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No More OpenMoko Phone
TuxMobil writes "Bad news for FreeRunner fans: development of the first Open Source smartphone will be discontinued. (English translation via Google)
OpenMoko executive director Sean Moss-Pulz said at OpenExpo in Bern (Switzerland)
that the number of staffers will be reduced to be able to stay in business. OpenMoko
had high intentions: the offspring from Taiwanese electronic manufacturer First International Computer (FIC)
wanted to produce an Open Source smartphone. Not only with Open Source software pre-installed, but with
free drivers and open specifications of the hardware components. This would give programmers as well
as users complete freedom. Up to now the manufacturer has produced two models, the first has sold 3,000 units and
the second one 10,000. Both models were targeted primarily to developers. From the beginning,
OpenMoko had to fight with different problems. The smartphones came onto the market after a huge delay. Some phones
came with construction defects. Also, changes in the team slowed down the development. Software development
for the current smartphone will be continued but with fewer resources, Moss-Pultz said. He still hopes the
community will support the FreeRunner."
That's the point of buying an opensource phone. To use it as our sandbox.
Having open source does not alone make a product awesome. However, one thing having open source does is make it so, even if the product fails, the knowledge put into making that product is not lost. And that's pretty awesome.
As a pissed off Freerunner owner I have this to say -
OM has been badly managed for some time now. Rather than concentrate on getting basic functionality going they wasted time and money doing things over and over and over again. They must have reinvented the wheel at least three times by now.
No disrespect to the developers, but OM the company was a failure. In what they did and in how they failed to communicate properly with their community, ultimately ensuring there wasn't much of one.
The only hope I have for getting a useful device out of the freerunner now is the (independant of OM) Android port.
The GP has a valid point. Sure, OpenMoko dying is sad. But to people writing open source software who *also want their software to be used by people*, there are important lessons here. Listen to users. Prioritize so that basic functionality (oh, I dunno, battery life) is working before getting carried away with GUIs, etc. Aim at a user community which is not just developers from day one if you want a product that non-developers can later use. Too many projects act as if being open-source is the most important thing that matters for success, and this just leads to wasted effort within the community.
If you RTPT (read the poor translation) they are laying off some employees and putting the ones that are left to work on a different electronic device (it didn't say what) that has been under development. They will continue to sell the freerunner and that they eventually want to return to mobile phone development. They hope that independent developers will continue to work on the phone in the meantime.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
"Ideas" are worthless. Everybody has good ideas. It is actually implementing the idea that is the hard part.
In other words, the money (and the devil) is in the details.
I've not really followed this project, but aren't the design documents public? If so, some other company could pick this up and run with it, no?
How is "downsizing" the equivallent of "no more"?
Een-gleesh?
Not even 101. Maybe 50.5. Maybe even 25.25. If worse comes to worst 12.625 (See Dick run. Run Dick run!)
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Only has the older, slower 2G technology, doesn't have 3G.
... and with AT&T poised to roll out 4G already and rumors of already crappy service using the OpenMoko on AT&T networks before that it seemed doomed from the start. Personally I would have bought one anyway if it wasn't for the forum posts I read suggesting that the phone boots Debian great and runs anything in the ARM port but had such abysmal audio quality you could barely actually use it for a phone. Basic functionality was clearly a neglected priority. :(
With the advent of Android on Linux, OpenMoko can safely retire. There will be a flood of Android hardware out soon in addition to the G1 and at least some of it will be hackable or open enough for developers to delve into the stack if they want. For example, you'll be able to improve the hardware drivers, add functionality left out by the original makers because they feared patent infringement, and take advantage of hardware acceleration that didn't make it into the shipping product. Perhaps the only sacrosanct portion kept off limits will be the radio stack itself, which if hacked could invalidate the CE mark, FCC, GCF, PTCRB, etc.
I bought a Qtek 9100 (aka HTC wizard) some years ago (~4~5). It came flashed with wm5.
Guess what? Qtek is killed, the official firmware updates went from a very reduced quantity to null.
So, right now - Zero support.
Fortunately there are groups of people constantly cooking their own ROMs with updated stuff.
www.xda-developers.com
Although, rom cookers have a hard time looking for a way to flash these phones that are usually locked down.
For those looking to have Linux on their phone, (I found http://linwizard.sourceforge.net/ for the HTC wizard and I'm part of the development team for a long time now) the task is even worse, there is absolutely no documentation about the hardware.
My point is that with opensource hardware, if the vendor dies, "supporting" the device by the community is much easier.
You realise of course that this was the real-life GNUphone.
...
The Free Software Foundation (NASDAQ: RMS) has announced the Free Software alternative to the evil, DRM-infested, locked-down, defective-by-design iPhone: the GNUPhone.
