Wifi again

Mikko Rauhala mjrauhal at cc.helsinki.fi
Sun Feb 18 12:52:20 CET 2007


la, 2007-02-17 kello 19:29 -0800, Wolfgang S. Rupprecht kirjoitti:
> > This has been discussed many, many times in the last month.  According
> > to Sean, no wifi chips that both are low-power and have open specs.
> 
> It sounds like the GPS and GSM chips aren't open spec either.  That
> didn't stop them from being included.

True, but especially with the GSM chip it's a rather different
situation. It's rather hard to make and sell an open GSM stack,
unfortunately. I'm willing to view that mostly as an accessory of our
free system.

As for the GPS, it does seem to be more of a compromise, since it
requires the proprietary daemon bit on our otherwise free software
running SoC. However, I appreciate that the team are aiming for an open
device, but have bootstrapping problems. Also, the daemon in practice is
not as intrusive as a WLAN driver would be, even if ideologically
they're not much different; at least with the userland daemon there
shouldn't be much of an issue in upgrading the rest of the system, esp.
the kernel.

Hopefully later there will be more choice of good and more open
hardware, especially if they can say "we sold 2^n of our last phone, so
you want to work with us on an even more open version" :] (I also
suspect that somebody will make an open daemon replacement, but don't
have the expertise for that myself; FIC may or may not be able to
distribute that sort of thing by default but I'd be happy for simple
availability.)

> I wonder if openmoko could benefit from using whatever the OLPC (One
> Laptop Per Child) folks are using.

That's been mentioned and Sean noted it. It may yet prove fruitful in
future OpenMoko devices, yes, but of course I'm also only guessing from
a non-FIC standpoint.

-- 
Mikko Rauhala   - mjr at iki.fi     - <URL:http://www.iki.fi/mjr/>
Transhumanist   - WTA member     - <URL:http://www.transhumanism.org/>
Singularitarian - SIAI supporter - <URL:http://www.singinst.org/>





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