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"Open" device
"Open" device
Posted Mar 23, 2007 22:32 UTC (Fri) by net_bh (guest, #28735)In reply to: "Open" device by mrfredsmoothie
Parent article: Playing with the N800
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
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"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.