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Why Open Source Phones Still Fail
adeelarshad82 writes "Truly open-development, open-source phones like the Nokia N900 will never hit the mainstream in the US because wireless carriers in the country hate the unexpected, writes PCMag's Sascha Segan. The open-source philosophy is all about unexpected, disruptive ideas bubbling upwards, and that drives network planners nuts. So, you get unsatisfactory hybrids like Google Android, which uses some open-source components but locks third-party developers into a crippled Java sandbox. The bottom line is that while Linux the OS, the kernel, and the memory manager are attractive to phone manufacturers, Linux the philosophy — and users banding together ad hoc to create new things — is anathema to wireless carriers."
No carrier wants geeks. Geeks use up a lot of network resources, try to find ways around rules, and create problems for tech support.
Yes. But geeks also build new cool applications never before thought possible, that become next year's must-haves.
In a sense, the iPhone app ecosystem is proof to that, despite its less-than-open review process. Palm and the PC as well, if you want to go back in history.
How hard can it be for the base-station to monitor bandwidth and avoid taking the whole network down?
--
Meet co-founders for your startup
"The open-source philosophy is all about unexpected, disruptive ideas bubbling upwards, and that drives network planners nuts."
Open source phones are about being user configurable, extendable and customizable. Wireless carriers like to charge for features, by the feature, and they don't like forking over what you've already paid for. That's pretty hard to do when you don't control one end of the transaction, as others have found out.
No buzzwords or BS about "disruptive ideas bubbling upwards" required.
More like corporate executives don't like competition.
The N900 will never hit the mainstream in the US because the frequencies it uses for UTMS/HSDPA/etc are only supported by one major carrier in North America.
I knew a lot of people who wanted to purchase a N900 some of which weren't 'geeks' but just people who really enjoyed the Nokia brand name, and who thought the N900 looked like a wonderful alternative to the BB/iPhone. However like myself, being limited to EDGE while mobile was a deal breaker.
Palm webOS is also Linux kernel based. That is the proprietary environment based on a Linux kernel, not Android. Android components by Google are distributed under the BSD license, that is the reason there is so much variation between vendors. That was the price to pay to get HTC and the other hardware vendors to jump in the Android bandwagon.
I don't agree with the sentiments of the article. It is true that carriers would like to limit what people can do with the phones but that cat has effectivly been out of the bag for quite a while now. Carriers are content with charging large monthly fees for data plans.
Googles andriod uses java/sandboxing because it protects the phone from potentially "evil" applications.
In terms of radio/carrier network access all phones still use RIL (Radio Interface Layer) to communicate with the business end of the device which is *not* linux or open source so there is little to fear in terms of carrier radio interop.
because wireless carriers in the country hate the unexpected
So does any network admin worth his salt. This isn't a failing of wireless carriers, it's not even a negative. I want them to be like this, this attitude makes me a happy customer. Think about the alternatives; a completely open platform which would allow a wireless consumer to do ANYTHING on the network, possibly disrupting other customers. Namely, disrupting ME.
So no. Allow them to be cautious with their network, as long as they continue to provide decent service ( verizon, excellent network where I am ). I could stand lower costs, but that's not what this article is about.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Whether or not the N900 reaches iPhone numbers is irrelevant to the fact that it will stand in computer history along with the Kaypro II, PDP-11, SORD IS-11, Altair 8080;
I don't care if AT&T likes it or not.
If you actually get your hands on one, you will understand that it feels good to actually own something, and not pay to carry the wireless equivalent of a cable box.
If people in America were "customers" and actually were allowed to decided what they wanted, and not "consumers" to be culled by the wireless carriers, then the N900 would on it's merits be the best selling mobile computer of all times.
Does anyone really like the fact that all you can get from the big wireless carriers is what they want you to have, and not what you want?
Those that go out and buy an N900 will understand.
* Carthago Delenda Est *
The N900 is by no means limited to EDGE, it's got HSPA 10 Mbps down, 2 Mbps up.
If they had their way, we would be paying them large amounts of money for nothing whatsoever. It's up to us to show dissatisfaction by either political action demanding open access or refusing to buy smartphones until a completely open one comes to market.
No.
It's because they cost hundreds of dollars.
I want an open source phone, I really do, but I can't justify spending 500 on little more than a PDA + phone. I already had a PDA once, hardly used it, and phones that just work as phones are less than a hundred these days. Make an open source phone that's a reasonable price and I'll buy it.