The key technical innovation of the GNUPhone is that it is completely operated from the command line. "What could be more intuitive than a bash prompt?" said seventeen-year-old Debian developer Hiram Nerdboy. "The ultimate one-dimensional desktop! Just type dial voice +1-555-1212 -ntwk verizon -prot cdma2000 -ssh-version 2 -a -l -q -9 -b -k -K 14 -x and away you go! Simple and obvious!"
The phone will also serve as a versatile personal media player. "I can play any .au file or H.120 video with a single shell command! The iPod could never measure up to this powerful ease of use." Video is rendered into ASCII art with aalib. "If blocky ASCII teletype softcore pinups were good enough for 1970s minicomputer operators, they're good enough for you. Respect your elders."
The KDE project will be bringing its next-generation KDE 4 desktop to the GNUPhone. "you can flip, twirl, dice, blend, fold, spindle and mutilate your terminal windows to your heart's content," said developer Aaron Seigo. "look at that cool effect! any complaint that basic functions don't actually work is ignorant of the intrinsic beauty of the plasma api and is just more fun spread by haters like stevie ray vaughan-nichols and novell corporation."
Actual successful voice calls are expected by 2011 to 2012. Regulatory approval is proving problematic in the corrupt, corporate-captured US environment. "The FCC said that if we dared switch on this, uh, 'piece of shit' in a built-up area in its present form, they'd break all our fingers with a fourteen-pound cluebat," said Nerdboy. "They're obviously shilling for Apple, Nokia and Microsoft."
The second version of the GNUPhone will run EMACS on the HURD kernel and be operated by writing eLisp macros on the fly. "It's the clearest, most elegant and natural operating environment anyone could conceive of," said Nerdboy. "Really, we're not out to destroy Apple; that will just be a completely unintentional side effect."
http://rocknerd.co.uk
The Buzz generated by OpenMoko was huge; several people at my work were just waiting for something that could be used as a phone before they purchased one. We waited three months, then six months, and then finally gave up expecting anything. That was a year and a half ago.
I got the Neo 1973 and used it in my autonomous boat project, as it had GPS, GPRS, could run Python and connect via USB to many types of devices. At this point while late there was still some promise.
One issue was the desire to please the techies. In order to be a real success it would always have needed to operate well as a phone. It never really achieved that. I would have preferred to see development limited to providing basic phone functionality first, then once that was stable extending it.
Instead it seemed that the Neo became a techie plaything, which was cool for me wanting a small device for my robotics, but not so good for a company trying to compete in the phone market where millions of units are sold. OpenMoko didn't deliver working software. The first rule of Open Source is to deliver something that works early.
Although there is a community around OpenMoko I suspect it will move to platforms that have a real future on mobile devices now. The Android platform may not be perfect yet, but it holds far more promise as a polished product that techies can extend, yet is still a viable mass market phone.
Personally I feel that Sean was too idealistic, and that OpenMoko needed someone stronger that could make some hard headed business decisions rather than making decisions that would see the total reworking of the platform when the first one wasn't even working.
I am very disappointed that such a great opportunity has failed because those in charge misunderstood that the tech people were his market. Certainly a healthy community is a good thing, but you can't create a polished product by trying to please every man and his dog.
Reposting from http://lists.openmoko.org/pipermail/community/2009-April/044915.html
Sean's speech at ESC about making a 3G device:
Since I worked on the presentation with Sean for the days he was here in
SF, let me give you my view and sean's view. That way we won't get into
some version of the telephone game.
Sean discussed three things at OpenExpo.
1. Our successes.
2. Our mistakes.
3. Our challenges
I won't go over 1& 2 but I'll cover #3 since rasters perception has
a bit of color added to it. Only a tiny bit and he's entitled
to that color commentary, I'll just add what Sean and I, as authors
of the presentation, had as our message.
Our biggest challenge was to make a choice about how to spend the
balance of 2009.
There were two paths:
A: Fulfill our promises on FreeRunner and launch GTA03
B: Fulfill our promises on FreeRunner and launch project B.
We will talk more about project B in the coming months, but these
salient facts should be able to guide any budding executives out there.
1. GTA03 was in constant flux as a design.
2. GTA03 schedule was consequently always slipping.
3. The resources required for GTA03 are 3X those required for Project B.
4. We don't have 3X.
So, we picked plan B.
Now comes the question, what about GTA03? how do we get there? And when?
and what is it?
