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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.
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.
... 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?