back to article MIPS open sources living room Android port

Google's mobile OS is poised for life beyond the mobile - and the netbook. Two months after porting Google Android to its MIPS microprocessor architecture - widely used in set-top boxes, HDTVs, and other embedded devices - MIPS Technologies has open sourced the port, hoping to create a kind of Android standard for consumer …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. This post has been deleted by its author

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Linux

    Startup time

    I have an HTC Magic, and would the startup time which is pretty long, be the same on a home media player? That would suck.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Linux

    It's 2009

    It's 2009. I'm a bit out of touch with MIPS (printer controllers etc are where I last encountered it). Other than compatibility with their own MIPS legacy, why would a volume system builder (not a hobbyist) chose a MIPS architecture rather than ARM?

  4. spencer
    Thumb Up

    FYI

    The Popcorn Hour Media Tanks Run on a MIPS chip (thats the only thing i can think of off the top of my head).

  5. The Indomitable Gall
    Dead Vulture

    I'm confused... "open sourced"?

    Hang on, they took an open-source OS and ported it. This means that the port was always open source. All they have done is make the source available independent of any (binary) software product -- the GPL would have been satisfied by simply providing the source to any purchaser of a MIPS Android product. However, as one of the purchasers would have made it publically anyway, that's a purely academic distinction.

    So the story isn't "MIPS open sources living room Android port" but simply "MIPS living room Android port now available".

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Other devices...

    The topfield PVRs such as the TF5800 are MIPS based. They however have the same problem as many mobile phones. While many many devices could in theory run Android (or other Linux distros) the hardware vendors keep critical details secret, refuse to divulge them except under NDA and most likely wont even talk to open source software developers. Many promising ports have ultimately hit this brick wall.

  7. Adam Connelly 1
    FAIL

    @I'm confused... "open sourced"?

    From what I can tell, Android is released under the Apache license and not the GPL, which means that a port is not necessarily open source. So MIPS would not have been compelled to make the source available with any binary distributions.

    So I would argue that the story is "MIPS open sources living room Android port".

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like