Some additions/comments [LWN.net]

Some additions/comments

Posted Sep 22, 2005 10:36 UTC (Thu) by laf0rge (subscriber, #6469)
Parent article: Two approaches to Open gadgets

Please see the OpenTom project for TomTom GO navigation systems. TomTom has been very helpful in releasing all kernel code under GPL (there even is 100% fre SD-Card support). They even released pinouts of the connectors, etc.

Maybe also of interest, my newest "locked down" linux based toy is a Motorola A780 cellphone (quad-band, with GPS). It runs a heavily modified 2.4.20 kernel with glibc(!) and qtEmbedded on top. There's already a port of two different gameboy emulators and a console program available from the folks at motofans.

The list is neverending, I'm running into tons of more-or-less open devices during my gpl-violations.org... I'm also intending to put a "www.gpl-devices.org" webpage online, but hampered by lack of time :(

to post comments

Some additions/comments

Posted Sep 22, 2005 13:10 UTC (Thu) by wookey (guest, #5501) [Link] (1 responses)

Indeed. Tom Tom have been remarkably enlightened as companies approached by GPLviolations.org go. They were smart enough to employ (some of) the open tom hackers to help with their kernel 2.6 port for example.

The big potential for devices like this is to help collect input data for open geospatial data projects like openstreetmap.org. If some of the world's TomToms have software which makes it easy to collect, annotate and upload track information then we can make fairly complete road-map datasets remarkably quickly.

This stuff will no doubt be discussed at the World Free Information Infrastructure Conference on 5th/6th October in London.

On the newer TomToms with flash drives in them you have enormous potential for making cool systems which play music and movies, and log tracks, as well as doingyour navigation. Build systems like Open Embedded and Embedded Debian should make it easier to knock together small-enough systems using standard components for relatively powerful devices like this. I'd encourage anyone with an interest in the potential to help out wherever they can.

Some additions/comments

Posted Sep 22, 2005 13:25 UTC (Thu) by wookey (guest, #5501) [Link]

That should have been 1st/2nd of October for the conference. Apologies for my brain-rot.