Well my basic argument was and is this:
First we attend to the issues that still remain with the GTA02. That's
why the VP of marketing ( of all people) is working on the buzz fix
problem. Second we complete project B. When we've done that, then we
get to eat dessert. Essentially, I made the same argument I heard so
many times on this list: "How do expect us to buy a GTA03 when you've
yet to deliver on all the promise of FreeRunner?" And I took the
arguments I heard from disty seriously, "how do you expect us to buy FR,
when GTA03 is right around the corner?" And I accepted the arguments I
heard from Engineers I respect who questioned the viability of the GTA03
in the market place. All of those arguments said "put a bullet in its
brain pan!"
So, what about GTA03? As it was defined, it is dead. So how do we
get to a new GTA03? Two requirements: continue to improve GTA02; deliver
on project B. What is GTA03 and when do we get there? There are a number
of independent efforts out there that are pitching me ideas for GTA03.
I talked to sean a bit about this and I'd like to try to open up more
of the design process and the marketing process to the community.
Perhaps on a separate list. Some of these discussions have already started.
What can you do to help?
1. Move GTA02 code upstream.
2. Stay Involved.
3. Continue work on applications
4. Buy a FreeRunner.
5. Get involved in GTA03 discussions
No, I'm sorry, but now you can just fuck off too.
The "GPL is viral" meme was lame ten years ago, the fact that you still spout it now is basically proof of mental deficiency.
OM was developed by a company full of people that also get up and go to work every day.
It was managed badly. That has nothing to do with the license. Grow up.
This has not been such a good year for open hardware projects. First OLPC, and now OpenMoko. I would say that both projects may have been overly ambitious, and were certainly poorly managed. I wonder, what will be next? OpenPandora? Can anyone list any successful open hardware projects?
Wake up dude. It is easier to rewrite, than to read code.
I don't know much of OMoko. But from what I see from the mess they made, never actually getting the thing to work as a phone. I don't expect much of their code to be on a level of maturity that would grant the time investment to get acquainted to it.
My honest guess, as developer, is that the code produced by these guys that did not get merged into other active projects will just die.
There is nothing wrong with initially aiming for developers. In fact, I'd say if you are a startup company doing anything tech, targeting developers is a great way to get started. You want your product to generate buzz with blogging nerds like that Schobel guy (aka tech evangelists). It would be a huge mistake to try to cast your net to large and target "everybody". Gotta start somewhere, and nerds, even a specific type of nerd, is a safe bet.
Remember how many bloggers were hyping the Razr when it came out? Flickr targeted developers by offering an API. Google got its roots targeting nerds. Digg, same thing. Hell, Firefox was able to start by marketing to nerds like us and the buzz we generated pushed it into the mainstream. If you can't sell your warez to developers and nerds, you'll never sell it with the public at large.
The bit that kills you is if you don't realize that the developer crowd is a small part of market and you are only using them to gain enough street cred to expand into larger market segments. Sure, you can avoid "selling out", but if you want to be truly successful, you gotta cross that chasm and move into the meaty part of the bell curve.
That said, I don't know if OpenMoko failed because they didn't successfully cross the chasm, or because they weren't able to successfully sell to nerds at all. Or probably something completely different.
OpenMoko failed because it was a phone that couldn't make or receive phone calls reliably, and when you did connect to someone they were often inaudible because of a hardware flaw that created a loud buzzing noise. Also, its core technologies were years behind the cutting edge (barely-functioning 2G in a world where 3.5G is giving way to 4G). No mystery here. It failed because it was a terrible, terrible phone.
Open Source's inability to deliver any sort of consumer-level device that isn't an expensive, misfunctioning joke should be a source of considerable concern to anybody who cares about the future of FOSS.
Openmoko is now earily similair to a zombie company - keeps blowing sunshine while its developers quits or gets fired in droves, they stop building products, the only ones left are in marketing, and they linger on without doing much. The facts are:
1) The 10,000 phones are mostly of the 900mhz variety, which has a "buzz" issue that makes the phone unusable. You need to go to a "buzz fix" party to do a non-trivial hardware mod. The "A7" version that fixes these issues is in perpetual delay, with no release date in site.
2) The only two paid kernel developers have left this last month or have announced they are leaving, some key hardware guys have left in the last two months. Some key UI people have left over the last 6-8 months.
3) They've abandoned the next model, the GT03, and they have publicly stated no 3G without a guaranteed sales of 50,000 units.
I like the idea of Free software on mostly open hardware - only they can't for whatever reason get the hardware part right. I think the software is not the problem, its the hardware. The Freerunner has been described as a Porsche body with a lawnmower engine, and looking at openPandora, I scratch my head and wonder why its like that.
IMHO its like any project that is going down the tubes - far too few developers on a project changing scope too often.
