an open phone from nokia ?

[Erez D]

On Sat, Aug 29, 2009 at 2:24 PM, Hetz Ben Hamo <hetzbh at gmail.com> wrote:

> Umm, actually, pretty open..
> Read this:
> http://flors.wordpress.com/2009/08/27/software-freedom-lovers-here-comes-maemo-5/
>
> Also, within the last few days, they signed and sumbitted new drivers
> to be included in the standard kernel.
>
> The technology that they use is open and it's right there on your
> linux desktop: Xorg, gstreamer, pulse audio, bluez, telepathy, they
> use upstart instead of sysinit, matchbox window manager, X terminal,
> busybox, GLX.
>
> Will it be totally open? I don't think so because they have to support
> their DRM'd music/video which you buy, and their DRM is from ..
> Microsoft, but OTOH writing/porting an app to N900, is IMHO way easier
> then to Android/WebOS/iPhone.
>
> I'm excited about N900 because it's the closest thing in terms of
> technology to my CentOS and Fedora machines I have here at home.
>
> Watch this Flors guy's blog, he'll post some info next week specially
> for Developers.
>

i quote one of the replys on flor's page:

Nokia has an unfortunate track record of marketing Maemo as “open” or “free”
and later shipping devices (N770,800,810) with a variety of proprietary
(closed source, binary only) drivers (e.g. wifi on the N770) and other
components (dsme, bme, etc.) without which the devices won’t even have
essential functionality such as basic power management (in the sense of
charging the battery). The corresponding bug
https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1584 has been closed as FIXED without
an actual resolution. The wiki page
http://wiki.maemo.org/Why_the_closed_packages indicates that the situation
hasn’t changed significantly and won’t change in the foreseeable future for
strategic reasons (”differentiation”).

when i got my n95, and could download C software development kit from nokia,
i was thrilled, until i found there was no ping utility on the phone, or one
that i can download from the net (at that time). and nokia blocked me from
writing one (privileged packets), so i was left without a basic network
debugging tool to check why my wifi didn't work in certain situations ...
(and nokia's error messages sucked).

also, do you think i will be able to use openvpn on the n900 ?
what about iptables ?

having a root shell doesn't mean i can use a firewall if i can not build
iptables for the kernel.


>
> Thanks,
> Hetz
>
> 2009/8/29 Shachar Shemesh <shachar at shemesh.biz>:
> > Erez D wrote:
> >
> > nokia is realeasing the N900 smartphone. which is using maemo (linux) as
> > it's os.
> >
> > will this be a de-facto open phone, or could nokia keep it closed ?
> >
> > In all likelyhood, the system will be more or less open (i.e. - there
> will
> > be some closed drivers), but the actual phone software will be pretty
> close.
> >
> > Then again, a port of OpenMoko (or, for that matter, android) to that
> phone
> > is, likely, not far away.
> >
> > Shachar
> >
> > --
> > Shachar Shemesh
> > Lingnu Open Source Consulting Ltd.
> > http://www.lingnu.com
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Linux-il mailing list
> > Linux-il at cs.huji.ac.il
> > http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il
> >
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Skepticism is the lazy person's default position.
> my blog (hebrew): http://benhamo.org
>
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