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Wikipedia In Your Pocket, $99
An anonymous reader notes the announcement by Sean Moss-Pultz (Openmoko, Inc.) of a new geek device: The $99 WikiReader. All of Wikipedia in your pocket with no Internet connection required. Works in bright sunlight. 3-button interface. You can update the information in the WikiReader either by mail (they ship a microSD card) or by downloading a 4+ GB file.
We don't all want to pay for data plans.
According to the rules of open source... all derivative works must also be open source.
This is hardware. Does that mean that the design, specifications and technology used are also open source?
That's an easy question! Answer: No.
First, the hardware is not derived from Wikipedia. That's just silly. Second, even if it were "derivative" in some sense of the word, hardware itself is not copyrightable, and thus not subject to the GPL in any meaningful sense.
I am a geek attorney, but not your geek attorney unless you've already retained me. This is not legal advice.
Three points to consider:
- It's openmoko based, so it's extremely hackable.
[citation needed]
It's produced by some of the Openmoko people but it's a very different software stack that shares little (if any) code with their phones. It doesn't run Linux.
Source code is available (seems to be at http://code.google.com/p/wikipediardware/) so there is some potential for hacking and community development, but so far I haven't thought of any interesting applications except for an e-book reader. It doesn't have any of the interesting peripherals that come with the Freerunner (WiFi, GPS, accelerometer, USB, etc).
I do appreciate the AAA batteries and the sunlight-readable screen. Those are the reason that I'm still using my Palm III to read science-fiction magazines.