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First Phone Out of Microsoft-Nokia -- and It's an Android
An anonymous reader writes BBC reports that the first phone resulting from the Microsoft-Nokia merger has been announced: the Nokia X2. And foiling everybody's ability to guess what OS it would run on, the answer is Android. But this being Microsoft, do expect some embrace-and-extend — the user interface is similar to the Windows phone. And it is being offered as a way to hook users into its cloud-based services, several of which come pre-installed as apps. Is this the first Linux product being offered by Microsoft? Can we upgrade Microsoft's social rating from CCC to CCC+?
Use the best tool for the job.
Buying an android phone from Microsoft? Isn't that a little like buying a firearm from the Brady Campaign?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Is this something from Marxist dictionary, comrades?
But does it run Android? It would be interesting to run a custom mod on this.
>Is this the first Linux product being offered by Microsoft?
Not the first. a few years ago they sold Suse linux, iirc.
I never knew that they merged. Haven't seen any news articles about the merger. Thanks for posting.
I can remember just a couple of months ago, when Microsoft hosted a tournament for Killer Instinct on the Xbox One. There was a bit of an uproar from the competitors and from the various streaming websites covering the event because Microsoft banned non-Windows phones at the competition venue (and, of course, gave out Windows phones to all of the competitors so they could have product placement on the streaming sites). As far as I know, that ban was never lifted and the tournament went on that way.
The idea that MS would then turn around and release an Android phone after pushing their Windows phones that hard seems like a complete turnaround.
Let's see: Government's legitimate duties
* Protect against invasion from without
* Protect Natural Rights of Life, Liberty, and Property
How's our Government doing on those? Not so hot? Well, they're trying to do other things, let's see how they're doing on those- they must be doing them well if they're ignoring their legitimate duties, right?
* Reduce Poverty
* Care for the Elderly
* Educate Children
* Provide "needed infrastructure."
Oh, you mean they suck at all those, too!?
Hmm...
Using android doesn't improve your social rating. With a locked down phone, "Open Source" is no better than Microsoft's Shared Source.
Is this the first Linux product being offered by Microsoft?
Definitely not. This might have been so in the 1990s and early 2000s. But Microsoft is nowadays a major kernel contributor and has been offering Linux as a first-class operating systemn on the Azure cloud computing platform since at least 2010.
Instead of CCC+ how about rating them CCCP?
that Microsoft bought Xenix in the 80s, and rewrote all their code in C at that time for portability to any platform, any OS.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Is it because Windows is to slow on the low end hardware that they need to offer an Android phone?
The phone don't have access to Play store, so it can't be due to the many Android Apps they are doing it.
Have they never heard of the Nokia Lumia Windows Phone? That was the actual first one. Saying it was released pre-merger so it had nothing to do with Microsoft when it's a Windows phone is pretty stupid and inaccurate.
With all the evidence out there of bad things Microsoft repeatedly do to their own customers over the years, it boggles my mind how anyone still trusts anything Microsoft does now enough to even buy a Microsoft product.
I personally would never do so or even trust any Microsoft product with any personal data.
Their standard strategy is actually to create something that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike the best tool for the job.
I fully expect that Microsoft's contribution to the Android ecosystem will end up like Ebola's contribution to human society.
Hopefully the carnage will remain confined to few localities and not spread significantly.
Honestly, I use Windows phone for the interface. I simply HATE the android GUI and it's inconsistent, fractious nature.
Coming soon to Visual Sudio: Visual Dalvik!
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
You get more from Microsoft and it is free !!!
"the user interface is similar to the Windows phone. And it is being offered as a way to hook users into its cloud-based services"
Can we upgrade Microsoft's social rating from CCC to CCC+?
For the benefit of those, such as myself, who did not get the reference, CCC is a low bond credit rating.
Also, a couple of things to keep in mind here about the history of MS corporate strategy. First, MS has a record of adopting (e. g. Kerberos) or imposing (e.g. OpenXML) open standards for the purpose of corrupting or abusing those standards. A record of unscrupulous behavior breeds distrust and it would be reasonable to suspect that MS could have something similar on mind for the Android platform. Good summary of the Kerberos episode here:
Secondly, and more innocuously, someone at MS might have wised up and realized that profits from their Android patent licensing would be better than losses from another round of failed MS OS phone investment.
.....for patents in the kernel, and a bunch of other GPL'd stuff. They are now indisputably distributing as per the terms of the GPL, they may have been able to argue they didn't distribute by provisioning linux distributions in Azure. But not now. So it's either no patent suits from them, or a massive copyright suit against them. Happy days.
