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Maemo Summit 2009: Fremantle, Harmattan, and N900Maemo Summit 2009: Fremantle, Harmattan, and N900Posted Oct 14, 2009 17:46 UTC (Wed) by cry_regarder (subscriber, #50545)Parent article: Maemo Summit 2009: Fremantle, Harmattan, and N900
Jake Says: "which ships with as close to a standard Linux distribution as the marketplace has seen delivered on a usable mobile phone. "
I've been using my freerunner using SHR-unstable for a couple months now as a daily phone. Not perfect but definitely "usable." It may not be the most "standard" distribution, but it is certainly more open.
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Standard distribution Posted Oct 14, 2009 20:03 UTC (Wed) by tajyrink (subscriber, #2750) [Link]
Well, I run FreeRunner with Debian and it surely is a standard distribution. The only package not from Debian main repository is the kernel, since there are still a few Neo FreeRunner drivers not in Linus' tree.
Of course, the point was "shipping". OpenEmbedded (based) is not maybe a standard, though it is quite popular in various embedded devices including Palm Pre phone. It could also have been pointing a finger at the faults of the shipping software compared to eg. Stable Hybrid Release (SHR), but it is a working phone out of the box.
And finally, one could argue if maemo is a distribution or a glorified SDK. I think not all deb:s are installable from a public repository with source code where available, so it's not that trivial to build one's package selection from scratch? Please correct if I'm wrong, ie. is the delta between Maemo and Mer ("maemo reconstructed) really small or not. Mer seems like a real distribution.
But whatever the case, Nokia N900 is by far the best mass-market choice to recommend to others if one wants to somehow advance open source mobile stuff. Maybe in a year or two it will run on standard Debian as well without losing any features.
[ending with obligatory mention about Nokia's open^H^H^H^H"proprietary" Ogg family media formats support]
Ogg Support Posted Oct 16, 2009 9:12 UTC (Fri) by Jaffa (guest, #4327) [Link]
Want Ogg support on your N900, fully integrated into the Media Player? It's available:
Ogg Support Posted Oct 16, 2009 10:34 UTC (Fri) by tajyrink (subscriber, #2750) [Link]
As you know and has been discussed to death, the availability of installable, but not shipped software is irrelevant to the discussion of major manufacturers supporting open media formats instead of continuing to strenghten by-definition non-interoperable world in the area of video and sound.
It's not a big surprise that on a relatively open device you can install own software.
Ogg Support Posted Oct 16, 2009 10:58 UTC (Fri) by Jaffa (guest, #4327) [Link]
Big companies are complex entities with one division having one opinion and another another.
Nokia don't ship Ogg out-of-the-box, but you can get a tier-1 experience by installing a single package, so I really fail to see the point of people being puritanical about Ogg support.
Do you want Nokia to ship support out-of-the-box' Nokia to expose their lawyers' concerns; or Nokia to publicly endorse Ogg Vorbis et al (but still not ship it)?
Ogg Support Posted Oct 16, 2009 11:17 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]
A lot of organizations including Red Hat, Novell, Google and Firefox are including Ogg Theora and Vorbis support. Even Microsoft includes Ogg Vorbis in some of their products. It's really high time, Nokia started endorsing Ogg and including support out of the box to meet their customers demands. Not only did they not do that, they went ahead and derailed Ogg Theora support in HTML 5 by calling it proprietary. Totally ridiculous and unacceptable behaviour.
http://www.boingboing.net/2007/12/09/nokia-to-w3c-ogg-is....
Actual Ogg Support Posted Oct 19, 2009 18:59 UTC (Mon) by divide_by_zero (guest, #60957) [Link]
In the previous tablets there was ogg-support, but just to play given files. The metadata-crawler cannot read ogg tags, though, so there is no easy way to access your ogg files from the mediplayer. No sorting by album, artist, etc. (You can hack the DB though.)
Dissatisfied users asked for the opening of the code of the player and the crawler so we could really integrate ogg into the system, but it won´t happen for whatever reason. What I heard is that for Fremantle Nokia created a totally new and more open player and a metadata DB system, even based in a popular FLOSS program I am not familiar with. I hope ogg users won´t face the same problem in the N900, then...
As for being official or not, I'm not personally concerned. As I understand, the freedom fight stops when users are allowed to fix the system. We can't ask Nokia to be ogg enthusiasts and push it to the uninformed users.
