francisco.
I was out on the coast for a round of job interviews in the Bar
area. My fluffy-sweater acquaintances in Cincinnati had scoped out
the territory the previous summer and were full of dire warnings
about South of Market in general and The Hothouse in particular,
so of course that was the first place I headed. Now, fisting
wasn't exactly a deep, dark mystery to me...somewhere along the
line I had acquired the book from the movie classic "Erotic Hands"
and I'd been jerking off to that for quite a while. You might say
I was into the concept if not the reality.
Well, The Hothouse was everything I had been warned it was...humpy
dudes wandering around in body harnesses leading their slaves on
leashes, the whole trip. I nearly came when I walked into the
shower room hunkered down on a plastic hose while he sucked his
buddy's oversize cock. I checked out the sling rooms, but I spent
most of the night doing conventional if rougher-than-usual sex.
I fell asleep with my door cracked. The next morning I woke up
with this warm, wet feeling on my arm. I looked up and there was
this hairy, muscular little dude impaled on my arm to the elbow!
Holy shit! He looked down at me and grinned "Good morning" "Good
morning yourself fucker." " Can you dig it!" "For sure, but I've
never done it before" Well, that turned his motor on, and soon
became oblivious that he wasn't gonna dismount my arm until he had
showed me all the right moves. We ended up with me punch-fucking
him doggy--style with a cheering audience of six or seven
leathermen. Well, my arm was busy most of the morning, but my
asshole stayed virgin.
I sorta filed the experience away and chewed on it until my next
trip to the coast. I only knew one dude in Cincinnati that was
into handball, and we were friends, not fuck-buddies, so I didn't
get a chance to practice again until another job interview took me
to San Diego. The job panned out. and I moved to California.
Now, you have to understand where I was coming from. Cincinnati
is one of the most tight-assed Republican cities in the Midwest.
There was one gay bar and no baths. If you wanted steam you had
to drive to Cleveland, Toledo or Chicago. So the first couple of
years in San Diego I was like a kid in a candy shop...baths, bars,
and Balboa Park!
I fisted if I was asked, and if I was in a "top" mood I got off on
it to a certain extent, but something was missing. What that
"something" was I found out one night at the old Fourth Avenue
Baths in Hillcrest. I was cruising the "open" rooms and came
across this hot little blond surfer-type. We started getting it
on, and our hands both started to go for the ass about the same
time, so he called a halt to go fetch the Crisco and poppers. Now,
fisting wasn't particularly on my mind...I figured we'd trade fucks
and that would be that. How was I to know that gay surfers in San
Diego get into handball?
Well. pretty soon we were pretty busy finger-fucking each other
while we sixty-nined. Then he called a halt and sat up and looked
at me. "Wanna go further?" "As in what?" "Fisting, man." "You
or me?" "Whatever," he muttered. "Well, I've never had it, but
I'm up for trying." Bingo! The idea of a virgin really pushed his
button, so pretty soon I'm on my back with my ass propped up on a
pillow and him sitting cross-legged below me.
"Your head's gonna get it done for you" he told me. "You gotta
want me inside you. It's just like takin' a big cock. It'll hurt
like hell goin' over the widest part of my knuckles, but then once
it's inside you're gonna lose your mind!" Well, we had smoked a
couple of joints and I was pretty mellowed out and the dude wasn't
tryin' to hurry me. We rapped about all kinds of shit, but all the
time there was this gentle but insistent pressure at my asshole.
"How much
It's not going to do anything but make your dick stink.
TrollTech still throws me off and makes me think its fake, but the Greenphone did sound really neat.
Twitter.com/TrentonHyatt
I was pretty excited about this project after reading about it in Linux Journal a couple of months ago. Too bad that it won't see the light of day.
Maybe OpenMoko can fill the void left behind...
I wish I had a kryptonite cross, because then you could keep Dracula and Superman away.
Really, look at the demographics. Who buys all those pink iPods? Teen girls. The kind of people that spend all day talking and texting on their phone. Who gets a hard on over linux? Introverted geeks. The kind of people that want pizza delivery robots so they can avoid all human contact.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
It might make your knee grow!
It would appear that they'e sold out of phones.
And yet they're quitting development?
DOES NOT COMPUTE!
They'll be back, I think, with something else. There's plenty of reasons for a corporate entity to want to provide customized phones to its employees, or to give them out as a promotion, or stuff like that.
