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"Open" device
"Open" device
Posted Mar 23, 2007 23:46 UTC (Fri) by mrfredsmoothie (subscriber, #3100)In reply to: "Open" device by net_bh
Parent article: Playing with the N800
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.
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"Open" device
Posted Mar 27, 2007 11:31 UTC (Tue) by net_bh (subscriber, #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.