google open phone platform

Shawn Rutledge shawn.t.rutledge at gmail.com
Mon Nov 5 22:08:14 CET 2007


On 11/5/07, Dean Collins <Dean at cognation.net> wrote:
> It was FIC's window 6-8 months ago but now when the industry stalwarts
> are crashing at your door it's time to close up shop, sit on the beach
> and think of the next coolest thing.

I would not be advising FIC to give up yet.  A big consortium,
especially one including the likes of Motorola, isn't likely to be
moving that fast.  There's plenty of time for some cross-pollination.
After whatever they have now has been fully revealed, I doubt we will
see much change for a couple years.  Their new ideas can inspire some
of our future ones, too.  The trouble is they work hard in secret for
a couple years and then make a big splash, whereas in the free
software world we make incremental small improvements more slowly (and
take some steps backwards sometimes too).  The sneaking around is the
annoying part - it's all about helping their bottom line and market
perception rather than being "about" freedom.  If this plan were known
before, it could have had some positive effects on this project.

I'm guessing they just made some improvements to Java to improve the
performance to the point that it could actually be practical.  No
reason the new improved VM couldn't run on FIC phones.  And it helps
that Sun's versions of Java are more fully open-source now.




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