It's too cool a gadget idea to throw away.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
It is a common misconception that these phones can't be economically feasible because only a small number of 'geeks' will use them. Yes, I would like a 'geek-friendly' phone, but more importantly, I want a 'developer-friendly' phone. One with a nice API to access bluetooth and wifi capabilities.
When that happens, the general non-geek population benefits due to the availability of quality software that will run on the phone.
So, step 1: make the phone easy to use
Step 2: make the phone customizable
Step 3: make the phone developer-friendly
Step 4: let me use the same API for different phones; I'm sick of recoding half of my program to make it compatible with a different phone!
- Demosthenes
cynicsreport.com
Apparently.
Modded troll for disagreeing with a furry-toothed-geeks view of Wikipedia. Pah.
If I had an Ass, I'd call it Fanny Bottom, then I could slap my Ass; Fanny Bottom, on the Arse.
Or does anyone else think this would be a great way to spy on your kid, your spouse, etc.. I wonder how many techie nerds bought this out of jealousy or fear... Why couldn't you program this open-phone to auto pickup from a certain number, disable the speaker, and transmit audio? All without a single ring, vibration, or visual cue.
i'm out of shitpaper. i'm sitting here on the shitter posting on slashdot and i fucking run out of shitpaper!
whats the chance of that?
i need to call up a digg buddy to wipe my ass i guess...
I thought apples iPhone was insane at $500, and this thing is/was $200 more than that? No wonder it was a failure.
The $300 neo 1973 replacement is still a bit steep for me, but at least it's in the ballpark.
AccountKiller
nt
OpenMoko and the 1973 will fail just as the Greenphone did. There is no leadership behind the project, no vision, just a bunch of well-intentioned geeks who want to make something cool. With no cohesive plan, though, the Neo1973 will never succeed.
iPhone is still "it" for those of us who want a powerful *NIX-based cellphone -- even if we have to fight Steve Jobs tooth and nail for it.
+++ATH0
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] ''
Has anyone gotten to play around with or develop for the Neo 1973?
I like the idea, but I need to play with a phone before I buy it.
I wonder how hard it would be to adapt a NEO 1973 to VOIP. It's got USB, but I don't think it could handle a USB NIC.
Trolltech is controlled by Canopy. And who else do we know that Canopy also controls? The initials are S-C-O...
Why does no one understand that the Greenphone was purely a developer platform?
It was never meant for consumers, and the fact that it works as a phone is purely secondary to its main function of providing a test bed for developing mobile phone applications for Trolltech's platform. Comparing it to consumer, mass market phones doesn't make any sense.
http://www.copyblogger.com/5-common-mistakes-that-make-you-look-dumb/
How do you stop five black men from raping a white woman?
Throw 'em a basketball!
(its rape because the white woman in this joke is not fat)
Is this thing available? The website says that I (the consumer) should come back in October. I guess I will check again in 5 days
but it is not looking good. My contract is up soon so I might not mind trying Neo but they sure don't look ready for business.
Yabbit, at $300 it's ugly as sin, has few features, and you have to program it yourself. Wake me when the promises are something other than vaporware and I'll listen to propaganda about replacing this iPhone I enjoy immensely.
Assuming we all had Neos with mobile broadband access and TrixBoxes(Asterisk) running at home what would the future look like? Open Source VOIP? Would we have something like email addresses instead of phone numbers? FYI, my biggest IT coup was installing asterisk at work and having it email everybody voice messages as email attachments. Best bang for your buck if you're about to ask for a raise.
What if Digg added local news and a Slashdot inspired comment karma system? ---
http://houndwire.com
Just an observation, Perhaps they're scrapping this idea to focus on the next line of UMPC/phone/you-name-it Computers, that are getting smaller and smaller (PicoITX anyone?) as time goes on. At least this would seem, IMHO, a better direction for such future portable devices than focusing on just the phone portion of development.
Developing for mobile is a pain generally... having a phone that is easy to develop for would be a good thing for both mobile developers and consumers.
It was never meant for developers, either. For ${deity}'s sake, it only supported GPRS. Name one developer who's going to spend lots of his own, personal cash on a phone that maxes out at ~38kbit/sec for data. I don't care HOW customizable it is... a phone that only supports GPRS is a paperweight. Of course, they'll blame its failure on Linux, or the niche market, or its price, and totally overlook its REAL failure -- its lack of support for at least EDGE.
How many nails can a linux coffin hold ??
..
::
,, within ++127 // --128 ??
:: how much do you got ,, as much as john wayne '' s colon ,, and as much as oprah '' s VaJayJay ..
