Community update: GSM firmware and GPS driver

Mike Montour mail at mmontour.net
Wed Nov 14 21:56:34 CET 2007


Shachar Shemesh wrote:

> Regarding the GPS, please pay attention to the fact that the GTA-02 did
> not "solve" this problem. It merely moved the non open source component
> from the software to the firmware. This solves the "supporting
> libraries" problem, but does not allow openness. 

It solved the problem of requiring closed software to run on the host 
CPU, which is the most important threshold. In my opinion it is 
unrealistic to expect a device like the Neo1973 to use completely "open" 
hardware. A serial-attached GPS module with closed-source firmware is no 
worse than the hard drive with closed-source firmware in everyone's 
desktop PC.

http://gps.psas.pdx.edu/OpenGnssProjects/ has some good links to open 
GPS projects, but I don't know of any that would be suitable for a 
mobile phone.





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