At the risk of being flamed : State of software

Lorn Potter lpotter at trolltech.com
Sun Aug 26 00:54:48 CEST 2007


On Sun, 26 Aug 2007, Marcin Juszkiewicz wrote:
> Dnia piątek, 24 sierpnia 2007, wim delvaux napisał:
> > Knowing that the device is now about 6 months late and looking at the
> > overall stability and completeness of the GUI (List of issues is still
> > long perhaps too long ?) I wonder if it would not have been a better
> > solution to put things like QTopia on the phone.
>
> The problem with QTopia is that you will get GPL version (so no commercial
> applications for it) or will force OpenMoko into license payments. 

OpenMoko Neo is a 'free' phone, why would you want to put commercial 
proprietary software on it? I thought the point of it was to get away from 
closed source/commercial/proprietary apps.  If I minded that, I would just 
use a Symbian or Windows Mobile phone as apps for those abound.

> To get 
> phone functionality of Qtopia

well, who knows.. if enough people email Trolltech... that could change.

> OpenMoko company would have to pay for 
> commercial Qtopia Phone or wrote whole phone subsystem from scratch as
> there is no phone functionality in Qtopia4/GPL.

Better than writing the whole shebang from scratch. Why not start with 
something that is 95% finished, mature, stable and tested.

/me shrugs

>
> And if you go into Qtopia world you will get small amount of applications.
> There was "lot" of stuff for old Qtopia versions (1.5->2.2) but none of
> them can be "just built" for Qtopia4 version (and you do not really want
> to play with Qtopia <4.x - trust me - I spent over two years with OPIE
> hacking). 

Nothing wrong with qtopia 2 and Opie...

> So at start all you get is Qtopia4 stuff which is done for 
> devices which have atleast few keys (but probably can be used with
> touchscreen only too). Forget about syncing PIM data to something other
> then Qtopia4 Desktop (if it exists), forget about many X11 based
> applications/games (I know that most of them needs to be adapted to small
> screen but many of them can be just used).

as can qt4 apps...

>
> > For me, the free community does not need (really) a new GUI library.
> > It needs a good phone ! Our interest lies in having a nicely featured
> > device available so that we hackers can release our creativity and
> > write apps that users like and not - yet again - re-invent the wheel to
> > start all over again.  And for what ? For a theme ? For true GPL ? ...

Well, that license does behoove free software...

>
> For me LGPL is proper license for such device. It allows to write free
> applications which will use any license (all those hackers which you
> listed) AND it allows to write commercial stuff. 

OpenMoko is touted as a FREE phone with FREE software, not closed source 
commercial software. Which do you want more of??

> We have GPS on device - 
> how many Linux applications you know which can show you maps and route
> you from one place to another? I know few:

well, the neo is currently a developer only phone, so someone could easily 
write such a best, for whatever gui library.


-- 
Lorn 'ljp' Potter
Software Engineer, Systems Group, MES, Trolltech




More information about the community mailing list