One other concern that exists is whether the ogg codec has access to the same resources the other official ones have. If we can't make an ogg decoder use some specialized and closed DSP chip while the wma decoder can, that's reason to get angry. I'm not sure if that happens in the N900. I remember a discussion once where a Nokia person said that while that was true, the implementation of a non-official ogg decoder could still be made better than the official, closed and privileged alternatives... (Sorry for the excess of uncertain statements. :] )
Maemo Summit 2009: Fremantle, Harmattan, and N900 Posted Oct 14, 2009 20:16 UTC (Wed) by n8willis (editor, #43041) [Link]
Note: Jake didn't write that, I did.
I don't in any way discount your experience or rating of OpenMoko; I just base my assessment of the usability of the platform on the totality of the public reviews -- which, regrettably, are on the negative side. Like I said in the article, I have a ton of respect for what the project set out to do.
In my personal opinion, the real distinguishing characteristic of it was always the open specs for the components, it wasn't the shine of the software. But they did choose to pursue writing the OS and designing the hardware device from scratch, which might have been too much. Given the company's troubles, I don't think the future looks particularly bright for the project, but hey, maybe it will turn out okay after all. I follow it closely; we'll see where it heads. In the meantime, though, the evaluation of the masses is that it isn't ready for prime-time, non-hacker usage. Still, if you like it, that's great. It's good ot have options.
Nate
OpenMoko Posted Oct 15, 2009 5:08 UTC (Thu) by laf0rge (subscriber, #6469) [Link]
Just let me address that point that OpenMoko "chose" to develop the OS and the hadware from scratch:
The way the semiconductor and cellphone hardware industry works is so closed and proprietary that you are forced to develop your own hardware if you want to do anything that is even remotely open on the system level.
There is no documentation on the majority of the components used in modern smartphones. If at all, it is under NDA's that don't permit you to write open source software such as drivers.
Based on this closed-ness in the hardware industry, you do not have much choice but to design your own hardware, based on a subset probably 1-5% of the components that the semiconductor makers offer :(
Regarding the software: When OpenMoko started out, there was no existing Linux based stack that fulfilled even only some of the requirements like "try to not deviate too much from the linux desktop world", "proprietary software is not acceptable" and "support for traditional phone applications like voice call, sms".
Sure, Openmoko made many mistakes... but developing the hardware was a burden and not a choice, as was development of a lot of the software.
Regards,
OpenMoko Posted Oct 17, 2009 3:20 UTC (Sat) by daniels (subscriber, #16193) [Link]
Surely the OMAP having open specs has put a pretty big dent in the 'nothing that runs in any modern smartphone has open specs' argument? :)
OpenMoko Posted Oct 17, 2009 6:06 UTC (Sat) by laf0rge (subscriber, #6469) [Link]
About the Omap:
While the application processor is an important component, it is only _one_ of many components in a smartphone. You have to think about the specification of things like the power management IC, the audio codec, the camera sensors and any other peripherals.
Oh, and talking about the OMAP: It is one of those parts that use an Imagination PowerVR GPU, which is the equivalent of nVidia in the embedded space: You cannot imagine any company that is more closed. Even as a device manufacturer, even under NDA, you will never get any bit of source code of the driver...
Most importantly, even though the 2G/2.5G/3G/3.5G baseband runs a proprietary firmware (like your wifi and bluetooth), the external interface/protocol needs to be documented.
If you look at people trying to get a truly open source software stack to work on any modern smartphone, the modem interface is where you waste months of reverse engineering, typically with very little success.
The Palm Pre is one example, where an undocumented binary protocol is used. There's a whole team looking at the binary stream going back and forth, without big success so far.
OpenMoko Posted Oct 17, 2009 6:53 UTC (Sat) by daniels (subscriber, #16193) [Link]
The audio, camera, and power management parts shipped with most OMAP3xxx parts also have completely open specs. Combined with an open driver for the N900, basically all you're missing is the baseband code (which makes it no worse than the Moko in many respects), the SGX driver, the 'energy management' (read: battery charging logic) code, and the bootloader. While it's true that there is no open source SGX driver, there's no real alternative for mobile 3D, so slating device manufacturers for that seems a little unfair.
You'll note that CSD as shipped with the N900 is closed, but ofono is open, and Nokia are heavily involved with the project, aiming to replace CSD with an open alternative, so.
Assuming you don't want 3D, and are prepared to ignore the bootloader (given that it's really just a BIOS that can load a Linux kernel) as you would a BIOS on a PC, then all you're missing is the battery-charging stuff on the N900, at least when ofono arrives. That's not perfect, of course, but still seems pretty damn good to me.
