Perpetual quest for GNU smartphone

[Nadav Har'El]

On Tue, May 26, 2009, Arie Skliarouk wrote about "Re: Perpetual quest for GNU smartphone":
> Yes, I want a free platform.
> I did not meant to say that lack of DRM is an disadvantage (actually I think
> the opposite). I just said that lack of DRM is one of the reason why
> professional developers do not develop for the FreeRunner.
> 
> The Android's combo of developer's and layman's versions of the phone looks
> like it is appeasing enough for professional developers to develop
> applications for the layman's version of the phone. The method is deficient
> as well, as the developer's model can not use Android Market for non-free
> applications.

I don't think that development for a platform has anything to do with its
DRM capabilities. Rather it has everything to do with the how popular this
platform is, or how popular the developers *expect* it to become in the
future. OpenMoku is not popular, and developers do not see it taking over
the world, so developers don't see much point in investing their time
learning it and developing applications for it. Android is not yet popular,
but being backed by Google with its almost-endless amounts of cash and hype,
developers *expect* it to become popular, so many consider it a good
investment to learn it and start developing for it.

Take a look at Palm. 10 years it was the most popular PDA platform, and
was continuously becoming even more so. So thousands of applications were
developed for it - many free and many not. Palm did not have any DRM of
the type Apple forced on us, but application developers managed. Heck,
an even more popular platform, called MS Windows (I'm sure you've heard
about it :-)), had no DRM and still commercial software was sold for
it all the time.

> > The Android may be Linux. But it is not GNU/Linux . The userspace is
> > completely different. Userspace GNU/Linux applications you know can work
> > on the Moko, but generally won't work on an Android.
> 
> Right.
> My hope on this is that the popularity of the platform and relative openness
> of the developer's version (see http://lwn.net/Articles/331908/) would make
> the phone to be both Linux and Android compatible.

Something doesn't need to be compatible with GNU/Linux in order to be good.
It is quite possible that a Unix-like environment (which is basically
what GNU is) isn't the best environment for a cellphone, and something
better could be developed.

> I would like to repeat my original questions, so they would not get lost in
> the details:
> 
> Do anybody knows more about andnav2 and Israel support?

:-)

Sorry, no, I don't know anything about that.

> > Also, do any of the Israeli phone carriers plan to import Android-based
> > phones?

I'm sure they will, once there are more Android phones from more well-known
(in Israel) makers. But I don't know of any concrete plans.


-- 
Nadav Har'El                        |      Thursday, May 28 2009, 5 Sivan 5769
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