Ponder and contrast your answer
Extra credit question
How many nails are currently in the linux coffin
Not acceptable answers are
Name one developer who's going to spend lots of his own, personal cash on a phone that maxes out at ~38kbit/sec for data. I don't care HOW customizable it is... a phone that only supports GPRS is a paperweight
I think you still don't understand. Developer platform doesn't mean "phone marketed towards the developer/geek market" it means "device that developers use to test their software on". It's really only that, and the lack of EDGE is not really an issue (unless the network speed is crucial to your testing).
Of course, they'll blame its failure on Linux
Trolltech is hugely supportive of Linux (sponsoring developers to work on X, KDE, and freedesktop.org projects like harfbuzz), and the Greenphone wasn't a failure so finding a scapegoat isn't necessary.
You must be a troll ?
You don't seem to understand what the purpose of the Greenphone dev kit is.
As a development platform, the need for any network at all is not necessary.
well, if i remember correctly, they charged for the sdk. which probably killed a lot of enthusiasm from the oss crows. now, what i really hope for - that openmoko and the associated devices will be both very geek friendly and very user friendly, thus making it an ideal device to get for me and to recommend for everybody else.
Rich
Shoufts To the OpenBSD. How many asshole to others into a sling unless (Click Here 'You see, even end, we need you though I have never his clash with
it only supported GPRS. Name one developer who's going to spend lots of his own, personal cash on a phone that maxes out at ~38kbit/sec for data.
Errm, I might.
I mean, of course I want UMTS, but at the moment there are no open platforms that support it - the Neo1973 is GPRS and GSM only and I'm seriously considering getting one. To be blunt, I'm sick of crappy closed devices that aren't developer friendly (and in the case of my Symbian UIQ phone and VxWorks phone, totally unstable even when you're using them for what they were _designed_ to do).
To me, having a decent speed connection is secondary to actually being able to do useful stuff on the phone, which the current closed platforms do not let me do.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
We were considering their Qt platform for cross platform development. It had everything we needed, it is well thought out and well implemented. However it is also buggy.
Some of the team expressed concerns, so we arranged a conference call with them.
Every answer was one step departed from what we expected/wanted. We hoped for, "yeh we've fixed that one", "that one will be fixed on Monday", "well send you a new version next week". These were minor easy to fix things, some of them had been listed on their bug database for 8 months already.
Instead we got, 'this is how we prioritize bugs', 'we've assigned that one a medium priority', 'the programmer accepts it's a bug' (so the programmer drives the spec not the business???), 'we'll give you a discount for hiring our consultants for 3 days to fix the bugs' (if the bugs can be fixed in a few days why didn't they fix them in the gap between us reporting them and the conference call FFS, if it can't you're just trying to sell us consultants which we don't need).
Our assumption was that there would be a whole string of bugs we would hit, and what we expected from them was that these very trivial bugs we'd hit during evaluation would be fixed in a few days. But what we got was sales patter and evasion. I withdrew my support for Qt and it was abandoned.
They need to get their act together.
I think you don't need to say *NIX anymore. OS X Leopard 10.5 is certified UNIX, and as the iPhone is based on OSX, isn't the iPhone the first UNIX phone?
even if we have to fight Steve Jobs tooth and nail for it.I thought Apple is going to open up the platform for developers.
The Neo runs X11 on a 640x480 screen and allows multiple toolkits to run on the same screen. If TrollTech wants to run in that environment, that's good.
On the other hand, if they are going to port Qt/Embedded and try to take over the phone, like they have done on other phones, they should forget it; those attempts at monopolizing the platform are unwelcome.
Overall, I'm kind of doubtful that TrollTech has much to contribute anyway. Devices based on Qt/Embedded have had lackluster commercial success, and the platform has serious usability problems in my opinion. Maybe the company should stick to writing toolkits and leave the end user experience to people who have more experience with that.
Trolltech is exploitive of Linux. They're providing QT to the KDE community so as to promote the sales of their development platform. While many people don't see this as a problem, I personally do.
The "KDE Myths" page, should be more upfront and less marketing speak, the truth is that many people simply don't care about restrictions to closed software development. The original Qt licenses were absurd, today's is at least as legal as the GPL. Unlike Redhat, Sun, Netscape, or other FOSS-positive companies, they're not selling support and giving back to the community. They're using the GPL to create a problem which the LGPL was designed to solve, but TT charges a per-developer license fee to circumvent.
http://kdemyths.urbanlizard.com/myth/65/
"... The LGPL is a solution to a problem that Qt doesn't have. The whole point of the LGPL is to make the development of proprietary programs possible: but Qt already allows everyone to develop proprietary programs, by providing an alternative commercial license [for a fee] to those willing to do so. ..."
