next smartphone thoughts

[Michael Vasiliev]

On 08/26/2011 02:10 PM, Erez D wrote:
> It is time to get a new smartphone. so i have to choose one.
[snip]
> and wanted a gnu/linux one.
> My options:
> 1. iphone - not gnu/linux nor open. actually this is the closest as
> can be in terms of free as speech.
What.
> 2. symbian - deprecated. should be open somtimes (i wouldn't get my
> hopes up for nokia promises)
No, I have one. As long as you shell out $$$ for apps, it works. That
is, for a while, until the certs expire. Development is not intuitive,
cumbersome, unsupported, undocumented and currently just plain out
impossible, as nokia dropped and privately archived all support sites
and the development platform does not work at anything but WinXP.
> 3. webos - gnu/linux but deprecated
Seems to be in "Gone" status, and changing hands, any attempt to run it
now is pure necrophilia.
> 4. maemo - gnu/linux but deprecated
Still going, albeit somewhat slow. An advantage is that you already have
the knowledge and experience. And some of the specs and drivers are
already there in the open.
> 5. meego (N9) - though about it, but once bitten from nokia - twice
> shy. nokia does not even say they expect to continue with meego
Not on the market yet.^W^W^W^W^WJust announced, ergo buggy. NO KEYBOARD.
Say you've bricked your phone or locked it down. How are you going to
bring it back without a keyboard? Personally, I don't like either wiping
off fingerprints or when a on-screen keyboard obscures the most of,
already scarce, available surface. So, it's an option, as long as the
company would like to open its chest of secrets. However, I would
strongly consider the silently announced "brother phone" N950 instead if
I were you.
> 6. android - live and kicking, actually the most popular. it is
> somehow open, and linux kernel. not gnu though.
As much as I like Google for being the "best among the worst", as a
security person, I cannot hope but comment that, sadly, it has a
long-running record of negligence or, rather, lack of foresight for the
privacy and security of both its customers and users. As a very closed
company, the policy of rewarding the researchers and silently closing
down vulnerabilities instead of releasing public advisories really does
no justice to its public image. Someone has to understand that a
situation where people are paid for their silence and every unchecked
privacy issue turns into a scandal is not the way to go. Especially for
the company that would like to see its services to be an integral part
of our lives. Better security practices have to be implemented both in
production and in development. That also applies to the mobile market,
even in the greater sense. As for the OS, AFAIK, the base system is
available freely. However, when being stripped of the closed-source
code, the device and OS lose most of their appeal. It does not attract
the same kind of developers that made a half-made and quickly abandoned
Nokia N900 so good, eventually.

--
MichaelV