2010/8/20 Jim Ancona <j...@anconafamily.com>: > True with respect to most phones, because hardware manufacturers don't > release their drivers. Not true with respect to the Freerunner. In any > case, Android is exactly as free as Linux is, because you would have > exactly the same problem running any Linux-based OS on that hardware, > correct? So Linux is not free by your definition.
I think the confusion usually arises from the fact that Android is usually used to indicate devices sold with Android. No Android shipping phone runs on just free software (on the main CPU) currently, except if all the limits with HTC Dream, which I think people have been hacking on the most, have been surpassed. But there are also other aspects than being free or non-free, like being a successful open-source project in terms of open development, external developers in the core components (besides kernel) et cetera. In that sense I and probably many others still very much prefer GNU-userland / something-we-all-know-better type of distributions over Android software. On the other hand, talking from hardware vendor point of view, free and ready touch device softwares are still a bit lacking, so Android could be a solution for "something to ship on the device", similar to Om2007.2. Remember that if doing some FreeRunner successor kind of thing, it doesn't matter that much what is shipped with it. And if it frees up developer resources to doing just hardware and kernel support by not doing a huge effort like OE-based Om2007.2/Om2008/Om2009 on the software distribution, I'm all for it. But if the vendor is going to build some application software, I'd vote for doing that for some other platform than Android stack, if for nothing else then for increasing competition in the free software touch/mobile applications. By the time any successor hardware would be available, MeeGo with handheld packages is probably anyway a better starting place, since it's a true GNU/Linux distro. I'm not saying Android has serious flaws, I just strongly think that the longer roots in the open world the better for the healthiness of the open software. Big piles of code-dropped code takes time to become an open project, similar to what we'll certainly see with Symbian that is now "all open". Personally I'd go for Debian all the way but I know the real-world-use touch applications will first arrive somewhere else and only later will be packaged on Debian, like we do in the pkg-fso group. But if the vendor would like to spend some time on the distribution software as well, I think Debian is The way to go for longevity of the product and its software. As a major component of it involves getting all the kernel code upstream :) -Timo _______________________________________________ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community