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GPLv3 is incompatible with OS distribution?GPLv3 is incompatible with OS distribution?Posted Oct 4, 2013 10:28 UTC (Fri) by nix (subscriber, #2304)In reply to: GPLv3 is incompatible with OS distribution? by khim Parent article: 30 years of GNU
In mobile, even if you have the best phone ever made, it is utterly IRRELEVANT if the carriers decide not to support it.This is, of course, not true in most of Europe. It's a US thing, I think. The thought of not being able to choose my mobile provider and phone independently is baffling. Why on earth would anyone want to cut themselves off from choice like that? Oh yes, because that way they get a 'free' phone (and an increase in contract cost that means they pay much more in the next year or two than they would have done to get the phone). i.e., it's a phone mortgage. I'm not really sure that phones cost enough to be worth taking out a mortgage for them -- particularly not when a side-effect is to greatly restrict your choice of phone.
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GPLv3 is incompatible with OS distribution? Posted Oct 4, 2013 11:14 UTC (Fri) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
In the US, if you try to get phone service without the contract and 'free phone', you really don't save very much. I'm going through this process right now, and you really have to hunt around and _not_ go with the main carriers to save anything. A few years ago I purchased a tablet that could take a SIM card and when I went to get service, most of the phone stores I went to didn't understand what I was talking about. That's getting better now, but still only AT&T and T-Mobile can get you a SIM, The other two major carriers (Sprint and Verizon) require different models of the devices that only work with their networks.
And like it or not, the US is a huge block of customers for phone companies. the EU may or may not have more total phone users, but that market is far more fragmented in terms of the advertizing needed, the different language versions needed etc.
in the US, most phone manufacturers spend exactly zero money on advertizing, it's only in recent years that you would find any phone advertizing from Samsung or HTC (Motorola and Apple have been advertizing for a lot longer). Since the vast majority of users get their phone from their carrier, based strictly on what the carrier has on display in their store, there hasn't been much need.
One good thing about the 'smartphone wars' is that people are seeing that there are a bunch of different options, and so people are getting interested in getting a specific phone rather than just picking whatever is in stock.
as for developing fully open phones, if you were a phone manufacturer and knew that investing a large chunk of money into your own system would anger the carriers that control access to a very large number of customers, would you be eager to do so?
GPLv3 is incompatible with OS distribution? Posted Oct 5, 2013 14:56 UTC (Sat) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183) [Link]
Actually, in the EU there is a huge market for SIM only plans, I think largely *because* of the fragmentation. Given that your mobile phone plan really only cheap in the country you bought it, it's not uncommon to buy an extra SIM when you go on holiday.
There are even providers that specialise in this: you select a country, a time period and a number of MB/minutes and they'll mail you a SIM card which you pop in when you reach your destination and pop out again when you go home. They don't even really need to advertise either, people who need it will go looking for them. But it does make locked phones somewhat worthless for normal use.
Ofcourse, for europeans going to the US, they can buy one SIM for one large area, which is reasonably attractive. I imagine this market will slowly disappear when the cost of roaming becomes more reasonable, either by competition or government regulation.
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