Interesting thread, and I agree that it's complex for businesses to find out how open to be while still being able to maintain a working business model. We certainly live in interesting times. I'm glad that such a question is on the table.
One thing that comes to mind in terms of augmenting Maemo and making it a more robust system is whether it's possible to consolidate efforts being made by other groups such as the Ubuntu mobile project (I can't recall the name of this effort), and perhaps the efforts of openmoko and Android. My feeling is to benefit from the work we're all doing and share the prosperity and accomplishments in whatever way possible. Ultimately the open mobile OS, which Maemo is a fantastic example of, could be a project that could help strengthen the open source community as a whole through cross-pollination of ideas and work. My feeling is trying to work by going from strength to strength and capitalizing on the enthusiasm of open-sourcerers around the world and showing what a portable, lightweight, dynamic, flexible, immaculate, and useful open OS looks like. I think we can give more to people than any current solution on the market. I think we could give people everywhere with cellphones, handhelds, and tablets an extraordinary product that truly benefits the world and enhances their work and lives. I think an open OS can do that, and I think that any company who is running the best, most feature rich OS will make a heap from selling devices that run it. My prediction is that we're reaching a certain technological singularity for portable devices, where you don't need multiple ones, that every one of them has the power of the grid behind it and has the capacity to be a virtual omni controller for any conceivable application. Think of the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy meets Adam Sandler's universal remote from the movie Click. I think that's where we're headed, a pocket-sized super computer. So why not start to design the OS in that vain? A superfluid platform that can be imported to many kinds of devices, repurposing them into new useful things. I think it's also a very green vision to have that we can still upgrade devices that would otherwise head to the trashcan. Or at least donate them to the developing world, upgraded with a new OS, so that we can give cheap super-communicators to people. There's a TED talk about when people have more avenues for communication people small economies that have been sagging will revitalize and begin to become prosperous. I think the current version of the XO was designed to be learning toy, but Maemo, Maemo has an enormous amount of potential to be more then just a toy to people. It can augment entire economies and societal structures for the better. So I'm totally enthused to see what can be done. My personal vision is for a device called a Geode, the passport to planet earth. It would be an inexpensive ubiquitous device that would have the world within it. It would be the hitchhiker's guide to planet earth. The only caveat I would add to the license is the the software is only available to people involved in what would be defined as socially evolutionary. If you do destructive anti-social things (like genocide) then you are betraying the terms of use and the software license is revoked. :) That's my riff. Cheers, Paul aka openartist On Tue, Jun 3, 2008 at 11:49 AM, Marius Vollmer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > "ext Robert Schuster" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > >> You are not a zealot like me and need an argument now? Ok. The free >> software scene came nearly out of nothing. Although free programs >> existed long before Linux was written, there was no organisation of >> those. One of the early communities that rallied together to make a >> change was Debian. > > Heh, please don't write the GNU project and the FSF out of the history > books... > _______________________________________________ > maemo-developers mailing list > maemo-developers@maemo.org > https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers > _______________________________________________ maemo-developers mailing list maemo-developers@maemo.org https://lists.maemo.org/mailman/listinfo/maemo-developers