They fail in the mainstream market because there's such a small market for them. The Nokia n900 is a geek's dream, but most people want a phone, not a handheld computer. Most as in 99.99% of the marketplace. And even fewer want a multi-hundred dollar handheld computer/phone. So I'm sure it sells well in the market it was designed for...that .001% of the population that wants a hackable, programmable micro computer that makes calls. So it succeeds where its market is. Saying it fails is like saying the Audi R8 supercar failed. Though, at least that made it into Iron Man.
You could say the iPhone is a failure as well: it only has 1% of the cell phone market. But I think most of the U.S. will disagree with that statement.
They'll get over it (eventually).
The summary almost hints that there do exist popular phone platforms which, while not open source, certainly allowed for quite open development and modification by users for a long time. Many Nokia phones for example.
But I've heard that US carriers didn't really want to offer them in unlocked state, and Nokia wouldn't castrate its products; so the carriers went with RAZR... (and look where Motorola is now)
So this really seems like your local problem. Since Nokia almost completed open sourcing of Symbian and more than 50% of smartphones run that OS, I'd even say that the article is quite irrelevant on the larger scale.
One that hath name thou can not otter
I suspect open development phones will become more mainstream as the smartphone and the laptop merge. As phone hardware improves, it's not so hard to imagine a phone with, say, a DisplayPort mini connection (or perhaps a pico projector), USB support, and bluetooth support will displace laptops as the mobile computers of choice. Perhaps instead of buying a laptop you instead buy a widescreen monitor and USB keyboard and mouse and plug those into your phone. Perhaps you just plug your phone into your HDTV and use a bluetooth keyboard and mouse.
For me, the Nokia N900 represents the beginning of this trend. It really is more of a mobile computer which happens to have a phone function. However, longer term, I don't think this necessarily means Linux will be the dominant mobile computer platform. If Intel's Atom CPUs improve their power usage to the point where it's reasonable to put them in devices of the N900's class, then you'd have to suspect that Windows will become the dominant operating system as it is for laptops today.
Right now most if not all major carriers offer some sort USB stick that connects to their networks, this opens up to Windows and (not sure of support) possibly Linux. This opens the door to the 'dreaded' bitTorrent protocol and of course malware and viruses running from laptops, netbooks, et al. So as form factors get smaller and smaller what is stopping me from making my own mobile device out of off the shelf components? VOIP and net access is really the fundamental building blocks for these devices and as this becomes more apparent more manufactures will be getting into the market.
;) ) . These providers should start taking their network and their advertised capabilities more seriously now, give it another 5 years and people will start demanding their advertised speeds rather than just shrugging and waiting while the download ticks.
Maybe one day Asus will come up with a smaller netbook and a baseband chip / usb slot? Maybe some one else will do the same? The components required to make such devices are getting more and more generalized, cheaper and easier for the end consumer to get their hands on (call China
These providers have it easy now selling people some imaginary 10-20mb/s network so they can email and twitter but it's going to catch up to them quick and make people look for alternatives. So open source phones will not fail but will be reincarnated when ARM really starts ramping up its low power alternatives and companies start pumping out their SoC designs.
I know it sounds like a "Year of the Linux!" type post but Linux is the most fluid solution right now and with the right hardware its small, quick, tested and easy to deploy and update so it is the right solution but it will be waiting in the wings for a bit longer.
A loop, by its nature, continues. If that didn't make sense, start reading this sentence again.
I probably should have known this, but I didn't realize that Google Android cripples the phone by requiring Java. I thought it was a truly open environment where you could write native applications like the iPhone.
Well, there goes any chance of Android getting the same level of applications as the iPhone. And no, I don't believe Java apps are ever going to be as fast and good as native apps. I thought I might be tempted to get an Android phone someday, but not as long as they don't have native apps.
(Queue the Javalytes telling me that "Java runtimes are getting really fast, and they'll be as fast as native code <i>real soon now...</i> In fact, even FASTER than native code, because the runtimes are so amazingly smart at optimization...)
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
The phone companies, as mentioned, don't want you to have freedom but also that most people don't actually want freedom either. They can't use computers well enough to handle it.
It's funny this article came out today - I was just wanted buy one today.
So I go to the nokia store: http://store.nokia.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/productdetail_10500_10101_-1_10000367?cid=dev-fw-lec-micro_maemo_01-con-na-maemo-us-na-n900_003, and they are "Temporarily out of stock".
