Slashdot Mirror
Canadian Firms Get Behind OpenMoko/FreeRunner
mario writes "Now that the OpenMoko platform has stabilized enough to provide the OM2008 image (supporting the three major toolkits), things are starting to heat up. Linuxdevices is reporting on the start of a port of Devicescape's connect application. Koolu (another Canadian company) is also doing development for its W.E. phone (a branded FreeRunner). Which leads me to ask: Where are the American companies?"
OpenMoko is a very ambitious project, and, in my humble opinion, very important. But the quality of the result from the development of the software stack has been mediocre. I still have my hopes set that it will lift off, but it's still nowhere. Qtopia rocks, and it's free software, it's working, and it's cool, but the OpenMoko distributions aren't there yet, and I have the feeling that the effort is not focused. The old distro was cool, but it was abondoned. ASU is far from being usable (it is not even developer-friendly, not talking about user-friendly). FSO is still not mature. Now, this sets my hopes up. One commercial venture is interested in improving the phone. That for me means that one of the most important goals of the whole project has been achieved. Whatever the quality of the software stack is, we will have our free (as in speech) phone.
well, Apple/ATT have the iPhone. Sprint, T Mobile, google, and others are more interested in Android.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
After looking at the Koolu.com website, I'd almost rather they not be referred to as Canadian... it makes us look bad...
So some Canadian firms think that an open-source handset is going to be worthwhile. Great, good for them. The likelihood is that even if they do get anywhere with it, the majority of their clients are going to be in the US anyway. The average person in Canada doesn't know or care about open-source handsets, and isn't going to care enough to learn.
It's kind of like RIM - they were the first to really get mobile, business e-mail out into the world, and now they're famous. Everyone who doesn't have an iPhone has a blackberry these days, and most of RIM's clients are in the US. Where were the American companies? What does it matter?
In this era of free trade and globalization, there's hardly any distinction between American companies and Canadian companies. I work for a Canadian company which is owned by an American company which is run by the Canadian company. We're traded on an American stock exchange, we all work in Canada, and we just bought an American company made up almost entirely of Brits and Irish. So what does that make us?
'Canadian company' these days only refers to locality - where people show up for work at every morning. Beyond that, it doesn't make a difference.
American carriers are not only completely uninterested in a platform that gives the end-user complete control over their phone, but actively shunning it. Their business model is to sell slick-looking, crippled devices that push as much functionality through their networks as possible such that they can charge the end-user as much as they can for things that should be free. Verizon and the V710 debacle a few years ago come directly to mind (disabling OBEX, etc.).
I'll be shocked if we ever see a viable OpenMoko device in the next ten years.
+++ATH0
Don't you mean "Investing their money in Washington crafting laws to protect irrelevant business models".
Last time I checked the map Canada was a country on the American continent. In North America, right next to the USA, to be more precise... but what do I know.
American carriers are not only completely uninterested in a platform that gives the end-user complete control over their phone, but actively shunning it
Android answers the description you provide, and there seem to be a number of carriers embracing it.
They are driven to do so by the iPhone but that makes little difference in that things are moving that way, and carriers realize now that it will happen sooner rather than later.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If AT&T and T-Mobile could legally and technically ban use of OpenMoko phones on their network, they would do it.
GNU Hurd was announced years before Linux, and look how far that project got.
In computing what counts is shipping / release date.