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Shuttleworth Answers FSF Call for Free Software Drivers on Edge
WebMink writes "In an interview at OSCON, Mark Shuttleworth of Canonical spoke about the vision behind the Ubuntu Edge phone as a concept device to test features the mobile industry is too conservative to try. Notably, he agreed with the Free Software Foundation's demands that the device should carry no proprietary software and have Free drivers (transcript): '... we'll ship this with Android and Ubuntu, no plans to put proprietary applications on it. We haven't finalized the silicon selection so we're looking at the next generation silicon from all major vendors. I would like to ship it with all Free drivers.'"
Although not a hard promise, it is a promising development.
When the article says "free", it means free as in "free speech", not in "free beer".
No, "free" in this context usually means copyrighted and protected under a license like the GPL (or something similar). The "free" that the FSF endorses is actually more restrictive than public domain, with the objective of forcing developers to share their improvements on the code.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
And as my grandpa used to say "Girls want ponies, people in hell want ice water, I want a million dollars...that don't mean any of us are gonna get it".
Unless they are gonna kickstarter the chips in the thing it'll be DAMN hard to make it FOSS, simply because the ones making the GPUs, wireless, etc, are about the most proprietary lot on the planet. Hell I don't even think you CAN make a FOSS GPU as everything from texture compression on up is patented up the ass, I know there was a project to make one using an FPGA but I never heard any more about it, probably ran into the legal minefield and ran aground.
So while it'd be nice with so few players in the top tier mobile chip business and with anything and everything patented and licensed from somebody the FSF can say "make it free" all they want, its gonna be damned hard if not impossible to make it truly FOSS and still get decent chips in the thing. Remember even the OLPC 1 couldn't get 100% free because they couldn't find a BIOS and wireless chipset at the time that wasn't proprietary and that was with X86, with ARM its even worse.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
The phone has global support but if you do NOT buy it now, you won't buy it later. The phone will ONLY be available if it is fully funded and you can't buy it afterwards.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.