They can't be selling all that badly then...
...the same carriers will let you plug a mobile internet stick into your laptop and run anything you want over their 3G network. No sim locking... No "per message" charges. The stench of hypocrisy is hard to miss.
The public message is that protectionist activities like SIM locking, sandboxing and removing features from phones is about "network security". The reality is that it is about MONEY. Carriers want a cut of everything you do on their network and this requires them to control the handset and the user experience. They will fight tooth and nail to ensure they maintain whatever control they can. BlackBerry, iPhone and Andriod are chipping away at the edges but it has been a long hard uphill struggle. In the end, the customers are the ones who lose.
Yeah, the N900 will never hit main stream. That's why they had to delay the release because Nokia was over whelmed by pre-orders, right? Because that's a clear sign no one is going to get it.
Don't let anyone fool you that it's about limited resources in a capitalistic availability. People get what they pay for, yet you have a phone network being throttled by network service technicians to limit how quick the technology agresses to perfection just so they can collect a more fine unit of currency in every change they make to the underlying Content delivery in their network.
They want to sell their software, but selling it too fast to people that payed more than others would make their technology look dire and unproven.
They want to sell their revision of software, but Open Source platforms have already skipped that delapidated development model by re-implementing what is already written.
They want to own all the rights to their software, but let's not forget that the network is not the same as the Administration that itself also bought rights to utilize that amount of network and conditionaly grant as a carrier for whomever subscribes to their accounting.
They want to control what hardware uses their accounting, regardless of the network capabilities just so they can guaruntee the use of their sold consoles will be obsolete and well-used that the next underlying technology of their network would obsolete the prior one in some extent of operation.
They want, want, want, and we don't need. A NEO OpenMoko FreeRunner PDA/Phone, a Motorola A1200 or Symbol MC7xxx/MC9xxx are perfect examples of equipment that have little tying them down to the network that these carriers hold ransom. Consider something more prevalent in theory as a Sony MYLO to a WIFI hub on a mountain, or even better a console that actually modulated a Chat room with a sleek shorthand communications protocol to a distant operator/moderator on a channel hosted on a mountain top. Does the network need to be proprietary than off-the-shelf components in the natural world of tools, or do the tools need to be proprietary to an open network?
I await the day that DARPA realizes that the people create their own redunant network of peers upon a natural layer that can't be shutdown by even the P-Resident of the Ournighted Straits of Mymerica over in the Tower of Washishington District of Criminals that like to round-up my account airtime units despite using less than 30 seconds in a call and there being a decimal point only utilized by text messages as it seems.
In english please.
It's not that this will be different it's that you're dealing with morons who still don't get that after 15+ years their little pet project has gone nowhere. Linux has failed in the consumer market because the same reasoning they use to cling to Linux is the same reason the consumer market rejects it. Consumers want predictable. Consumers don't want to have to be engineers to use a machine. Consumers don't want to have to keep up on geek trends.
There will never be a year of Linux on the desktop. Linux has lost in the consumer market. It's over. But if a bunch of losers want to keep on going at it I won't stand in their way. They can keep on losing.
Google Android, which uses some open-source components but locks third-party developers into a crippled Java sandbox.
not true anymore.
I build myself computers and install opensource software. I tell me relatives to buy macs. Mac is like bowling with bumpers. Sure it's a poor skill-less representation of the game, but at least the kids won't cry.
"Truly open-development, open-source phones like the Nokia N900..."
are you kidding me???
what is "Truly open-development, open-source" about a platform that has
* proprietary power management (bme)
* no docs for the gsm modem interface (and no source code for the apps using it)
* proprietary powervr graphics drivers
* proprietary osso-dsp-modules
read also:
https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1584
http://wiki.maemo.org/Why_the_closed_packages
i'm not so much pissed by proprietary applications as i can replace the rootfs by a free and open source one what pisses me off is the undocumented hardware used and lacking communication with upstream kernel development.
dont call this device "truly open"-blah... it is definitely NOT.
there are a few devices that strive to be as open as a linux phone should be:
openmoko tried and indeed even though the calypso is undocumented they provided a implementation of how to interface it and thanks to it one can use all of its hardware without binary blobs - NOT POSSIBLE ON THE N900!!!
then there is the FLOW by gizmoforyou which uses a gumstix overo as the base and added a telit modem for which you can download the FULL DOCS from their website - hey guys at nokia, this is the kind of modem you should have picked if you wanted your device to be called "truly open"!
the modem used in the n900 uses ISI for which no reference interpretation in oss exists.
is it only me or did the slashdot crowd forget what "truly open" means and is now all over a device that is open on the top but not if one wants to really start messing around with it?
