Implications of free software in embedded

There may be a strong momentum for open source in these kinds of devices, but as long as the momentum is driven only by the short term economic balance sheet it is fragile. Intel is a large supporter now because they can compete on a level playing field with the industry leader ARM, but if Intel would find itself on top of ARM in the future that situation may not be desirable at all. This risk has to be kept in mind.

The user empowerment which is the result of open source is what we truly desire. But when its use is driven by a different agenda it is not clear that the result is desirable to us at all. This is something that really should be present in all discussions surrounding MeeGo, Android and similar.

I have an Android phone which has some misfeatures I would like to correct, but there seems to be no possible way of pushing my patches upstream. Even if there was, there is no way for me to rebuild the software since it contains proprietary parts. And if I buy an infotainment system for my car built from MeeGo and want to add some missing feature, and all these hurdles are fixed and I can rebuild the software, what good does it do if I can't reflash the device?

There is a bigger picture here that musn't be forgotten just because big companies shows up to the party with shiny new hardware.