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.

Comments

Cost is a killer

[DuckDodgers]

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.

Fairphone

[cerberusss]

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.

Re:Fairphone

[lkcl]

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.

take a deep breath... (and people with moderator rights: leave that "troll/flamebait -1" button alone please)... the problem with the fairphone has been that they've been massively ignorant of the consequences of software lock-in. yes, sure, great: they tackled the (hard) problem of "fair wages", and conflict minerals: these are things that any coop worth the "Fair Trade" salt would do, and it's good to see that they did it. ... BUT....

for the first fairphone they did only that: tackle the "Fair Trade" concepts. people loved it. including various extremely prominent software libre developers and advocates. at first. we then warned them, "hang on a minute, you're going for 'Fair' but you've completely ignored the "UnFair-ness" of the proprietary operating system that you've bought - lock stock and binary-only GPL-violating criminally-infringing barrel from frickin MEDIATEK of all frickin people, and are about to get yourself into a shit-load of trouble when it comes to people wanting to upgrade. or fix security flaws".

response: absolutely f***-all from the Fairtrade team. so we stopped bothering to communicate with them, knowing that they (and their customers) would just have to experience the train-wreck for themselves. ...and what happens? *EXACTLY* as they were warned, customers 18 months down the line who were delighted to have bought the Fairphone 1 were getting REALLY PISSED OFF, feeling that they'd been totally deceived, when their requests for firmware upgrades to fix MAJOR known security vulnerabilities went completely unanswered.

why did those requests go unanswered? well... because AS THEY HAD BEEN WARNED, the chinese factory was under NDA with Mediatek (in direct violation of the GPL) and had *only* been given an illegal copyright-violating *BINARY ONLY* version of android (containing linux kernel source code and so also a second GPL violation). there *was* no source code, and there certainly weren't going to be any updates, at any time.

(btw note that because it has not obtained - and cannot obtain - the source code for the Fairphone 1, Fairphone is still in criminal infringement of Copyright law and has lost its rights to sell any products that use the linux kernel....)

now let's fast-forward to the Fairphone 2, which is now sold on the basis of its modularity. it's fantastic that it can be repaired, just as you say, cerberusss, but can the *OPERATING SYSTEM* be quotes repaired quotes?

if there's a massive security flaw like the one that left 900 hundred MILLION qualcomm--based devices completely vulnerable last year happens again, can the people who paid well north of $EUR 500 get it fixed immediately, rather than be at the mercy and whim of a company that ITSELF has *ABSOLUTELY NO CONTROL* over the software it's providing with the device that it's selling?

of course they cannot.

this is what michael is trying to get across to people. *it doesn't matter* even if you bought a "Fair" phone, with "Fair" hardware, and "Fair" wages, and "Fair terms for the workers" or anything else that's "Fair" if, just like *any other* device which is *not* under the "Fairtrade" brand you *still* have to chuck the whole fricking device into landfill because it became totally useless, virus-ridden and was instrumental in emptying your bank account, is it? that's not exactly "Fair", is it, ehn? :)

Re:A rant from the community side.

[AntiSol]

This. A thousand times this. I was there.

I was really enthusiastic about an open phone, to the point that I organised a group buy for people in my area (we bulk-purchased a bunch of devices and paid for them before launch to bring down shipping costs and so that we'd be among the first to have the devices). I contributed, I was very active in the community and wrote a couple of useful tools for the device. I tried to use my freerunner as a phone for the best part of 2 years. In the end I gave up and reverted to a nokia. Openmoko seemed more intent on making the interface shiny than giving us a functional phone. I remember the "upgrade" from 2007.2 to 2008.1 particularly unkindly - I went from having a mostly usable phone with a somewhat clunky interface and a few fairly-serious bugs that I coped with in the hope they'd soon be fixed (the biggest ones being the broken suspend, making the battery life abysmal, and the echo heard by everyone I talked to) to having a pretty animated interface which was much less reliable while still having all the same old bugs (battery life was even worse because the animations were more expensive and suspend still didn't work).

I strongly agree with the sentiment of the article that it would have been better to make it reliable phone with rock-solid core functionality (phone, SMS, PIM) and then work on the interface. I said as much at the time.

There was also quite a strong element of fanboyism in the community. You couldn't criticise openmoko, because they had made an open source phone! I should be grateful! If I want suspend to work, I should fix it myself! It's not up to openmoko to actually make their product work! It's totally my fault if ~8 hours of battery life isn't enough for me, that's what I get for having the audacity to not be near a power outlet for such a long time! Despite the fact that before I bought the device I was told it was a consumer-grade device which would work as a phone (unlike the neo1973, which was marketed at developers). With the exception of a few notable people, this made rational discussion and any attempt to get openmoko to focus on the important things impossible. On the occasions where openmoko did engage with the community, they were met with an echo chamber where dissenting (i.e: rational) voices were drowned out by flames. Part of me felt vindicated when openmoko died because of this, but mostly I was just sad that I never got my open phone.

Openmoko released a bunch of increasingly pretty but less useful software rather than focusing on core functionality, which led to an explosion of distros, none of which got everything right (though some did have some good ideas). Qtopia came along and seemed like a good thing for a while, but the maintainer was totally arrogant and basically gave responses which were the equivalent of "you're holding it wrong" when we made suggestions for UI improvements (in particular the keyboard was pretty much unusable), assisted by the echo chamber. Then, shockingly, qtopia died. A while after this qtmoko came along thanks to the herculean efforts of one guy (whos name I should remember but can't) and gave us something pretty close to a usable phone (so I'm told). But by that point I and many others had given up on ever using it as a phone and our devices were sitting in drawers and we'd stopped contributing to the community. Also around the same time the (already not-blazingly fast) hardware was starting to get really dated, and then openmoko folded and we never got a successor (the gta04 and neo900 look great, but they're waaay too expensive for what they are. I'd pay a hefty premium for an open phone, but I'm not paying 3x as much for something with less capability, particularly after my openmoko experience).

A couple of years later I did some hacking and turned my freerunner into a dedicated GPS device running foxtrotgps with a bunch of map data stored on the SD card. It was really good at this and it still does this job today. I still take it with me as a backup when I go on trips (it seems to be more accurate wrt gps logging than my cyanogenmod phone). But this is just me using lemons to make lemonade. I wanted an open source phone, and Openmoko screwed that up over and over again.