I've discussed the Nokia 770 with a few high profile members of the FSFE community. The reaction was generally positive. Sure, it may have Flash and Opera, but it's essentially a free platform, was the common feeling. I call this assertion into question: Maemo relies heavily on non-free components and Nokia has constructed technical and psychological barriers which prevent a free platform from emerging. I contend that Nokia, despite their contributions to the FLOSS communities, represents a greater threat to freedom than many proprietary hardware vendors. Read the note here:
http://walfield.org/blog/2007/01/29/maemo.html
Neal
On Tue, Jan 30, 2007 at 02:47:49PM +0100, Neal H. Walfield wrote:
I've discussed the Nokia 770 with a few high profile members of the FSFE community. The reaction was generally positive. Sure, it may have Flash and Opera, but it's essentially a free platform, was the common feeling. I call this assertion into question: Maemo relies heavily on non-free components and Nokia has constructed technical and psychological barriers which prevent a free platform from emerging. I contend that Nokia, despite their contributions to the FLOSS communities, represents a greater threat to freedom than many proprietary hardware vendors. Read the note here:
I think Nokia's attempts to introduce software patents were even worse than releasing proprietary software or closed hardware platforms. Opera keeps their software proprietary but at least opposed laws that would have other people not be able to choose the access they want to grant to their own code. Nokia contributes to free software but also contributes to software patents. Ditto for IBM and so many others. Companies don't have a single mind, so I guess we have to take what we can from companies and prevent their abuses as best we can, but moral judgements on companies are even harder than on people :(
On Tue, 30 Jan 2007 14:47, neal@walfield.org said:
common feeling. I call this assertion into question: Maemo relies heavily on non-free components and Nokia has constructed technical and psychological barriers which prevent a free platform from emerging. I
I talked at the LinuxTag 2005 with Devesh Kothari, Nokia's product manager for "OSS", who is more a techie than a suit. He assured me that the use of Opera is only a temporary solution and that they are already working on a replacing it using a free browser (Konquerer). I have still not seen any movement in this regard. AFAIK, even the promised Vorbis support using the DSP has still not been implemented.
At one point I was about to get into DSP hacking to make the 770 a more useful audoi device (in terms of battery life). However, noticing that with the n800 nothing went for the better, I doubt that it makes sense to spend time on hardware which is more ore less obsolete now. So my device will rest in my living room as a Wikipedia browser.
BTW, it is not only Nokia. Other vendors operate the same way. For instance, Hauppage's MVP box: Many people spent a lot of time improving the devices but at one point you are trapped the same way as when working on Windows. In that case the driver for the MPEG decoder and video device of the PowerPC chip. IBM, that huge free software supporter won't release any specs.
Maybe these vendors are part of a greater plan: Embrace the hackers and let them spend their time on cool para-free gadgets so that they can't work on free code ;-)
Shalom-Salam,
Werner
At Tue, 30 Jan 2007 16:08:34 +0100, Werner Koch wrote:
On Tue, 30 Jan 2007 14:47, neal@walfield.org said:
common feeling. I call this assertion into question: Maemo relies heavily on non-free components and Nokia has constructed technical and psychological barriers which prevent a free platform from emerging. I
I talked at the LinuxTag 2005 with Devesh Kothari, Nokia's product manager for "OSS", who is more a techie than a suit. He assured me that the use of Opera is only a temporary solution and that they are already working on a replacing it using a free browser (Konquerer). I have still not seen any movement in this regard. AFAIK, even the promised Vorbis support using the DSP has still not been implemented.
This is one of the common misconceptions in the free software community regarding the 770 and n800: that the only non-free components are Opera and Flash. As I point out in the note, Nokia holds back several important pieces of the platform including how the battery works and several central UI components. Unlike Opera, these components are less easily replaced, I think.
BTW, it is not only Nokia. Other vendors operate the same way. For instance, Hauppage's MVP box: Many people spent a lot of time improving the devices but at one point you are trapped the same way as when working on Windows. In that case the driver for the MPEG decoder and video device of the PowerPC chip. IBM, that huge free software supporter won't release any specs.
I wasn't suggesting it was only Nokia but observing the amount of enthusiasm towards Nokia, especially in the GNOME community, I thought it pertinent to analyze this particular case. Your example is a good one, though, and one which I was not aware of.
Maybe these vendors are part of a greater plan: Embrace the hackers and let them spend their time on cool para-free gadgets so that they can't work on free code ;-)
para-free is a nice term; it immediately invokes the image of paralysis.
Thanks, Neal
On Tue, 30 Jan 2007 16:39, neal@walfield.org said:
components are Opera and Flash. As I point out in the note, Nokia holds back several important pieces of the platform including how the battery works and several central UI components. Unlike Opera, these components are less easily replaced, I think.
