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OpenMoko: Ten Years After (vanille.de)
Michael Lauer, member of the core team at OpenMoko, a project that sought to create a family of open source mobile phones -- which included the hardware specs and the Linux-based OS -- has shared the inside story of what the project wanted to do and why it failed. From his blog post: For the 10th anniversary since the legendary OpenMoko announcement at the "Open Source in Mobile" (7th of November 2006 in Amsterdam), I've been meaning to write an anthology or -- as Paul Fertser suggested on #openmoko-cdevel -- an obituary. I've been thinking about objectively describing the motivation, the momentum, how it all began and -- sadly -- ended. I did even plan to include interviews with Sean, Harald, Werner, and some of the other veterans. But as with oh so many projects of (too) wide scope this would probably never be completed. As November 2016 passed without any progress, I decided to do something different instead. Something way more limited in scope, but something I can actually finish. My subjective view of the project, my participation, and what I think is left behind: My story, as OpenMoko employee #2. On top of that you will see a bunch of previously unreleased photos (bear with me, I'm not a good photographer and the camera sucked as well). [....] Right now my main occupation is writing software for Apple's platforms -- and while it's nice to work on apps using a massive set of luxury frameworks and APIs, you're locked and sandboxed within the software layers Apple allows you. I'd love to be able to work on an open source Linux-based middleware again. However, the sad truth is that it looks like there is no business case anymore for a truly open platform based on custom-designed hardware, since people refuse to spend extra money for tweakability, freedom, and security. Despite us living in times where privacy is massively endangered.
However, the sad truth is that it looks like there is no business case anymore for a truly open platform based on custom-designed hardware, since people refuse to spend extra money for tweakability, freedom, and security. Despite us living in times where privacy is massively endangered.
The problem is that people with money to burn are less likely to focus on tweakability and freedom. At 15, 20, or 25 you have time but not money. At 30, 35, 40 if you're lucky you are likely to have money but not time. I know a number of guys that were Linux and free software supporters in school, but once they reached 80k or better income they just switched to buying the hottest proprietary option and went on about their day - typically a Macbook Pro and an iPhone, or Samsung Galaxy something, or Google Nexus or Pixel device.
I cared about OpenMoko in 2006, but I didn't have the money. Today I'm contemplating purchases of more devices with the Free Software Foundation "Respects Your Freedom" certification. But it's tough to get excited about spending more money for much slower hardware. And the Replicant.us completely free Android version? I love what they're trying to do, but because of the (*$&%()*%&$ proprietary firmware all the devices need it renders the devices they support all but useless.
However, the sad truth is that it looks like there is no business case anymore
I'm not so sure. Yesterday, a female coworker showed me her Fairphone, then proceeded to completely disassemble it, right in front of my eyes. I couldn't contain my enthousiasm, but it was very remarkable. She told me she bought the phone then a couple of months in, dropped it and broke the screen. She ordered a new screen and replaced it herself.
The Fairphone is an Android phone which you can disassemble with your fingernails and a small Phillips. So maybe it's not strictly and completely open source, but it's incredibly easy to repair and replace parts of it. The components are free of rare earth metals that were dug out by horrible exploitive companies. The only exploitation here is done on your data, by Google.
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With that name, they alienated the entire Spanish-speaking population of the planet - among them, admitting to having a device with OpenMoko would be a constant source of embarrassment and hilarity.
Back then internet connectivity was extremely spotty and expensive so you had to have some local processing.
Today you could simply build a mobile terminal, running something light mosh. Since LTE routers are available now you wouldn't even need to have an LTE baseband inside.
Considering how much investment and interest the wireless industry as a whole (handset manufacturers, wireless connectivity providers, etc) has in the game, I wouldn't at all be surprised if there was behind-the-scenes action to kill a project like this, and any others like it that might come along.
"However, the sad truth is that it looks like there is no business case anymore for a truly open platform based on custom-designed hardware" Many companies, including ours, are deploying Linux and Android to an s-ton of embedded and custom tablet like devices. I see Linux being adopted more and more in many forms in the B2B market. Product development for consumers is a tough cookie but when you design/develop turn key solutions and services for other businesses the truth is the business customer doesn't really care if you use FOSS or M$ or Crapple. They want a product that works as you're sales team has sold them, is intuitive, adds value to their business and is reliable. You'll find plenty of work for open source (and Linux especially) in the B2B space.