One of the stipulations that Google managed to have placed in the FCC license for commercial 4G LTE spectrum is open device access, which is absent in current wireless spectrum licenses. They did this by getting approval for a clause that if a certain minimum bid for the spectrum was met, that that open device access rule would go into effect, then they bid that amount, and then proceeded to let Verizon outbid them, ensuring that clause would go into effect. Carriers may have been able to get away with this type of draconian control over their networks in the past, but it seems that's coming to an end with the shift to 4G LTE already underway. With this open device access regulation, actual user-accessible open source handsets may finally be able to see widespread use.
"I like systems, their application excepted", George Sand (French)
...then how do you explain MS-DOS and the first several generations of Windows.
All of this "but it's so hard" nonsense sounds nice if you just fell off the turnip
truck yesterday and have never actually used Linux. Otherwise it's simply absurd.
If what you say were really true, Apple would have put Microsoft out of business a very long time ago.
Now it might be accurate to say that people favor "predictable hard to use malware infested CRAP that they are used to" versus anything else. They would rather eat the dirt they know rather than try something new. THAT would be an accurate observation based on the actual facts.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
As a customer, why do you care that carriers don't like a certain phone model? Just buy the phone and buy a SIM card from your favorite carrier.
Pick one at www.nokia.com today
There are pretty much 3 reasons for that, one they're many times oversubscribed with their bandwidth. Just see what the iphone did to AT&T, mobile networks are not
really looking for the next killer app. Two their infrastructure is way not as reliable as people might think, I know of a bunch of NT4 machines that were handling text msgs
at a German network in 2006 and I'm sure there still there. Three and this is what I believe is the most important reason:
They maintain a consumption culture where they are in control not only over the network and the services reachable through it but also the device itself (pay 4 apps, ringtones etc.) while
locking out the competition and keeping their customers in the app store. Locked down devices, usage restrictions, "AUP" "acceptable" use policies, chicanery and arbitrary
prohibitions - your mobile phone experience today is a taste of the "Internet2" joys to be forced on you tomorrow (if you let them).
then how do you explain MS-DOS and the first several generations of Windows.
Read the post again asshat. It said CONSUMER MARKET. Are you too stupid to recognize what that means? Not to mention anything about easier systems being available today. When you need to use a technology you use it even if it's painful. When something easier comes out you migrate to it. If you need a fucking car analogy that your little brain can wrap around think stick versus auto.
All of this "but it's so hard" nonsense sounds nice if you just fell off the turnip truck yesterday and have never actually used Linux. Otherwise it's simply absurd.
I do use Linux but I'm not such an asshole as to dismiss the end user experience. Don't be a fucking fool and learn how to use HTML in such a way that your posts don't look like they're written by a 9 year old making GeoCities site for his favorite Transformer.
If what you say were really true, Apple would have put Microsoft out of business a very long time ago.
At those premiums? You must be joking. Again don't be a fucking moron. Most end users don't care much about 550 USD versus 600 USD but when you're asking for 1300 dollars for a model that is the same in the eyes of the end user? That's a big difference. Sorry that you couldn't reason this out on your own.
Now it might be accurate to say that people favor "predictable hard to use malware infested CRAP that they are used to" versus anything else. They would rather eat the dirt they know rather than try something new. THAT would be an accurate observation based on the actual facts.
Yeah. You've presented so many facts. You're just full of shit and you know it. Most of the shit said about Windows here is largely exaggerated. The average end user doesn't download \X/aR3z and most use a firewall today. The crap your spreading about malware is actually on it's way out even as we speak.
But it doesn't support the frequencies used by AT&T therefore you cant use the HSPA on the AT&T network.
"The bottom line is that while Linux the OS, the kernel, and the memory manager are attractive to users, Linux the philosophy -- and users banding together ad hoc to create new things -- is anathema to potential users."
But what exactly is stopping you from just buying whatever phone you want and chucking your simcard into it?
Its what we do in Australia... every phone in the past 10 years i've bought off of ebay.
You can tell how powerful someone is by the magnitude of the crime they can commit and be able to get away with.
Will make a huge amount of money for the very fact that it is a disruptive technology. Just like the iphone.
