Free Your Phone

David Schlesinger David.Schlesinger at palmsource.com
Sun Jan 21 22:01:39 CET 2007


>If more people are aware of why freedom and community matter, then
>they will buy more products that support freedom and community, like
>more Neos.

I don't actually believe this, other than for the excruciatingly small minority of people who hang out on mailing lists such as this one. The overwhelming majority of people neither know nor care what the operating system on their cellphone is, nor is the idea of one cellphone "supporting freedom and community" more than another one going to be the least bit meaningful to them. Moreover, efforts to explain it will be met, almost entirely, with completely blank looks, and will most likely be counterproductive. "I just wanted to buy a phone, and he's talking about _community_..."

If people buy phones based on Linux, which could be a fine thing for open source developers, they'll buy them because they're _better phones_, and for no other reason--that's presupposing that they, in fact, are better, of course.

And neither freedom, nor free software, emanate exclusively from the GNU Project, and it's disingenuous of the FSF to suggest that other people or organizations are less supportive of freedom than they are--Apache's done as much for GNU, at least, as GNU's done for Apache, and to suggest otherwise smacks of some weird form of McCarthyism. I'm a little tired of this "freedom as long as you do it _our_ way" stuff, frankly.

But this is strictly a _political_ agenda, and I'm still unconvinced that this list is an appropriate place for you to be flogging it.

Maybe Sean can set up an "openmoko-politics" list for those who want to grind that axe some more...
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