Openmoko dropped the ball in a big pile of manure, and then asked the community to lick it off.
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A quick outline of the process - from someone who has been active in openmoko on IRC forever, and bought the early version when I really could not afford it.
Openmoko is a perfect example of how not to do an 'open source - community involved project'.
Firstly, in march 2007 or so, we had a working phone with hardware available, with somewhat clunky but more-or-less usable basic phone and SMS. Battery life was not great - 12h or so.
Basic kernel stuff was unreliable - suspend diddn't work right, clock frequency changing diddn't work,
Fix the kernel bugs, get the software 50% faster in 6 months, which is not implausible, and you could have had a phone selling for christmas 2007, that had a somewhat clunky phone, SMS, application, bluetooth working, you can play nethack on it (with an external bluetooth keyboard), run any X app, with a several day standby time
So, the logical thing to do at this point is of course to after no consultation with the community drop a different - though similar - software stack on the community, with no notice other than the CEO saying 'Something really cool is coming up!!' at a conference some weeks before.
This software gets sort-of polished over the next yearish, with still the underlying kernel problems unfixed, and during this period new 'better' hardware is being worked on.
The new slightly evolved hardware arrives, and at the same time the CEO pops up saying 'Something really cool is coming up!
And yes, another drastic software change with no notice - from X to Qt.
The kernel bugs are still not fixed, and worse, the new better hardware that was supposed to fix everything turns out to have a graphics accellerator that is at best usually a wash, compared to the earlier version with a processor with half the speed.
Shortly after this - another UI change - this time back to X, and an explosion of 'community' distributions, some of which mostly work.
And some of the kernel bugs are even fixed - but by this time openmoko-corporate has run out of money, at least to do phones, as a new model is going to take a large slice of a million to make a stab at developing.
There is even a gta02-core project - which is a community phone project based on the schematics. But, this again would require a large slice of a million for a 'real' launch.
And the elephant in the room is the n900 now. It makes users think 'For $150 more, I can get the n900, which does x,y,z,...', which is impossible to counter from a small production run as you don't have the margins to slash the price.
Openmoko-corporate never really talked to the community, which was a fundamental failing.
They diddn't say 'We are not working on a,b,c,d,e' - so of course people assumed they were, as they must be - they'd have to be insane not to...
So kernel bugs that made the device unusable went unfixed, and it all kind of went very very wrong.
Openmoko-corporate is now out of the mobile market - they are not employing any engineers on designing new phones or fixing the software stack. They are continuing to sell the hardware - but not even in a fully bugfixed form.
(references to ongoing things in this have probably now died)
> Buy a Sony Xperia, then unlock (manufacturer supported),
> clone the manufacturer gits and off you go
Does Sony still permanently cripple the camera module (with no way to ever restore its original functionality, not even by reflashing to stock) if you unlock?
I was so excited about openmoko when I first heard about it. I followed it right up until the day they revealed what it'd look like: a fucking stretched-out hockey puck.
I don't care how good your hardware is. I don't care how pure your business ethics or design philosophy is. If you make a device that looks idiotic, it will fail.
Being a bit of a greybeard, I do remember the Openmoko project and blogged about it earlier this month. Launched at roughly the same time the iPhone first came to market, Openmoko took an utterly different approach. Today we might look at the Neo1973 and subsequent devices as being failed smartphone projects, but when looking back I realised that they were really fully-featured hackable computers. So, perhaps the Openmoko project in part foreshadowed devices such as the Raspberry Pi (launched 5 years later). The advantage that the Pi has over what Openmoko was trying to do is that it was simpler and cheaper. You weren't restricted by a crappy little resistive touchscreen with the Pi, just just plugged in a monitor, network cable, USB input devices and OS on an SD card and you were ready. The fundamental principles are pretty much the same.
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yeah, I got a neo 1973 buried away somewhere too. I couldn't get over that it looked like fischer price toy.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
The above has little or nothing to do with open hardware.
Almost none of the issues with OM were due to the hardware side, the problems were due to the poor communication of what software was not being worked on by the very small team at OM.