Perpetual quest for GNU smartphone

[Shachar Shemesh]

Michael Shiloh wrote:
> Openmoko has departed the cellphone business and no longer makes the 
> FreeRunner, although you can buy them and there is still very large 
> community support.
Quoth the man who has worked for them and have been burned... :-(

Actually, that fact matters very little, if you think about it. If Nokia 
goes out of business one day after you bought one of their phones, does 
that matter to you? For that matter, if Nokia issue a new model of their 
phone, priced exactly the same as the previous one, one day after you 
bought your phone, does that matter to you (beyond the "damn" effect, of 
course). A cell phone is a consumer product. Once you own it, it's 
yours. If the Neo Freerunner is a good phone, then the fact that FIC is 
no longer contemplating a new version does not really matter to you.

Having said that, I have moved off the Freerunner myself (except as a 
portable battery powered Linux machine). It had something to do with the 
fact that my GSM receiver stopped working, but also with the fact that 
it suffers the classic "market pioneer" syndrom - it's not very good 
:-(. It is bulky, heavy, has a small screen (with too high a 
resolution), and doesn't have a high enough battery life. It's a 
wonderful dream, and I still hope someone realizes it. Furthermore, the 
FOSS model triumphs again, in that, despite FIC not being "the one" to 
produce a completely free phone, the next one to come along and try will 
have a better starting position, with much more mature software to work 
off of.

Shachar

-- 
Shachar Shemesh
Lingnu Open Source Consulting Ltd.
http://www.lingnu.com

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