On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 11:59 AM, Rui Miguel Silva Seabra <r...@1407.org> wrote: > On Tue, May 19, 2009 at 07:23:38AM -0700, Gothnet wrote: >> What's proprietary about android? > > The DRM locking you out of applying changes to phones. The excuse of "oh, its > the > phone maker/operator that does it" is a mere smoke screen. > > And no, an unbricked android phone does not count as Free Software since > you're > possibly breaking the law (in the US thanks to the DMCA, and in EU thanks to > the > EUCD).
Are you talking about Android, or are you talking about phones that run it? Obviously, most phones that run Android are proprietary. The Freerunner is not. That's got nothing to do with whether the Android OS is free software. >> Android is under the APL2, which has even less restriction than the GPL, > > Only on a superficial level can that be true. It has less restrictions than > the > GPL because the later tries to make sure everyone has all the essencial > freedoms. According to the FSF, Apache 2 is a free software license: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html#apache2. > APL2 (and similar licenses) mean that somewhere along the line YOU may not > have > a Free Software phone on your hands, just another proprietary piece of crap. It's true that someone can make a proprietary fork of the Android code. The code that's installed on my phone will continue to be free. >> it. Check out koolu for their android source git, though the mainline source >> is available directly from google. > > Yes, the OpenMoko is the first Free Software example of Android (and it's the > worst out there for making calls on the FreeRunner, according to the comments > I've seen). To the extent that the Freerunner is a "free phone" (proprietary bits like the GSM modem and wifi notwithstanding), if you run Android on it you will be using a free phone with a free as in freedom operating system. Jim _______________________________________________ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