Many Americans are focused with something else before 9/11 like Clinton was busy with Lewinsky during his term and Bush was pondering on his businesses in Texas when he assumed office. Thus, they ignored the threat of the terrorists and it was the reason why terrorism struck America by surprise. http://www.scribd.com/doc/23658247/Ultimate-Acai-Max-Review-Does-Ultimate-Acai-Max-Trial-Work
The article doesn't say or allude to the Java sandbox being crippling. The Java Sandbox is a good, safe, standardized environment. And unlike the Apple apps written in Objective C and locked to the iPhone, when the next Android phone comes out on any other carrier, we'll be able to run our apps on those with no changes, thanks to the "crippled java sandbox".
~Hergio
I didn't even read the article, but this is the biggest piece of garbage ever. Open source phones are not "failing", Android is booming at the moment. And developers are certainly not "locked" into a Java sandbox, that's merely the method that is support by Google (by using Eclipse + Android plugin).
See http://developer.android.com/sdk/ndk/1.6_r1/index.html:
Android applications run in the Dalvik virtual machine. The NDK allows developers to implement parts of their applications using native-code languages such as C and C++. This can provide benefits to certain classes of applications, in the form of reuse of existing code and in some cases increased speed.
The author also seems to be under the impression that Android is created by a bunch of "banded together" users, when in reality it's actually Google using predeveloped open-source libraries, plus their own bits and piece, which they have themselves open sourced.
Sascha Segan should be fired.
The new Android phones may not be 100% open, but I think they are certainly a step in the right direction. I'm really surprised that Verizon allowed them on their network.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
If AT&Ts network can't handle the traffic from iPhones, why would I ever use an N900 on? Especially with T-Mobile rolling out HSPA in major markets?
Sounds like a problem with the wireless carriers to me.
Nathan's blog
I pay for 5Gigs per month, that's what i get. Flat rate. It's a business package.
I want them to offer a developer's package, where i get the full access to the bandwidth i pay for.
The wholesale prices are easy to find. They have to add a civilised percentage to pay for the maintenance and to provide a return on the money that was invested to build the necessary infrastructure. That's ok. I want to pay professional wages to the technical staff, as i happen to be one of them. So, wholesale cost, plus 10%. But no more than that.
There's always going to be a minimum number of people to sign up, to achieve the break-even point. Count me in.
That means that we can get a reasonable amount of bandwidth, at a price that is not a rip-off.
It means that the network owners could get a guaranteed income that will pay for the infrastructure upgrades that they need.
It also means that it becomes easy for people to create the local networks that can provide it.
The telecoms companies CANNOT charge more than that, as we will undercut them.
That's why they are really scared. They know that it's easy to rollout the same network coverage. It requires local nodes, but we can build beowolf clusters out of duct tape and string. The old hardware designs are out of patent, and the necessary computing power costs nothing if we use older equipment.
It's already compliant with the relevant industrial standards.
Use the open-source versions of the routing software and we're using what the professional company's are using.
They can't shut you done on technical grounds without putting themselves out of business.
They can't shut you out of network peering agreements, without being prosecuted on anti-trust grounds.
Add in cross-peering arrangements between the local networks in every city, and it doesn't matter where you travel to. No roaming charges.
Local server nodes for caching content, would mean that the inter-network bandwidth costs will go down.
Reduces the overall cost on your bill.
And as long as we manage our hardware as usefully as possible, we'll be able to play how we like on our phones, because we as end-users and we as developers will be responsible managing how we use that bandwidth we own.
The telecom's companies ARE worried about open-source phones.But they're really terrified of open-source infrastructure.
_________________
Sig. Measure Twice.
The reason why the Nokia will never sell in the US mainstream market is that they (Nokia) will only target the GSM market. They pulled out of the CDMA market three years ago. See here http://www.phonescoop.com/news/item.php?n=1787 what that article doesnt explain is that one of the reasons they pulled out was due to a patent squabble with Qualcomm. Most of the Nokia phones on sale in the US arent made by Nokia themselves anymore, they are sub-contracted. The main reason the iPhone isnt as big as it is now in the US is because they didn't go with a CDMA carrier (and probably because most of the rest of the world uses GSM as well). Imagine if the iPhone was with Verizon, it would be a much stronger phone (although Verizon stinks). Its the old format game again, CDMA is technically superior in every way to GSM, but isnt the world standard. Shame really.
