Keeping out the competition

As manufacturers release handsets that can be programmed to do anything you want, on any carrier, the network operators are getting worried.

These standards are designed to keep out open source 'phones like the OpenMoko, prevent the innovative experimentation that has led to the rapid growth of Internet applications, and keep customers paying for expensive services restricted to your network provider.

It is dressed up as security, but aimed at keeping an oligopoly: unless they are merely talking about a Java sandbox model, rather than certifying individual applications.

Right now we need 'phones designed for people who aren't western businessmen or city teenagers - even ones working in multiple scripts, and icons understandable by farmers in villages in Bangladesh.

You won't like this

But WM5 does what I want here.

A mobile app can do just about everything, make calls, look in the SIM, take screenshots. If enabled, the app gets signature checked and it *prompts* if there isn't a valid signature. But if the user wants, it will run happily.

Needs to be dual-core, though.

More of the crap that Symbian have foisted on us with S60V3

This just benefits the incumbent firms and their favoured software houses. Just as Symbian signing locks out everyone with a good idea but no money. If I own the hardware I should be allowed to run what I like on it.

Let's hope that Android and OpenMoko become widely available and easy to install.

No more Talks

This will break accessibility software such as Talks, which needs to hook in to all sorts of operating system routines, by fair means or foul, in order to gather the information it needs on what has changed on the screen, so it to be spoken to sight impaired users.

Not PCs, just Windows.

It isn't PCs that are the source of the battle against malware (or for that matter the source of spam). Linux isn't prone to it, and neither is MacOS/X.

Just Windows.