Hardware's not easy - I damn near went insane from the politics of embedded linux projects myself - but I can't imagine working with a constantly changing hardware scope while everyone is leaving. I'd be pleasantly surprised if openmoko makes a comeback at this point - the first problem is I wonder how they could attract talent in the future, even if they could afford it.
See,
If it was me running that company, I'd be pimping it to these guys. Give them a phone you can mod the shit out of, you'll get sales.
Now, in order to do so, you'd have to realize those guys aren't developers. They know just enough programming to get into trouble. Therefore, "open source" isn't what they want. They just want an easy way to bling their phone or run some program their cell phone company won't let them. That is their pain, and something like OpenMoko could have cured it.
Granted, if you ever wanted to expand outside that niche market, you'd have to cure pain felt by a lot of people. Most people don't mod their phone. However, I'd bet a lot of people are dissatisfied with how restricted their service seems. You'd have to do something to lessen that pain.
This is a means to an end. You don't sell people on the fact it is "open", you sell them on the fact you can use any wallpaper you want. You sell them on the fact they can install games the mobile provider doesn't want them to.
I had to chuckle every time I read a FOSS zealot's dismissal of the iPhone as "bling," defending OpenMoko as a superior alternative.
As an ideal, yes, an open phone OS is superior. But for actually using a phone, for actually running mobile applications, for actually keeping a calendar and a directory of contacts and syncing it and calling people when you need to and actually talking and getting things done, there is no comparison. OM isn't even in the same league as the iPhone OS.
What it comes down to, of course, is design. Even if OM had ever actually released a stable, consumer-ready package, the Apple product would, quite simply, still have had the vast advantage of a team of skilled HCI researchers and designers behind it. The iPhone is a pleasure to use because of the great amount of work that went into defining its interaction vocabulary and user experience as well as the solid software engineering and exhaustive testing.
This is something that will never be replaced by developers making icons in GIMP. Nor will it be replaced by artists making icons in Photoshop. It's design, not graphics, not animation, that sets great products apart from mediocre ones.
Your mind is clear / The things that you fear / Will fade with how much you / Believe what you hear
Sean did not say development is stopped. Development of the software stack is continuing. What has stopped (for now!) is the development of the next phone, codename GTA03.
As an owner of one OpenMoko FreeRunner since July 2008, I do not want to let people think OM is not a working phone. (I am sorry for my english as I am french)
The FreeRunner has been my only phone for 10 months.
At the beginning there were lots of problems, with battery autonomy and lots of missing services (because software was bugged or simply inexistant). But lots of devs did lot of work...
Today it's not the big revolution, but still I enjoy my FR and find it usable :
I can phone, receive or send messages (SMS), use my gps (tangogps, or navit if I am in my car), connect to wifi spots (using wifimofi), surf on the web (ewww, midori, gnash or swfdec if you want flash), read ebooks, use bluetooth to make the FR be a universal remote control device (remoko project), play games (pinball, Doom on accelerometers, numptyphysic...)
The battery lives for ~8h without sleeping (screen on), ~3 days on normal usage (with screen off/sleep mode when not used directly, of course GSM still runs)... it's not tremendous, but acceptable if we compare with other smartphones.
On a more geek point of view, I can log myself through ssh -X (and run my GPS apps on my desktop computer), I can "share" my FR with my PC (using x2x, sshfs, ...), I can do cool things with accelerometers and xrandr, I can develop easily (same as on my desktop), I can even boot Debian from my 8go microSD card (giving access to the complete debian packages repository), I also have a mini USB port which could run in host mode, so I can plug usb flash drive, a printer, a keyboard/mouse... (even a 3G dongle, but I think battery will not support that during hours)
What are the problems :
- the buzzing noise : depending on GSM provider and current geo localization, you can suffer of lots of noise while phoning. I don't have any problem at work, but I have the noise in certain rooms of my house (25km from my work). This problem HAS BEEN HW-FIXED in revision GTA02v7. Therefore you can buy a FreeRunner now without this buzzing problem. Existing FR could be fixed too, community is organizing fixing parties (it requires good soldering skills indeed)
- slow graphics : HW chip was designed for QVGA but runs in VGA. It beautiful for browser, ebook readers or terminal, but not for video or animation (video should be downscaled to QVGA). Moreover data bus is shared with microSD, so IO access to sd card slows display.
- no 3G : 3G means +=200$ on price, but it would be great to have 3G, to have high-speed internet connection when there is no wifi spots.
FR is absolutely not ready for mass users (!developers), because you have to install and configure your distro (as for linux some years ago), then you must be aware that some updates could break things and you will have to downgrade sometimes to get back your FR to a functional state.
But release after release the FR becomes better.
"I won't be a rock'n'roll star. I will be a legend." Freddie Mercury