Microsoft sold a Linux Distro for years. The website still exists.
http://www.mslinux.org/
Don't Believe me, just look at the left column, even Linus Torvalds has a blurb endorsing it.
and their goal is to make money. Given the lack of popularity of Microsoft's mobile platform, it makes far more sense to ship Android devices with their products layered on top than it does to ship a fully Microsoft phone that will likely have limited uptake.
... but Microsoft had to use lots of FSF tools such as ... gcc. When they have their own compiler toolchains.
That must had to smell like defeat.
EGA is the name of the game in the Android. Embrace & Get Assimilated.
All your bases are now belong to us.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
It must be a very cold day in hell, but it is still 45 degrees where I live.
This phone isn't running true Android, it's a port of Android, but using Xenix as the base OS.
For those of you on Slashdot who are not old farts like myself, google "Xenix" to find out what it is. It's part of Microsoft's "Embrace and Extend" policy to use something they own to create a whole new version of an existing popular phone/tablet OS....
And if anyone believe what I'm saying, even for a second, you need to find a BBS for the less naive....
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
This device was developed by Nokia long before the buyout and is ready to go to market, the Nokia name still moves lots of product in the key market for this device: India. Get them hooked, in two years Windows phone OS will displace this temporary line (it's already started with the 8.1 hardware spec, which effectively permits any Android-capable hardware to run Windows Phone, on-screen buttons, no camera button etc...) Most consumers won't even know they're changing OS. Microsoft would be stupid to ditch this.
"Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs," I said. "we have a protractor"
Unfortunately for this very specific case, Linux (and most other GPL stuff) stuck with GPL 2. It's GPL 3 that strips a company of its patents.
The kernel devs thought GPL 3 went way too far in it's anti-patent attack, allowing any competitor to invalidate ANY patent the company owns just by contributing infringing code. If it were limited only to patents related to code that the company contributed, the kernel and other projects may have adopted v3.
I'm very glad they did stick with GPL 2, because it's risky for any large organization to contribute to a GPL 3 project, which means it may require approval from the chief legal counsel before some guy in some little office that's part of some minor department of an unimportant subsidiary can contribute a bug fix. That's because by the terms of GPL3, one employee at the company contributing a fix for one feature risks all the patents throughout the entire company, not just those related to the feature the helped fix.
I wouldn't have been able to comment on this, but they are looking at the Nokia-X line as being a major factor in emerging markets, with strong support for Android apps. Even now, I would consider them for my own use (my Nexus-1 is getting a bit long in the tooth).
AFAIK, Microsoft makes more money off patents they own on Android than they make from Windows Phone. Now they are just implementing on their Android business B-)
Linux is for people who don't mind RTFM.
Clearly, this was a phone that was developed and ready before the merger, probably already in production. Microsoft is deciding that rather than dump whatever inventory was produced, they'll sell it. Smart move. It would be more telling if they released another Android phone in six to nine months.
Wish I had mod points. You made my day :-)
GPL3 can take away your patents. It doesn't say anything about software patents specifically. Which makes sense, because as any software engineer or systems engineer knows, there's really no such thing as a software patent.
There are patents on mechanisms. Some of those mechanisms could be implemented via software. In fact, most them could be. Most of them could also be implemented with wood, steel, or plastic. Whether you make it from wood, from plastic, or from electrons, it's essentially the same machine, in many cases.
Then of course there are also bogus patents, which don't describe a mechanism at all.
I'm curious what language you're thinking of.
Certainly if you contribute anything which implements your patent to ANY public project, that could be construed as implied permission for people to use the whatever you contributed. That really has little to do with GPL, though.
GPLv3 affects patents that have nothing whatsoever to do with any contribution you make, if you mirror the project on Github or similar.
Who said it runs on Android? Official information available says it runs on "Nokia X software platform 2.0". Nobody is saying it runs Android. All the advert says is "it can run your favourite Android apps". Sounds as compatibility layer to me.
Nokia: http://www.nokia.com/global/products/phone/nokia-x2-dual-sim/specifications/
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_X2_%282014%29
That's an interesting reading of it, and I can see how one might figure that the wording IMPLIES they'd prefer that. I can also see that if you have a patent LICENSE, restrictions placed on you by the license do not excuse you from the GPL.
What it says is that if you CAN'T distribute under the GPL without violating the patent license, you shouldn't violate the patent license by distributing anyway. However, if you OWN the patent, that paragraph doesn't apply - I COULD grant a patent license, I just choose not to.
Of course the big difference is GPL2 just doesn't give you permission to violate a patent license - GPL3 effectively revokes your patents, even patents that have nothing to do with any code you contributed.