"Open" device [LWN.net]

"Open" device

Posted Mar 22, 2007 20:01 UTC (Thu) by mrfredsmoothie (subscriber, #3100)
Parent article: Playing with the N800

Jon, I'm disappointed: this article doesn't live up to your usual standards of journalism or free software advocacy, IMO.

The truth is, this is a _somewhat_ open device, as there are a bunch of undocumented and/or proprietary hardware and software components without which the device doesn't function to its full capabilities (in areas as basic as power management) and which the wider developer community is not _easily_ empowered to fix (to be fair, some Nokia employees such as Igor Stoppa have helpfully tried to drop unofficial hints on the maemo-dev mailing lists to try to make that easier, but it's nothing compared to having full source and documentation).

Furthermore, one of your pet bugbears, abandoned hardware, has happened already on the N800's progenitor! Nokia has abandoned the Nokia 770 as far as official OS images goes (again, to be fair, they have released a compatibility version of the latest Internet Tablet OS for _developers_, primarily so those who don't have N800s can use their N770s to develop N800-compatible apps).

I wish you had used LWN's high profile (and my subscription $) to raise these issues in your article.

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"Open" device

Posted Mar 23, 2007 22:32 UTC (Fri) by net_bh (guest, #28735) [Link]

There we go about closed power management again. It has been clarified plenty of times that _ALL_ of the power management code is in the kernel and open sourced! The closed code only controls display backlight ON/OFF/dim states.

Although I won't claim that it is easy for developers to roll their own rootfs currently, it is fairly trivial to figure out what the closed components do and write replacements if somebody was that motivated. Just spreading misinformation is not going to get Nokia to open that code in a hurry. It will happen when it will happen, if it will happen.

/Amit

"Open" device

Posted Mar 23, 2007 23:46 UTC (Fri) by mrfredsmoothie (subscriber, #3100) [Link]

Right. It has been clarified in the form of various comments in diverse threads scattered across maemo-dev and maemo-users, _some_ of which contained such gems as "I cannot say more about it for legal reasons that hopefully will be removed in a near future, but if you are willing to take a friendly advice, all you need is right under your nose."

I said in my post that Igor and other Nokia employees have tried to be helpful to the extent that they are allowed.

However, I subscribe to _this_ site for news about and advocacy of Free Software, and I would like it if reviews about a device advertized by its manufacturer as a "Linux-based" device informed readers prior to shelling out $450 or so that they might not want to assume that means they can, say, modify all of the software or build a fully equivalent environment from the sources and information provided (without basically reverse engineering a bunch of things).

Pretty radical, I know.

"Open" device

Posted Mar 27, 2007 11:31 UTC (Tue) by net_bh (guest, #28735) [Link]

>I would like it if reviews about a device advertized by its manufacturer as >a "Linux-based" device informed readers prior to shelling out $450 or so >that they might not want to assume that means they can, say, modify all of >the software or build a fully equivalent environment from the sources and >information provided (without basically reverse engineering a bunch of >things).

This is based on your assumption that every device that runs Linux (the kernel) somehow has to have the whole stack (userspace+middleware+kernel) open sourced. I am not sure there are many devices and software stacks out in the market that allow that. Openmoko is probably the first such attempt.

I am not questioning your wanting the whole stack open-sourced. But implying that Nokia is misleading people into believing that is the case is a stretch of imagination.

"Open" device

Posted Mar 27, 2007 14:02 UTC (Tue) by mrfredsmoothie (subscriber, #3100) [Link]

You are correct, however, IMHO my assumption is not such a stretch, particularly given the fanfare that accompanied the announcement of the device initially.