That would make them no better than any other company violating the GPL.
Only if they redistributed them. But with Bluetooth it's almost always a firmware issue (which could be had from any existing Touchpad.) You're probably right about the graphics drivers (the disaster there we can thank Google for.)
Yes in many ways using GPLd code is like poisoning your project
Bullshit. If you wander into using GPL'd sources for something without knowing what its terms are, you are a fool.
Perhaps the term FOSS is bad, as all Free software is Open Source but not all Open Source software is Free.
That said, the AOSP is OSS (but not Free, as it can be closed) and at this point, the most current version of Android is totally closed. And it's still largely incompatible with the rest of the Linux world.
Google started the debate by taking the Linux kernel, forking it, and dropping an incompatible user space on it. Now the FOSS Linux user space has to compete with a non-FOSS user space, that happens to be backed by the marketing and advertising revenue of Google.
Google is, unfortunately, the outlier here. And it causes problems for the rest of the Linux world.
The people here who make that claim about Linux are occasional, but by no means representative of the site. Many major Apple focused forums do believe in the impenetrability of OS X as gospel, they are simply rare here.
No, it's schadenfreude. Patents are rapidly proving themselves to be destructive legal constructs, and each case like this simply reinforces that reality.
This has roughly the same extremely mediocre specs as most of the cheap Chinese tablets. I wonder if this company will comply with the GPL, in contrast to the vast majority of Chinese vendors who either hold the kernel sources ransom (after giving you a binary) or refuse to release them at all.
The question is what this will do to Sprint's fees, and what they plan to do if they fail to double their user base AND get an iPhone into all of their hands.
Yes. Unless you fork completely and disavow compatibility, then you are dependent on Google for the development.
Surely the effort necessary to create a new custom Linux distro for phones, is greater than the effort necessary to slightly modify an existing phone-optimized Linux distro.
Which is why bailing on MeeGo was dumb. Push the distro out into the open, let it exist independently and among multiple vendors and not only do you not have a dependency on a single vendor whose interests may diverge (or conflict) with yours, but the overall expense is lower.
Requires a bunch of kernel tweaking, driver-writing, and packaging work.
Kernel tweaking and driver writing is required for ANY hardware port. Only Google massively modifies the kernel for their OS. Packaging work, well, using existing tools and procedures works pretty well.
Retaining a dependency on Google while not playing along with them requires that you be willing to do all the work Google won't be, whether because you have diverged massively or because they gave up and walked away or (worse) closed the sources on you. Remember: Android is "open" and absolutely not Free.
One of which is ~3 years old, the other is deliberately hard to find and unavailable in major markets. Of course, this is not relevant to your argument.
Meego, Moblin, Android, et al. are all cut from the same cloth
MeeGo/Moblin, yes. Android, no.
Android is an entirely unique and incompatible user space. That it shares a kernel with the other two is moot.
We were running more, back in the day, on 200Mhz/32Mb RAM/32Mb ROM PDAs, after all...
No you weren't. You thought you were, but instead you were heavily constrained by the storage and hardware capabilities of those devices. Everything done then is possible now, but now we have more options in terms of tasks assumed, how they are presented, and what we can do with them (did any of those devices have hardware GPUs that you could actually use?)
I know, how stupid are people for wanting Linux on high end smartphone hardware. They should be happy to get ANYTHING, especially in this market that is the rightful territory of Microsoft and Apple.
Yup, and they didn't convict because they're all damned hypocrites, and they had to hound the man and burn millions of dollars only to try and get him for something that occurred during the investigation and not something revealed as a result of the investigation.
tl;dr: the Republican witch hunt was worthless, and so was the impeachment.
You honestly believe that the patents they leverage to extort fees out of companies were the result of intensive, high cost R&D? I'd be surprised if they weren't scratched out in short order by lawyers told to pour through concepts and turn anything they could into a patent, regardless of merit.
Android is not FOSS. Android is a proprietary project that Google selectively makes open source.
Only the kernel is FOSS in Android, and I'll be the first to suggest that Google basically mooches off the efforts of the kernel community. But they DO act according to the statement you highlighted for the kernel, even if unhelpfully.
Usually in Slashdot people hate companies because they only do something that pleasures their shareholders.
Speaking as a shareholder, I hate it when companies do something stupid shortsighted to please traders who are come-today-gone-tomorrow. To have a drop as severe as they did earlier this year, long term investors had to have been annoyed and dumped their stock.
The N900 has a 600MHz Cortex-A8 based processor and 256MB of RAM. The GPU in the processor on the Raspberry Pi is an ARM11 (ARMv6) core, which while decent (same as the early Android devices and first two iPhones) it's behind the N900.
What, and create yet another external dependency on the efforts of some other corporation? No, it's much more sane to contribute to existing open source development efforts that exist largely independently of the goals of some other company.