"locks third-party developers into a crippled Java sandbox"
Hmm, no it doesn't. Android offers an NDK for native application development. Yes your application entry point is still Java, but using Java's Native Interface (JNI) the main part of the app can be native (C/C++) just fine. It already supports native OpenGL ES 1.1 which is great for 3D games development on G1 or Droid phones which have great 3D graphics hardware.
note: I develop native apps for Android for a living.
jedidiah is a known anti-ms troll. Don't bother...
PC Rag has hated Open Source software and Linux for a long long long time. No paid ad revenue anywhere in sight. The big paid ad buyer hates it, so they are (being a company) compelled to spew vitriol left and right. There is nothing wrong with the quality of OSS. There are no "Surprises". There is no "Scary". Apples iPhone has a ton of 3rd party developers (you name it, and theres an app for that too). Open Source means you don't have to jailbreak. You can jailbreak the others too, but here you don't have to feel bad about doing it. But hey, if you don't like an app, you can change it. The code is open, after all.
So, you get unsatisfactory hybrids like Google Android, which uses some open-source components but locks third-party developers into a crippled Java sandbox.
Java isn't my preferred language, but I'm glad that my Android phone uses it. With Java, Android actually manages to enforce permissions decently, it keeps applications from screwing up or crashing too badly, and it allows a component architecture for Android that beats pretty much anything else out there. It's also pretty easy for people to get started in and there are plenty of apps.
Native programming on Android would be nice, and I suspect it will be coming sooner or later, but for now, this is fine. We can look at the iPhon app store and look at what apps in there really do require native programming and hence aren't available for Android, and it's very few.
There are several open source phone operating systems now that allow native programming: Symbian, Maemo, OpenMoko, and they don't work as well. And, frankly, I'd like a bit more non-native programming on my desktop as well.
The release of the N900 had to be delayed one month due to overwhelming preordering. It is a tremendous success in spite of its very expensive price!
http://futureoftheinternet.org/
This is like saying "I can buy something like three Ford Transits for a Porsche".
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
They - companies - are mostly just afraid that what they've been producing as things that could only be produced by a company, these things can these days be created by a bunch of people, without any company control over them. It just doesn't fit into their bussinness model, and they don't want to change what they had up to now - they do what they want and they ask as much for it as they want.
It's very similar to what the music "industry" (what a crazy word that is in that context) is - or at least should be - going through, also unwilling to change how their cash cows work.
Someone has to realize that you can't close the consumers out of the development process. After a while the efforts to keep you closed down will result in painful death.
These industries that have such problems now just can't seem willing to differentiate themselves from real industries, like coal mining, steel producing, and so on, but they are different. In an age where technological knowledge spreads faster than any disease, keeping customers out of your products - even more so when these products are based on open source results, which come from the those same customers - will cause you more harm than good.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Isn't the n900 a open phone available now?
A mesh network is a good solution for non-profit or municipal wifi where the goal is providing underlying baseline internet connectivity as a basic human right and nodes are immobile and have continuous power. I've serious doubts about meshing the phones themselves however. You must figure out what the power consumption is like when nodes are continuously moving.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
And, so many anti-anything-but-M$hit trolls hide behind Anonymous COWARD. Go away until you're ready to come
out of the shadows.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
DOS did fail initially in the consumer market. It did well in the business market, but was much less popular than competing systems (Amiga, Atari, Apple) in the home. It wasn't until Windows 3 that this started to change.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Who cares if cellphone carriers want to maintain tight control of their network?
I'm very happy with the stability and predictability of the cellular network, and I have no interest in seeing it clotted up with some god-awful Bittorrent-ish thing that some kid invented so that he could avoid paying for ringtones or whatever. I would greatly prefer that my phone continues to be reliable than that the cellular networks are allowed to degenerate until they work as poorly as the internet.
Those of you with ATT service may not understand this distinction.
Applications are rapidly becoming the determining factor for platforms success. A truly open phone was never viable before the Andoird and n900.
iPhone : Apple attracts thousands of sleazy third party Mac developers. So almost all applications are commercial closed source, nobody will port them to other platforms, etc. Zero progress towards an open platform.
Android : Android offers an application store competitive with Apple's but using Java means applications can easily be ported to other platforms. Also more open source applications are available since Apple has sucked up so many of the sleaze bags. Big win!
n900 : No application store. Applications should be portable to other Qt based platforms. Well established distribution channel for open source applications. Major win!
All the open phones you named failed because they didn't offer enough applications. A truly open phone could now be built around Maemo native APIs and Android Java APIs, thus allowing users to port all the applications.