I have not looked in depth into this. I assumed that it falls into the category of firmware/bootloader/monitor. It is always hard to draw a line here. We are still living with non-free BIOSes and embedded platforms often use non-free monitors. This is nothing special with the Nokia devices. Well, with their claims to distribute a fully free device they should have provided the source for everything under their control. But, well they obviously use the same modules as for their phones and freeing it would allow people to tinker with the phones (what they definitely don't like).
In your article you mentioned that Maemo requires all libs to be LGPLed. To be frank, that is nothing special: Both, KDE and GNOME have this requirement. I had discussions with KDE maintainers in the past on how to get a GPLed library (GPGME) into KDE proper. This was one of the reasons we later switched to LGPL for that library. The claimed reason for the LGPL requirement is that some companies are using the core KDE libraries for proprietary projects.
Salam-Shalom,
Werner
Werner Koch wrote:
In your article you mentioned that Maemo requires all libs to be LGPLed. To be frank, that is nothing special: Both, KDE and GNOME have this requirement. I had discussions with KDE maintainers in the past on how to get a GPLed library (GPGME) into KDE proper. This was one of the reasons we later switched to LGPL for that library. The claimed reason for the LGPL requirement is that some companies are using the core KDE libraries for proprietary projects.
And what about GNOME? It's an official GNU project, and AFAIK GNU doesn't especially care for companies who want to use their code for proprietary projects.
Frank
On Thu, 1 Feb 2007 12:17, frank@g-n-u.de said:
And what about GNOME? It's an official GNU project, and AFAIK GNU doesn't especially care for companies who want to use their code for proprietary projects.
The only one who things this is an official GNU project seems to be RMS ;-).
Salam-Shalom,
Werner
Werner Koch wrote:
On Thu, 1 Feb 2007 12:17, frank@g-n-u.de said:
And what about GNOME? It's an official GNU project, and AFAIK GNU doesn't especially care for companies who want to use their code for proprietary projects.
The only one who things this is an official GNU project seems to be RMS ;-).
: GNOME is... : : Free : : GNOME is Free Software and part of the GNU project, [...]
Frank
On Thu, 1 Feb 2007 13:13, frank@g-n-u.de said:
An official GNU project has a maintainer assigned and needs to follow the GNU coding standards. For example copyright assignments and due tracking of contributions is a pretty strict requirement.
A quick check of the copyright assignment shows only 3 entries: TigerT assigned images for GNOME ART, Juan Garcia assigned changes to gnome-api-sniffer and Ettore Perazzoli assigned changes to gnome-libs. The founders of gnome did not assigned any GNOMe stuff (Miguel is listed only for MC and Federico not at all).
Compare that to GNUSTEP with more than 110 individuals listed.
Shalom-Salam,
Werner
An official GNU project has a maintainer assigned and needs to follow the GNU coding standards. For example copyright assignments and due tracking of contributions is a pretty strict requirement.
It depends on a per project basis, and isn't as strict as you might think. But it is generally recommended that for a GNU project that you sign a copyright assignment.
Werner Koch wrote:
On Thu, 1 Feb 2007 13:13, frank@g-n-u.de said:
An official GNU project has a maintainer assigned and needs to follow the GNU coding standards. For example copyright assignments and due tracking of contributions is a pretty strict requirement.
I'm confused. You said RMS may be the only one who considers GNOME a GNU project. OTOH, RMS is known to be very strict about copyright assignments etc. How does that fit? And I don't suppose RMS wrote the gnome.org web site that says so, either ...
Frank
Frank Heckenbach wrote:
I'm confused. You said RMS may be the only one who considers GNOME a GNU project. OTOH, RMS is known to be very strict about copyright assignments etc. How does that fit? And I don't suppose RMS wrote the gnome.org web site that says so, either ...
Copyright assignments are not required for all GNU projects, as Alfred explained. See for example GNU Freetalk and a lot of others. And no, RMS is not the only one that considers GNOME a GNU project (although many GNOME contributors don't share our philosophy -- but that's not a requirement for a GNU maintainer either).
The only company that is investing to develop a free software platform for mobile phones which I know of, is ACCESS.
http://www.access-company.com/home.html
A few years ago there was a company called Palm which developed smartphones (treo, etc.) with the PalmOS proprietary operating system.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_OS
Then the PalmOS division left Palm and formed a new company called Palmsource but the OS was still proprietary.
Later a company called ACCESS acquired Palmsource and now they are working on APL: Access Linux Platform (they called the system Linux instead of GNU/Linux).
http://www.access-company.com/products/linux/alp.html
They hope to begin selling smartphones with APL before the end of 2007.
Is the Mobile GNU/Linux era beginning?
:)
http://www.palminfocenter.com/news/8514/access-linux-platform-shown-at-linux...
On Thu, 2007-02-01 at 13:08 +0100, arc wrote:
The only company that is investing to develop a free software platform for mobile phones which I know of, is ACCESS.
The FIC OpenMoko project is also promising, and has some very free software friendly developers working for it.
Cheers,
Alex.