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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."
"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.
There are many reasons to lock shit down.
Fear of teh hax0rs taking down a tower.
Fear of pirates sucking up your bandwidth, and getting all your apps for free.
Fear of zealots circumventing traditional pay schemes by getting voice, data, and other services off network (and thus free).
Fear of the russian mob using the phone hardware to spy on or disrupt other people's communications.
Fear of lawsuits when it gets out that you illegally used copyrighted shit when making the phone's os image.
Fear of people finding out that you rig the fucking battery display to show higher than it is, or that you rig the reception indicator to show full bars when it shouldn't...until you make a call.
Fear of Bob deciding to take his shiny new toy to another network.
While virtually ALL of the reasons center around the company being afraid of people exploiting the company's stupidity, they are still valid concerns - the companies are stupid.
However, TFA is completely incorrect. Companies don't fear the unknown - they know EXACTLY what we'd do with open phones.
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.
There is no control-freak network provider to blame there. Why doesn't open source take over then?
There is a scapegoat for every problem. Microsoft, vendor lock-ins, corporations, bad managers, bad employees, government, society, temporary insanity, depression, depression medication, education, teachers, family, finances...
Not to say we can't perhaps put our finger on real problems that prevent open source from "taking over," but just saying that one can reason and argue for a whole lot of perceived problems that may not actually be the reason.
The Iphone ecosystem is a good example. An example of a phone where I'll have to install anti-virus for my relatives and make sure they are up to date on patches, otherwise their phone will get owned and I'll have to waste a weekend fixing it.
Let's not go there.
Then do it.
Get the FCC approve your devices for use.
Get any sort of decent battery life out of a mesh network with no towers while still maintaining access to the PSTN and emergency services.
Sell the device at a profit.
It's so easy why didn't I think of it?
"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?
His email address is ...@ovi.com. Ovi is the name of Nokia's internet services brand, so it looks like this is just astroturfing.
You couldn't be more wrong. Astroturfing is when you hide your professional affiliation, pretending to be completely objective and disinterested. This person is doing exactly the opposite. That's commonly known as advocacy, and it's perfectly all right in my books, because we can weigh what they say on its merits.
General note: I'm getting really, really tired of people who think bias has anything to do with the merits of an argument. Bias is good. It breeds enthusiasm and makes it clear which side a person is arguing. Until we all become Spock, there will be no objectivity in the world, so let's quit pretending that objective sources exist.
That said, anyone who can't change his mind in the face of a better argument is just a fool.
Go ahead, prove me wrong. I'm willing to listen. 8^)
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
What I meant by the kernel was the kernel should have the basic I/O-file systems, networking, etc and that the drivers for device foo belong in the ABI. And as for "windows drivers causing BSODs"? Yeah, that was true in 1998, but working PC repair I have had to deal with some seriously shitty hardware and since XP came out finding a BSOD due to 3rd party drivers is EXTREMELY rare. 99 times out of 100 the device simply doesn't work. And in 99 out of 100 of those cases a simple uninstall/reinstall fixes it right up.
While I think your idea of a "retailLinux" is intriguing, and if I didn't suck ass at website design I have some ideas that could mitigate it somewhat, I think ultimately in the end Linux is doomed to stay just where it is at, and it is NOT because of some conspiracy. sadly, it all comes down to politics and the "SCoN!" (Source Code or Nothing!) brigade. They will NEVER allow a stable ABI, or an easy way to just slap drivers on a CD and ship it, because "Gasp!" you might actually get a few vendors that don't release their source code for RMS to rummage through.
To see how militant the SCoN! brigade is, just look at the Anti-TiVo clause in GPL V3. Here you have the defacto leader of the GNU movement rewriting sections to specifically target a SINGLE company he doesn't like, and lets be honest here, okay? If the TiVo was easily "hacked" to run unsigned source code, how long do you think it would be before the net was flooded with "Free TiVo!" code and/or easy to use ways to copy any and all content off of said TiVo? I would say about a week, and TiVo would go bye bye, but RMS don't care about TiVo or any other busines for that matter.
And THAT is why ultimately Linux is doomed to a niche at retail. It will cost serious money for advertising, fixing the problems I outlined in my previous post, making inroads with retail stores like Walmart, all that takes money. I'm sure there are plenty of companies that would be happy to meet with RMS and try to come to some sort of compromise, but to the SCoN! there is NO compromise, ever. To them GNU is NOT an OS, but a religion, a way of life if you will. They do NOT care if it ever becomes more than a niche, as long as their beliefs are upheld.
And to ultimately make serious inroads on the desktop you will HAVE TO make shopping for Linux as easy as shopping for Win7 and OSX, which means you HAVE TO be able to put drivers on CDs and penguins on the box. But because the SCoN! has so much power within Linux that will simply never happen, because then companies might be able to release binary drivers like nVidia does, but without having to blow serious mountains of cash like nVidia does on driver development. The SCoN! would rather things be hard and Linux be a niche than to compromise, now or ever. That is the problem with zealotry, it always gets more extreme, never less.
And I apologize for the length of this rant, but I have been hoping and trying different distros and waiting for Linux to finally get to where I can sell it without going bankrupt since WinME came out and stank up the joint (remember ME? Shudder) but every time the after sale support ends up costing me MORE than a Windows license, and in the end it is all because of paperweight roulette.
What Linux needs is guys like me, the mom & pop shops, to sell your OS and make getting support for it as easy as dropping a windows box off at Worst Buy. And we LIKE your OS, as none of us enjoy cleaning porn bugs off an infected Windows box. But until I can sell a Linux PC without having my gut tied in knots waiting on the customer to get pissed at me because they lost playing paperweight roulette it just ain't worth the pain. Sorry, no sale.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
... 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?