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Sony Encourages Linux On Their Phones

Posted by Soulskill on from the mixed-signals dept.

neokushan writes "Sony has been in the news a lot lately — from the PSN downtime and the identity theft issue that came with it, to the numerous court cases launched to try and quell the PS3 hacking scene. It may come as a surprise to many, then, that Sony's mobile smartphone division has taken an almost polar-opposite approach — they're actively encouraging developers to create, modify and install customized Linux kernels into their latest lineup of phones, including the Xperia Play, the device that was once known as the 'PlayStation Phone.'"

1 of 212 comments (clear)

  1. Re:I tried that once... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    Which only went away because it was being used to hack a machine that already allowed - even encouraged - installation of Linux. It shows remarkable good will on the part of Sony that they haven't just said "never again" to a policy that must have cost them more than it's gained.

    There's a distorted view of the OtherOS debacle that lives in these forums that paints the hackers as purely good and Sony as pure evil*. Is it not fair to say that a lot of the hackers are just a bunch of jerks? What's the point in hacking a games console for homebrew when you can buy a more powerful OS-less PC for less? It just becomes an impotent act of disobedience against IP law - one which inconveniences almost everyone who owns a PS3 while doing, at best, nothing to advance the cause of the anti-IP movement.

    Meanwhile, Microsoft and Nintendo send cops after mod chippers and no-one ever mentions it. This isn't one company being unusually evil, this is just the world of corporate IP law at work. If you want to live outside it entirely, build your own computer from Arduinos or something. If you want to change it, build political support. If you just want to pretend it isn't there, you'll also have to pretend the cops aren't there when they break down your door.

    When a company encourages this type of thing, reward them. Even if it's Sony. If you don't reward good behaviour, you won't see it twice.

    *admittedly, people were primed for that by the purely evil rootkit debacle.