OMAP, N900 and openness Posted Oct 17, 2009 7:46 UTC (Sat) by laf0rge (subscriber, #6469) [Link]
1) audio, camera, pmic:
I cannot comment on this specifically for the N900, as I don't have a N900 and have not seen even something as simple as a block diagram of the hardware or a list of the major parts that are in it. As soon as somebody provides that or high-res PCB photographs, I'm happy to verify if that is the case. From my past experience with all the phones that I've spent time reverse engineering, it has not been true!
2) modem baseband firmware / interface
as stated, I can live with the proprietary baseband modem software (just like I have to live with proprietary GPS and bluetooth firmware), as long as the interface is documented.
Yes, with PhoNet in the kernel there is some code. What I've heard from a number of people who have worked with nokia firmware based modems, they tell me that PhoNet in the kernel is incomplete.
Also, I have never seen any documentation on that protocol, neither the lower layers (PhoNet), nor the higher layers that are being implemented in ophono now.
3) battery charging logic
that sounds like a really strange bit to keep proprietary. I doubt there can be many trade secrets in there that need to be hidden. So it is completely unacceptable to have something as simple as that proprietary. However, if the hardware is reasonably well documented (i.e. which gpio is attached to which external piece of hardware, how does the battery charger / coulomb counter work, ...) then somebody can write a replacement.
So far, I yet have to see any of that for the N900.
I think there is a common misunderstanding of people who mainly work in application space about how many hardware details you really need to be able to actually write your own free software drivers without reverse engineering. No offence, this is not about you personally but about many of the statements I see in the community.
4) Lack of open source SGX driver
Unless the various companies using SGX cores don't _demand_ a driver solution that is in line with the regular linux graphics architecture and that is at least open source 'friendly', Imgtec will certainly not change.
All I'm seing is that Intel has been hit hard by the Poulsboro debacle, as well as everyone who builds products on that chipset. I know of other semiconductor makers who are struggling very hard with their customers requests vs. what Imgtec can provide.
I also know that the TI OMAP contains the Imgtec SGX core based on customer request... I presume that customer was Nokia in the first place.
5) serial console / jtag
Another thing that is key for actually doing efficient/reasonable system-level development on any hardware: serial console and jtag pinout. This information has never been officially released by Nokia,
On the general openness of the N900:
_If_ it is really true what you are writing, i.e. the documentation is all there and there are no other closed bits apart from bootloader, battery charging, SGX driver and baseband firmware: Yes, it is more open than most what we've seen before in that market. But given the hype that existed about every new device, including the previous Nokia nXXX products, I am extremely careful with my enthusiasm. So far, all of them have not really been very exciting from an openness point of view.
Battery charging "logic" Posted Oct 22, 2009 14:28 UTC (Thu) by forthy (guest, #1525) [Link] Having seen the data sheets of several battery charger chips for mobile phones, I can't see what's that fuzz about (the data sheets are available). These chips have an extremely simple interface: three logic pins, all open drain logic: enable, power present, charging. There's little possible magic behind driving these three pins. What's more interesting is a charge tracking circuit - and the code behind that. That code might have patented algorithms inside, so it's probably not easy to release it.
Battery charging "logic" Posted Oct 24, 2009 10:14 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
The people who sell those circuits also claim that they are protected for
health and safety reasons: if they released the code and someone changed it and a battery exploded...
... and that's why nobody ever uses Linux or free software in
(But perhaps that's not entirely 100% accurate.)
Battery charging "logic" Posted Oct 24, 2009 21:11 UTC (Sat) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] It turns out that the Microsoft EULA doesn't allow you to use Windows in life-or-death situations, such as nuclear plant or air traffic control. This tells us that Microsoft doesn't think their own code is good enough for these applications -- at least not to the point of putting their money on it. On the other hand, nobody ever successfully sued Microsoft over a bug in their software.
Openmoko inc. != Openmoko project Posted Oct 15, 2009 6:27 UTC (Thu) by tajyrink (subscriber, #2750) [Link]
I have to note even with the off-topicness of it that the project is not dependent on the company. With gta02-core we are seeing a completely new area being pursued, and in that sense the open hw was really the number one thing Openmoko Inc. managed to create. New companies can arrive to support gta02-core, but also the community itself is able to do further development of new, open phones, created with fully free software tools - which I think is pretty radical in the longer term perspective.
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