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Only if they redistributed them. But with Bluetooth it's almost always a firmware issue (which could be had from any existing Touchpad.) You're probably right about the graphics drivers (the disaster there we can thank Google for.)
Bullshit. If you wander into using GPL'd sources for something without knowing what its terms are, you are a fool.
Perhaps the term FOSS is bad, as all Free software is Open Source but not all Open Source software is Free.
That said, the AOSP is OSS (but not Free, as it can be closed) and at this point, the most current version of Android is totally closed. And it's still largely incompatible with the rest of the Linux world.
Google started the debate by taking the Linux kernel, forking it, and dropping an incompatible user space on it. Now the FOSS Linux user space has to compete with a non-FOSS user space, that happens to be backed by the marketing and advertising revenue of Google.
Google is, unfortunately, the outlier here. And it causes problems for the rest of the Linux world.
The people here who make that claim about Linux are occasional, but by no means representative of the site. Many major Apple focused forums do believe in the impenetrability of OS X as gospel, they are simply rare here.
No, it's schadenfreude. Patents are rapidly proving themselves to be destructive legal constructs, and each case like this simply reinforces that reality.
This has roughly the same extremely mediocre specs as most of the cheap Chinese tablets. I wonder if this company will comply with the GPL, in contrast to the vast majority of Chinese vendors who either hold the kernel sources ransom (after giving you a binary) or refuse to release them at all.
Check your math.
20,000,000,000 / 30,500,000 = $655 per device
The question is what this will do to Sprint's fees, and what they plan to do if they fail to double their user base AND get an iPhone into all of their hands.
If it shits itself, it won't have been caused by the labor laws.
Way to go, moron, for going off an random as fuck tangent.
Yes. Unless you fork completely and disavow compatibility, then you are dependent on Google for the development.
Which is why bailing on MeeGo was dumb. Push the distro out into the open, let it exist independently and among multiple vendors and not only do you not have a dependency on a single vendor whose interests may diverge (or conflict) with yours, but the overall expense is lower.
Kernel tweaking and driver writing is required for ANY hardware port. Only Google massively modifies the kernel for their OS. Packaging work, well, using existing tools and procedures works pretty well.
Retaining a dependency on Google while not playing along with them requires that you be willing to do all the work Google won't be, whether because you have diverged massively or because they gave up and walked away or (worse) closed the sources on you. Remember: Android is "open" and absolutely not Free.
It wasn't a low end phone when it came out...
The N950 is irrelevant as it suffers from a critical lack of availability.
Two, actually.
One of which is ~3 years old, the other is deliberately hard to find and unavailable in major markets. Of course, this is not relevant to your argument.
Using Android places a dependency on Google. I'm pretty sure that Nokia doesn't want that (many vendors don't, but it's the only game in town.)
MeeGo/Moblin, yes. Android, no.
Android is an entirely unique and incompatible user space. That it shares a kernel with the other two is moot.
No you weren't. You thought you were, but instead you were heavily constrained by the storage and hardware capabilities of those devices. Everything done then is possible now, but now we have more options in terms of tasks assumed, how they are presented, and what we can do with them (did any of those devices have hardware GPUs that you could actually use?)
I know, how stupid are people for wanting Linux on high end smartphone hardware. They should be happy to get ANYTHING, especially in this market that is the rightful territory of Microsoft and Apple.
It's Google's liver, actually.
What you have described is a feature phone, which these days tend to run Nucleus and not Linux.
Yup, and they didn't convict because they're all damned hypocrites, and they had to hound the man and burn millions of dollars only to try and get him for something that occurred during the investigation and not something revealed as a result of the investigation.
tl;dr: the Republican witch hunt was worthless, and so was the impeachment.
You honestly believe that the patents they leverage to extort fees out of companies were the result of intensive, high cost R&D? I'd be surprised if they weren't scratched out in short order by lawyers told to pour through concepts and turn anything they could into a patent, regardless of merit.
Android is not FOSS. Android is a proprietary project that Google selectively makes open source.
Only the kernel is FOSS in Android, and I'll be the first to suggest that Google basically mooches off the efforts of the kernel community. But they DO act according to the statement you highlighted for the kernel, even if unhelpfully.
Speaking as a shareholder, I hate it when companies do something stupid shortsighted to please traders who are come-today-gone-tomorrow. To have a drop as severe as they did earlier this year, long term investors had to have been annoyed and dumped their stock.
Really? Like who?
The N900 has a 600MHz Cortex-A8 based processor and 256MB of RAM. The GPU in the processor on the Raspberry Pi is an ARM11 (ARMv6) core, which while decent (same as the early Android devices and first two iPhones) it's behind the N900.
What, and create yet another external dependency on the efforts of some other corporation? No, it's much more sane to contribute to existing open source development efforts that exist largely independently of the goals of some other company.