Given that projects like OO and Mozilla depend on dual-licenses, is it conceivable that OO might ever actually use the native KDE toolkit?
Why does no one understand that the Greenphone was purely a developer platform?
I do understand that, I just don't think it really matters. If the developer version cost $700, how much was the consumer version of whatever this thing would become going to cost? Does the developer version have a whole lot more hardware that the consumer version doesn't? Or did they just price the developer version really high to try to re-coup costs? I didn't see any target prices for the consumer level version, so I'm only left to wonder. I sure as hell wouldn't want to develop software for a phone that costs somewhere around $600-$700. It's just not mass-market enough. If they raised the price to try to re-coup costs, it seems like they really don't have enough cash to market this thing to large amounts of people.
The thing is that the price reflects a lot about what you can't see, or what you aren't told.
AccountKiller
If the developer version cost $700, how much was the consumer version of whatever this thing would become going to cost?
There were never any plans for a consumer version. As a developer, you're not buying the Greenphone to develop for some future iGreenPhone, you're buying it to develop for either your own device (before the hardware is ready) or for other open phones based on Qtopia.
Trolltech is exploitive of Linux. They're providing QT to the KDE community so as to promote the sales of their development platform. While many people don't see this as a problem, I personally do.
You're confusing mutualism with parasitism. Of course Trolltech benefits from having KDE use their toolkit. They get free testing and bug reports from hundred of OSS devs. KDE benefits as well, because they get an excellent C++ toolkit without having to waste time developing it themselves. Given the complexity of something like Qt, this is a massive advantage for KDE.
The rest of the Linux world benefits from being able to develop high quality GPL applications based on Qt, and taking advantage of the improvements to cross-desktop projects.
Given that projects like OO and Mozilla depend on dual-licenses, is it conceivable that OO might ever actually use the native KDE toolkit?
OO has their own toolkit, and will probably never migrate to either GTK or Qt. That said, OO on Linux has a KDE "wrapper" around it, which makes it fit into a KDE environment well. However, I'm not sure if the widgets are being rendered by Qt/KDE, or if they are just styled to look like them. I can't see any differences to regular Qt/KDE widgets though, so I think Qt is actually doing the rendering.
That makes a little more sense, though it still seems like a strange idea. I assumed "developer edition" meant it was for software developers, not hardware developers.
AccountKiller
ripping off potential site names, I DO grouse (privately, usually) that a topic I submit is instead posted by someone else. I am pretty sure I submitted it to slash, but someone else gets credit. I suppose Slash only wants stories by non-controversial or non-looney types.
My submission/post, at 12:36 on Thursday:
"
TrollTech's GreenPhone discontinued...
[ Edit | Delete | 0 Comments | #185749 ]
Thursday October 25, @12:36PM
User Journal
Nothing emotional or rhetorical in this story submission. But, I did not see this coming. However, according to the article:
"Despite the announcement of the discontinuation of its flagship mobile phone development platform, the company also announced that the mobile phone would be superceded by a number of new devices, including that of portable media devices and additional mobile phones, although the new models are to be distributed by third-parties."
More at:
http://linuxformat.co.uk/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=613&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
"
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Signs are not looking good for opportunities for the little guy to develop applications for the iPhone. This means open-source software goes out the window -- unless we continue to hack the thing.
+++ATH0
... but in any case having to do with the cell phone industry in the United States, the overwhelmingly safe bet is always the pessimistic one when it comes to consumer rights and putting power in the hands of the consumer.
The industrial design is bad, there is no leadership and it will probably never get better. I hate it, but it's true.
+++ATH0
The Greenphone program was not a failure, it was a success. It did what it set out to do. Trolltech never was going to release this to the consumer mass market. It was developers only.
-- "Perceptions create reality. By changing your perceptions you change your reality."
Best regards
Knut Yrvin
Community Manager Trolltech ASA
The phone came with an sdk. You could download the SDK for free, as well.
-- "Perceptions create reality. By changing your perceptions you change your reality."
when the phone came out, there were a lot of materials about this - a quick search reveals only comments right now, but searching more would turn up much more.
:)
from a comment :
http://lwn.net/Articles/248819/
"Too bad that quite a few components in the Greenphone SDK are proprietary. That makes it almost useless as a developer's toy."
if i remember correctly, they opensourced it when openmoko started or something - but the community desire to hack on it was seriously reduced by keeping sdk closed. imho
Rich