Or maybe people can even develop open version for critical closed packaged used by Nokia.
I'll be buying an n900 once they hit the second rev. of the OS, maybe even before.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
How about I just want a phone that works? Unfortunately, it has come to the point where I need to be an IT geek to maintain my phone. What's next? Will I need to apt-get to get the latest release of my phone's firmware? It's a phone, fer crissakes, not the comm to my starship's bridge.
Android does not lock you into a java sandbox, you still can reach the apis as well in C, it locks you into userspace however (not on the dev phone though), which should be expected anyway by a client os.
The java vm is just there to ease the portability on all processor platforms and it is more convenient for most parts of a program to use than raw c/c++.
The main issue is that android itself more or less runs in a vm to prevent you to reach the lowest parts of the phone, which indeed could damage the carriers network if programmed incorrectly.
... so you're one of the guys screwing up communications on the amateur bands, just for your fun. Thanks. Thanks a lot. And thanks for caring about someone other than yourself. Would you corrupt others' Internet communications as readily?
(n.b.: This type of illegal CB operation is especially bad because the illegal "channels" used are in the portion of the amateur 10m band used for international narrowband, weak-signal work -- usually in Morse code, and often at the threshold of audibility in a 250 Hz bandwidth. Since the transmission modes were different, the illegal operators often can not hear the communications they are disrupting; further, since the "freebanders" use wider, single sideband transmissions, a single illegal transmission can interfere with dozens of narrowband signals at once. Since this band is capable of worldwide communication at certain points in the sunspot cycle, the interference can quite literally be global in nature.)
By the way, the world has changed. In the UK, an amateur radio licence is now free, valid for the lifetime of the user, and available online. If you're worried about the licence examination (but you're a geek, so technical matters are no problem for you -- right?) there are clubs that will hire the room, give you the study book, and teach you the exam material, all for £45. So if you want to talk to the world, why not just follow existing international standards and agreements, and get an amateur radio license?
I don't understand why everyone is rabbling on about 'carriers' like they have any actual say in the matter. sure a lot of people buy their phone that way but I'm going to assume that everyone in the target market for an open source phone knows that this is a rip-off.
I havn't bought a phone through a network since 2000. Since then all my phones have been unlocked, unbranded and uncrippled.
The OpenMoko phone is a fail because the community is trying to create iPhone effects while they are completely overlooking the base problems: no proper power management, unable to accept calls and calls failing, audio problems, no way to handle text messages, no proper contact handling. These are all basic phone things that are being completely ignored by people trying to reinvent the wheel using only square corners. Carriers have nothing to do with it and even the OpenMoko company does not want anything to do with it.
The N900 is a major step forward since it gives people root access and apt-get without jailbreaking and playing cat and mouse with the telcos. Unfortunately though, some dick decided to render it pretty much useless by shipping it with the worst touchscreen ever known to man.
It is not immoral to create the human species - with or without ceremony, Samuel Clemens.
The "crippled Java sandbox" is the best thing that hapenned to Android.
The last thing you want is people's mobile phones to get exploited by admin/root exploits like a lot of Windows PCs do.
The Java virtual machine is, by design, completely immune to buffer overrun/overflow and doesn't allow "0" pointer dereferencing (last serious Linux kernel root exploit was due to that). The Java virual machine renders most admin/root exploit impossible.
If a Java VM allows buffer overrun/overflow then it's not a compliant Java VM. Last buffer overrun I remember for Java was on Linux, in a C-written lib (zlib IIRC), which has now be replaced (in Java), by pure-Java code, 100% immune.
People don't realize how big the Java VM concept is.
Do the facts change if someone is anonymous or not? Let's face facts; Slashdot has an extreme anti-MS slant. Admitting that Linux has issues where Windows has gotten it right will get you modded down.
Maybe if CmdrDildo would do the right thing and get rid of the over and underrated mods there would be more openness around here as a lot of Linux shills would lose their mod points.
If slashdot had an extreme anti-MS slant, blatant ms shilling wouldn't be getting +5 mods, so go baw elsewhere.
Typical US-centric, generalisation, extrapolated to the corners of the galaxy..
The US has what the vast majority of mobile phone users consider utterly unacceptable, total telco lock in. A company like Nokia has 41% of the world's largest handheld market, China, where Nokia phones are a status symbol, not to mention South America and India! Really open phones haven't been tested in the market (the Moko doesn't count, it never left the developer version and was never intended for the mass market) - it's too early to ring the bells of doom. Western Europe alone has more people using the internet than there are people in the US, that's a lot of people that want the web in their pocket and this is where the N900 proves to be a perfect fit.
