No FreeRunner follow-up, says OpenMoko

Misinformation

"But since OpenMoko was announced, back in 2006, the mobile phone industry has embraced open source with enthusiasm: Android, Symbian and LiMo all offer open-source alternatives to the iPhone and Windows Mobile platforms, while Access Linux is turning up on TVs and satnav boxes and everyone is developing mobile phone applications."

Symbian is only open source if you live in some promised (and apparently stimulant-centric) future. All the other Linux variants are pushed by people who will quite happily use open source, but actually being able to take advantage of that as a "consumer" is a different matter, since the vendors involved are prone to "Tivo-izing" their code, pretending that they haven't actually shipped it to you, the punter, whose only consolation is that Linus Torvalds doesn't care about such stuff going down as long as it's "cool stuff", or something.

"Open-source hardware still lacks a definition, let alone a business case, and the FreeRunner remains little more than a reference design or hobby project - a luxury that fewer and fewer people can afford."

There's plenty of open source hardware out there. If your colleagues would stop oiling themselves up over the possibility of a Sun takeover, they and you might recall that particular company's activities around open source CPUs, to take one example of something people probably claimed couldn't be done. There's plenty more happening out there around Arduino, but the main problem is arguably the fabrication of components at levels attractive to small communities.

I don't see how any of this translates to the lack of a definition, however. Perhaps a broad statement was needed to finish off the article, but I don't think it quite conveyed the impression of insight into the subject matter that was probably intended.

@James - Open Source != Design by users

Sorry lets blow this mis-conception out of the water since I'm tired of hearing it. Open source is not about letting your software, or in this case hardware, bend to the whims of it's users. It is about giving those users the choice to develop their own product from your work.

I'm a developer for a large open source project and not a day goes by without someone whining that open source means we should accept every a feature request or patch to the code. That's not the way it works folks, open source is not about wiki-style development where just anyone gets to make their changes to the code of a project. If you want to create a feature for yourself, then you can because you have the source. If you then want it to be available for others then you can try submitting it back to the project, or release the patch/fork the original project.

It's harder to see how this might work for hardware, not everyone has the resources to have a phone built to their own specs, but all the same this is what Open Moko were demonstrating with the FreeRunner. It might not have made commercial sense, but they weren't violating the spirit or intent of open source by ignoring suggestions from the community.

@james: That's not open source...

Open source doesn't *necessarily* mean you take ideas from the community and do them yourself...

Open source means the source is available for all to use. You can go to the website and download the circuit diagrams and CAD files for the casing, then make your own with a camera if you really want to/can be bothered. *That* is open source.

I have a freerunner, and once the software stack was upgraded a couple of times (to the release before this one), it's been great, keyboard is excellent and the platform is, for the most part, stable. My only complaints are the absence of a terminal by default (you need to find and install one), and the fact that it's *still* a bit dodgy for wifi connectivity. So, those last two points in mind, I'm all in favour of them fixing the GTA02 instead of building the GTA03. Go for it openmoko!

Aw, phooey

The OpenMoko project was such a wonderful, wonderful idea with such crippled implementation. I was so looking forward to the day when they made the hardware useful - either by adding a camera or a hardware keyboard or, ideally, both. Sadly, as it was, it seemed to be trying to compete head-on with the iPhone and, obviously and predictably, failing wretchedly.

I'd have bought one in a heartbeat (to echo the first poster, whose views I completely agree with, having followed the project's postings for quite a while myself) if the damn thing had had even theoretically useful hardware. Apparently, that isn't going to happen, and we're forever going to be stuck with the crap that the telcos see fit to poo on us.

I wanted this project to succeed. Too bad the people running the project didn't.

more problems...

i think it's great that they're going to fix this device, and I am laughing at people that really don't get open source, however there's a far bigger problem than them being slightly broken, I would have bought one of these a long time ago if it wasn't for this problem, because it's a huge one.... it's called: Stock Levels.

The thing is near impossible to find in stock, so they're not going to be shipping many of these devices until they can fix this "bug"

The secret of "Project B"... revealed!

The "B" stands for "Bankruptcy"!

<note for the humour-impaired: that's a joke>

<note for everyone else (i.e. non-lawyers): what has the world come to that we have to spell it out when we're joking?>