From where I sit, with my N900 (which incidentally is selling like hotcakes - Nokia is struggling with the demand), such speculation seems vacuous. The N900 is an absolutely incredible device with the best browsing experience bar none, flash support, beautiful screen, powerful preamp, great phone (Skype/SIP VoIP and regular calls) absolutely gorgeous UI and a physical keyboard you can actually type on at a real clip.
As proof, I typed this post on the thing.
Thanks Nokia for being this brave. I'm glad it's clearly not just us geeks that are loving the thing.
I can buy them without a cellular provider and use VoIP (Skype like over 20 Million others) + WiFi to talk where I spend over 80% of my life. Why on earth should you use cellular if WiFi is available. Even if you want cellular, here in the US every carrier, except Metro PCS, will nickel and dime you for every second, minute that you use. And I am not talking about the rounding up to the nearest minute that they do to all of us either.
An open source DD-WRT enabled hardware firewall/router (price depending on features from $15 - $100) at home and another one at work pretty much covers it. The DD-WRT software gives you secure tunnels, SSH, VPNs, IPTables and most importantly a way to see your actual bandwidth usage 24 X 7. If the cable company tries to rip you off marketing 16,000 Kbps down and 2,000 Kbps upstream; you can complain when they throttle you back to less than 400Kbps down and less than 40Kbps upstream.
ONLY purchase a DD-WRT supported router, do not waste your hard earned money.
If you are not using DD-WRT software on a residential router at home, you honestly do not know if you are being throttled back and/or restricted or not.
The carriers have Open Source phones on the shelves, all equipped with price tags and UPC codes. They aren't mainstream because not very many people are buying them. The phones lots of people buy are mainstream because lots of people buy them. An over-engineered, fetid, steaming, convoluted pile of logic wrapped around a predetermined conclusion doesn't change the facts. Reality is much simpler than that. Mainstream is what the stupid consumer gets out his wallet for.
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.
The iPhone has an open source kernel and open source Web browser engine, and has the best support for the outrageously open HTML5 API of any phone. It also has security features such as not running arbitrary native code, so that even people who are not computer scientists can run it safely. If you can't understand that both the openness and the locking down are features, that is your problem, not the problem of phone companies and the 90% of humanity that DOES NOT WANT to have to learn about bits and bytes in order to use a fucking phone, they have THEIR OWN JOBS to geek out on.
It's just as bad to say that everything has to be open as it is to say everything has to be closed, because your extremism blinds you, gives you myopia, and you go on to produce a piece of shite like Windows Mobile or OpenMoko and tell people that's better than an iPhone, which is an actual solution to phone problems, not an academic exercise for computer nerds. Have you learned nothing from the PC, where you have one totally closed OS and one totally open, and you have to dual boot between them to get anything done? Me, I'm running Photoshop and Apache side-by-side for a decade. I have work to do.
I truly feel sorry for anyone who has evangelized open source over the past 20 years and doesn't see the iPhone as a success. You will never find peace. You will just grind yourself down on your bullshit philosophy until you die unhappy. The rest of humanity is not going to join you in your extremism.
While the author has correctly pointed out some of the issues, he failed to address the "average joe factor". I wrote my response to this analysis at my blog : http://glembay.blogspot.com/2009/12/opensource-phones-vs-operators.html . Comments are welcome.
"in the beginning"
Well, it was the beginning! There wasn't much choice, and if you really needed a computer you put up with the crap - there wasn't much choice. Apple was a little in chaos at the time, and Microsoft became the defacto standard.
Not so with the iPhone - here is an example of a customer focused product taking over based on it's merits, not momentum. Get used to it. Obscure tech-focused crap isn't going to make it in the mainstream market any more. That's why I don't see a real future for Android. Given to their devices manufacturers are going to go nuts trying to "differentiate" themselves and application compatibility is going to be a nightmare. Not consumer friendly at all. Apple will continue to mop up and Android will be a geek toy, much like Linux. That's why I do expect Google to come out with their own phone - controlling the experience is the only way they are going to have any meaningful success - users have a real alternative in the iPhone to a miss-mash of confusion that Android will devolve into.
In english please.
That was English. You should learn it, like the rest of the civilized modern world.
android phone